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The article provides information on the Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) Conference that was held at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, from 19-21 July 2006. Various interesting papers were presented at the symposium which focused on information theory. One of the sessions focused on rural communities. Theresa Anderson from the University of Technology Systems and Chun Wei Choo from the University of Toronto were two of the speakers among the several who presented their papers.

The article provides information on the Collections Council of Australia Ltd Digital Collections Summit which was held in Adelaide, Australia from 16-17 August 2006. Almost 200 delegates from collecting institutions attended the summit. The papers discussed focused on the various digitization and digital access programs underway across the country. One of the speakers included Tom Kennedy, former chair of the Internet Industry.

This article presents an information on an international economic education conference in Australia in 2005. Even among micro economists, however, there was considerable debate in some plenary and concurrent sessions on what microeconomics to teach. Some speakers in concurrent sessions were far morecritical of continuing to use perfect competition as a benchmark even for comparative statics and especially for the dynamic case. The assumptions of the competitive model were often described as severe and unrealistic. More specific but nevertheless related criticisms were voiced in several papers and sessions, suggesting that most economics teachers and textbook authors pay too little attention to recent empirical work and theoretical models and to topics that raise serious questions about using competitive rather than imperfectly competitive models of product and factor markets.

For many years a Women in Engineering Forum was run in conjunction with the Australasian Association for Engineering Education conference, but in recent years "women in engineering" has fallen off the radar to a large degree. There is a widespread perception that the issues of concern for women have been addressed, and that women are now incorporated into the mainstream of engineering education and the engineering profession. Yet Australia and other western countries still have participation rates for women in engineering education that are lower than any other field of education and that have stagnated or declined for the last decade. This paper reviews a range of recent data and studies to examine the current picture of women in engineering education: the statistics, student experience and faculty issues. It concludes with a look to the future: what still needs to be done? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the first Commonwealth Parliament. It reports that among the 36 senators in the first Commonwealth Parliament were Josiah Symon from South Australia and John Keating from Tasmania. Like many of their colleagues, they were both lawyers but the two men differed markedly in experience and temperament. Symon was a Freetrader, with long political experience as a member of the South Australian legislature and as a prominent delegate at the Federal Convention of 1897-98. They shared a passion not only for the law but also for literature and history, including the history of their own country. Known to be great book collectors, they were nominated as founding members of the Parliamentary Library Committee and they remained active members of the Committee for many years. As readers of this series and other works on the Australian history, Symon and Keating were well aware that most of the sources on the maritime exploration and colonization of Australia were located on the other side of the world.