Wednesday, November 04, 2015

USAIN 2016: Call for Contributed Papers, Posters, and Lightning Rounds

USAIN 2016: Call for Contributed Papers, Posters, and Lightning Rounds

Deadline for proposals is Nov. 30!! 

The United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) Contributed Papers and Posters Committee is now soliciting proposals for the 15th Biennial USAIN Conference.  This year’s conference, “Interdisciplinary Agriculture: Meeting Tomorrow’s Global Challenges” will be held April 24-27, 2016 in Gainesville, Florida and hosted by the University of Florida.

Please consider submitting a proposal that will contribute to the discussion of interdisciplinary aspects of global agricultural information. Papersshould be on a topic of interest to a large proportion of conference attendees or a USAIN interest group, are presented orally, and should be no more than 15 minutes long.  Posters suitable for sharing preliminary research or short project reports, are also welcome.  An individual may be lead author and presenter on a maximum of two submissions – one paper and one poster.  Lightning Rounds will be 8 minutes each and should be focused on topics related to technological developments in librarianship.

Two USAIN Interest Groups are soliciting contributions for their programs. Contributors are not required to be Interest Group members. The AgNIC Interest Group is hosting a paper session on Collaboration in Agricultural Librarianship. The group seeks paper proposals related to any collaborative efforts, such as crowdsourcing, collection development, etc. The Technology Trends Interest Group is hosting a lightning round on technological developments in librarianship. Examples include assessment of useful mobile apps relating to food, agriculture and nutrition, faculty and students’ use of mobile apps or social media in their academic pursuits; assessment tools and measures that have been used in repositories or open access collections; data management tools in use, their assessments or effectiveness, new tools used for library instruction or for outreach to patrons, user preferences for e-book collections, evaluation of the impact of e-book collection, technology useful to help faculty increase their impact, new online tools, open source, etc.  When you submit your proposal you will have the option to indicate if it is for the main USAIN 2016 papers track, the Collaboration in Agricultural Librarianship track, or the Technology Trends Lightning Rounds.

Those wishing to present a proposal should submit an abstract in English (maximum 300 words) online at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=usain2016 (new users of the EasyChair software program will need to sign up for a free account). Because reviews will be blinded, please exclude any identifying information (names, addresses, institutions) from the body of your abstract.

The proposal deadline is November 30, 2015.  Notification of proposal acceptance will occur in January 2016.

The following criteria will be used for reviewing proposals:
  • Reports on original research or project;
  • Demonstrates a new application of existing technology, method, or thought;
  • Contributes to the knowledge of and in the field;
  • Is of broad interest to the USAIN audience;
  • Is of suitable length, scope, and content for a poster, paper presentation, or lightning talk;
  • Adds to the quality and diversity of the conference program.

For more information about proposal submissions, please contact committee chair Lorrie Pellack (pellack@iastate.edu515-294-5569).  An FAQ with more information about submissions can also be found at http://cms.uflib.ufl.edu/usain2016/Program/FAQ.aspx (scroll down to FAQ).