3-day Documentation & e-Archiving Conference concludes

Such a working group should comprise representatives of local, regional and international organizations as well as experts in respective fields, a final communiqué issued after the conference has pointed out.

The concluding session of the conference was chaired by Obeid Salim Al Shamsi, Assistant Director General of Dubai Municipality for Administrative and General Services Affairs.
The proposed group, according to the communiqué, should define the necessary vision and objectives for achieving this goal. The ultimate objective of this initiative should be improving human skills, organizing academic events and providing the right climate for the spread, exchange and development of knowledge thereby guaranteeing the reach of knowledge to all targeted groups and accomplishing development opportunities.

The conference also urged Dubai Municipality to introduce a mechanism whereby recommendations of the conference as well as the proposed international working group could be effectively followed up and implemented.

"Similar conferences should be organized on a periodic and regular basis and all the best practices and applications in this field should be encouraged. Dubai Municipality , in cooperation with the proposed international working group, may choose the themes and subjects for the upcoming scientific conferences and meetings with a view to encourage capabilities in the production, spread, exchange and development of knowledge," said the communiqué.

Dubai Municipality was also urged by participants of the conference to introduce an electronic forum, in the form an Internet website, for facilitating dialogue among participants of scientific conferences with the objective of exchanging knowledge and expertise. Such a website may include information on the latest international standards and specifications, expertise, experiences, academic researches, institutions, and professional organizations that can be an excellent reference to all those concerned with knowledge and its applications.

Organized by Dubai Municipality in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at the Dubai International Convention Centre, the 3-day conference was attended by some 1250 from 19 countries around the world, including 75 experts on knowledge management, libraries, statistics and Geographic Information Systems.

The final day has witnessed four general sessions in which 12 papers were presented on the four modules of the conference: Knowledge Management, Libraries & Documentation, Statistics & Information and Geographic Information Systems.

Under the module, Knowledge Management, three papers were presented. Dr. Hadeel Shawkat Al Obaidi, Lecturer at Al Mansour University College of Iraq, presented a paper on "Dynamic Analysis of Structuring Websites through Websites Engineering", while Dr. Amer A. Moustafa, Director of Graduate Studies at the American University of Sharjah, presented a paper on "Internet Tools for Making Better Cities in the Gulf Region." Other papers in this module included "Knowledge is Power - Acquisition of Knowledge Management, by Andrew Plummer, President of Document Corporation, Australia, who explained how can organizations deploy Knowledge Management when the Information Technology (IT) environment is predicted to change so significantly.

Under the module, Libraries and Documentation, Eng. Qussai Shahin, Head of Computer Section at the Arab Mining Company, Jordan, presented a paper on "Building the Electronic Thesauruses". Other papers on this theme were "Arabic Thesauruses: Waqf Sciences Thesauruses" by Huda Farhan, Supervisor of Information and Documentation at the Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation, "Arabic Information Bank experience as one of the establishments specialized in electronic documentation in Al Bayan Journal" by Faisal Bin Haidar and Saleh Taha Mohammad, "Electronic Archive in Sultanate of Oman: Experience of the Ministry of Housing, Electricity & Water" Dr. Saif Abdullah Hamood Al-Jabri, Group Development Executive, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman, "Key Technical Issues of Long-term Digital Archiving of Documents" by Dr. Gabor Magya, Professor at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary, and "Commercial Electronic Archiving," by Bruno Wildhaber, Owner of Wildhaber Consulting, Switzerland.

On the theme, Statistics and Information, three papers were presented which were: "Demographic statistics role in security planning" by Dr. Izat Al Shishini, "A Probabilistic Retrieval Model Using Query Relevance Dependence Of The Documents" by Dr. Abdelmoula El Hamdouchi, and "Overview on the state of global youth employment, with emphasis on Egypt's case" by Dr. Khaled El-Sayed Hassan.

The final session on GIS included three papers : "Use of GIS and Remote Sensing to survey the marine pollution in term of hydrocarbons: case of ARZEW harbors (Algerian West), by Aisha Benmecheta, "Integrated study of the Nouakchott city environment" by Dr. Menny Ould El Bah and "Development of Mining Information System (MIS) in Egypt: An Application of GIS" by Dr. Sameh Saadeldin Ahmed.