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Under the plan, EUSIDIC and NFAIS will retain their separate identities, governance structures, and programs. In merging operations, the two will form an umbrella organization—“the global alliance”—that will seek additional partners in other parts of the world. The umbrella organization will focus on global issues, common strategies, and shared goals, while NFAIS and EUSIDIC will retain full control over their national/regional agendas.
The alliance will initially bring together NFAIS’s membership of approximately 50 information providers with EUSIDIC’s membership of approximately 100 information services, intermediaries, users, and providers. The two organizations will share a secretariat.
“The alliance is mutually beneficial to both organizations,” said EUSIDIC chair Daphne Tomlinson, of Siemens Building Technologies AG, in Switzerland. “EUSIDIC will bring a large membership base representing a broad spectrum of the European information industry, and NFAIS will offer a more solid machinery. The synergistic effects of joining with NFAIS in common administrative operations are obvious. With this alliance, both organizations will achieve a critical mass, allowing improved membership services and the possibility to shape and influence the global policy and research agenda of the alliance.”
Both the NFAIS board of directors and the EUSIDIC Council have endorsed the decision for the two organizations to enter into detailed negotiations in order to develop the detailed plans and complete the merger, which is expected in early 2001.
“This alliance,” said NFAIS president Brian Sweet (of Ovid Technologies), “fulfills a strategy that the NFAIS board of directors first outlined several years ago. We have been seeking a strategic partner to work with us in creating an umbrella organization that would focus on global issues. We are delighted that EUSIDIC shares our vision, and we look forward to working with them in completing these plans.”
Established in 1970, EUSIDIC exists to provide a forum and channels of communication for professionals involved in the information industry, both suppliers and users.
NFAIS, founded in 1958, is a membership organization of more than 50 leading not-for-profit, commercial, government, and academic producers and distributors of digital information services for research and professional communities.
Source: EUSIDIC, Karlsruhe, Germany, 011-49-724-780-8403; Fax: 011-49-724-780-8114;
http://www.eusidic.org and
NFAIS, Philadelphia, 215/893-1561; http://www.nfais.org.
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