Description: This article discusses the major topics of the American Society for Indexing (ASI) conferences. The purpose of this article is to identify major topics discussed at ASI conferences from 1997 through 2011 and to explore how the topics have changed over time. ASI conference programs reflect topics of interest to indexers and thus provide insight into concerns of the profession at large.

Description: This article discusses artificial intelligence, libraries, and information retrieval. In the science fiction short story "Anniversary" (Amazing, March 1959), Isaac Asimov described a computer system that combined advanced elements of artificial intelligence and information retrieval. Called "Multivac" in the story (The author wonders if the name was inspired by the UNIVAC systems that were being marketed in the early fifties), Asimov's system is described as "a mile-long super-computer that was the repository of all the facts known to man; that guided man's economy; directed his scientific research; helped make his political decisions--and had millions of circuits left over to answer individual questions that did not violate the ethics of privacy." Multivac was capable of understanding and answering what we would now call natural language queries on any topic. The protagonists of the story typed in their questions on a terminal that worked much like a typewriter.

Description: This article discusses biography indexes. The author discusses index characteristics considered significant by book reviewers of biographies, drawing on reviews excerpted in the 'Reviewed elsewhere' column of Biography.

Description: This article discusses cataloguing in 2012. Abstract: The major looming changes in music cataloguing today-the cataloguing code 'Resource Description and Access' (RDA); a system of genre/form and medium terms, to be used as "subjects;" and a not-yet-determined replacement for the encoding system MARC-result from a concern for the needs of the user. The first thorough, systematic analysis of user needs was 'Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR).' RDA is designed around the conceptual framework presented in that document. Similarly concerned with user needs is the new system of genre/form and medium terms that will soon replace the current workaround of using "subject headings" for what an item 'is', instead of only for what an item is 'about.' Because catalogue data created according to RDA cannot be adequately expressed in the current MARC format, another initiative is underway to develop a new encoding framework to replace MARC.

Description: This article offers a comparison of strategies and policies for building distributed digital preservation infrastructure. Abstract: This paper discusses the importance of a particular approach to building and sustaining digital content preservation infrastructures for cultural memory organizations (CMOs), namely 'distributed' approaches that are 'cooperatively' maintained by CMOs (rather than centralized approaches managed by agencies external to CMOs), and why this approach may fill a gap in capabilities for those CMOs actively digitizing historical and cultural content (rather than scientific data). Initial findings are presented from an early organizational effort (the MetaArchive Cooperative) that seeks to fill this gap for CMOs. The article situates these claims in the larger context of selected exemplars of Digital Preservation (DP) efforts in both the United States and the United Kingdom that are seeking to develop effective DP models in an attempt to recognize those organizational aspects (such as the governmental frameworks, cultural backgrounds, and other differences in emphasis) that are UK- and US-specific.