Originally founded in 1876 in Philadelphia and now headquartered in Chicago, the American Library Association (ALA) is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 64,000 members.
 
The 2005 ALA Midwinter Meeting was held January 14-19 at the John B. Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA USA. Owned and operated by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center is one of the country's most-used, midsized event locations and conference facilities. Situated right in the heart of Boston's historic Back Bay, the Hynes is also connected to a mega-complex of nearly 4,000 hotel rooms, shopping malls, restaurants, theaters and more.
 
For many years, Thomson has been a major supporter of the ALA Midwinter meeting, and its annual meetings in June. The Midwinter meeting is of particular importance for the Thomson Scientific Academic & Government Strategic Business Unit. As in previous years, Thomson Scientific planned several events designed to increase visibility, including an ad in the conference program, a breakfast workshop, in-booth presentations, and a lavish reception.
 
Also notable was the Thomson Scientific 20 x 20 Island booth, which rivaled the display booths of the hundreds of other exhibitors. Vistors to the Thomson Scientific booth could get information and demos of a variety of information solutions, including ISI Web of Knowledge^SM—which facilitates discovery by offering seamless navigation to the highest quality journal, patent and life sciences content, evaluation tools, and Web content; and the Thomson ResearchSoft bibliographic management products, EndNote^®, ProCite^®, Reference Manager^®, RefViz^TM and WriteNote^®.
 
Another focus was the Century of Science^TM initiative, which boosted Web of Science content with backfile and cited reference data and navigation from 1944 to 1900. With the Century of Science initiative, approximately 850,000 articles from more than 200 journals, carefully selected from the published research of the first half of the 20th century, was added to Web of Science.
 
The Thomson Scientific events began with a breakfast workshop held on Saturday (1/15/05) morning at The Colonade Boston hotel. At the workshop, Jim Pringle provided an overview of the Web Citation Index^TM Project—the multidisciplinary citation index for Web-based scholarly resources. The new Web Citation Index will combine a suite of technologies developed by NEC, including "autonomous citation indexing" tools from NEC's CiteSeer environment, with the capabilities underlying ISI Web of Knowledge. The program also included commentaries by project participants from various institutions.
 
At the ALA Midwinter meeting, Thomson Scientific is well-known for hosting lavish receptions to thank customers for their continued support. And 2005 was no exception. In fact, this year's event could arguably have been the most festive to date. The reception was held at the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA). Located on a four-acre parcel of land devoted exclusively to the arts, the BCA measures 23,000 square feet and is home to an array of exhibitions, performances and community events and houses the Community Music Center of Boston, the Art Connection, Boston Ballet's headquarters, three small theaters and a rehearsal studio. A unique circular structure, the Cyclorama rotunda was built in 1884 to display a panorama painting and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
 
Upon entering the Boston Center for the Arts guests ascended a staircase beautifully lined with rows of candles. At the top staircase hung white silk curtains illuminated with stars. Behind the curtains, guests entered an elegantly decorated room, where a galaxy of twinkling stars hung from the ceiling and lined the walls.
 
The room was tastefully decorated with silk draped cocktail tables, lounge areas, and an elaborate circular bar.
 
During the reception, the DJ entertained quests with popular music selections from 1920 to the present. After enjoying the delicious food and beverage selections, the librarians danced the night away. At the end of the evening, in keeping with a long tradition, each quest received a commemorative ceramic tile. By all indications, a good time was had by all.
 
At various times during each exhibit day (Jan. 15, 16, & 17), Thomson Scientific staff conducted in-booth presentations. The presentations by Jeff Clovis, director of global sales support focused on ISI Web of Knowledge with a concentration on Web of Science, the Century of Science initiative, and the product offerings from Thomson Researchsoft.
 
In addition, Jodi Bukowski's daily presentation on ISI Web of Knowledge offered visitors to the booth an opportunity to showcase their ability to navigate through the platform to answer questions about research excellence. The names of each participant who uncovered the correct answer where entered into a drawing to win an American Express gift certificate.
 
From the exhibits to the workshops and presentations to the reception, once again, the ALA Midwinter meeting proved to be a show that businesses like Thomson Scientific must continue to support--for the building of relations, sharing of knowledge, and camaraderie.