Author Description

The Charleston Conference Proceedings 2003 is a record of what is arguably the most influential and highly thought of conference in the U.S. library world. Always well attended and managed, the conference attracts the leading figures of both the library world and the businesses that service libraries, including publishers, both paper and electronic, jobbers and aggregators. Its focus is collection management, but the topic is misleading now that traditional collection management has been expanded to include electronic publications of all sorts. Each year the speakers and topics are outstanding and this year's is no exception. Indeed, the conference seems to get better each year. This year's includes as a highlight keynote speaker Stephen Abram, a leading thinker in the library world, formerly of Micromedia ProQuest, and recently made vice president of SIRSI Corporation. Session topics include: Scholarly Communication Issues, Archiving Issues, Electronic Publishing Issues, The Future of the Book, and others. In short, something for everyone, but most topics are of interest to everyone with a stake in the future of the library. Most of the presentations appear here as papers; a few are represented by PowerPoint slides.