Medford, NJ, April 24, 2000— Information Today, Inc. announced today a prominent lineup of key industry executives speaking at the 21st National Online Meeting, North America's largest electronic information conference and exhibition. National Online Meeting 2000 will be held May 16-18, 2000, at the New York Hilton in New York City.

The National Online Meeting, a cutting-edge industry event, will highlight a prestigious roster of information industry professionals and pioneers who will share their knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm for electronic information. An Opening Plenary Session will begin each day of the conference and will focus on a specific "hot topic" of particular interest to today's information professional.

Starting off the conference on Tuesday, May 16th will be the Opening Plenary Session, which will be followed by keynote speaker David Mirchin, vice president and general counsel for SilverPlatter.  Mirchin, a reknowned lecturer and author on Internet law topics, will present "Hot Topics in Internet Law: How Do They Impact on Publishers and Users of Information?"  In this session Mirchin will explore the current developments in Internet law and the latest breaking news in the field. In addition, he will cover such hot topics as spamming, employee gripe sites, clickwrap licenses, protection of factual databases, and deep-linking and framing.

On Wednesday May 17th the Opening Plenary Session will be presented by Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland, who is a prominent author and speaker in the fields of interface design and information visualization. Shneiderman's presentation, entitled "Interfaces for Visual Information Seeking," will discuss how human perception skills are largely underutilized by current graphical user interfaces and the importance of interface design in the usability of products. Shneiderman will also talk about the new opportunities in information visualization going forward in the future.

The Opening Plenary Session on Thursday, May 18th will feature Scott Plantz, M.D., FAAEM, chairman and CEO of emedicine.com.  Plantz's presentation, entitled "Electronic Publishing of an Online Emergency Reference Text and Other Multi-Author Online Medical References," will delve into his cutting-edge Web site [www.emedicine.com] and the groundbreaking online Group Publishing System (GPS) used to develop the site. With the print publishing cycle not able keep up with the rapid advancements in medicine, emedicine.com has been created to be a peer-reviewed medical reference free of charge to anyone with Web access. Plantz will discuss both how emedicine.com can be used by the general public and as well as by medical doctors.

In addition to this 3-day meeting, for the twelfth year in a row, Integrated Online Library Systems (IOLS) will be a “conference within a conference” at the National Online Meeting. Taking place May 17 and 18, IOLS 2000 will consist of plenary sessions, technical papers, and workshops based around the theme “Beyond the Frontier.” 

The National Online Meeting is sponsored by Information Today, Inc., publisher of Information Today, KMWorld, Link-Up, Searcher, Computers in Libraries, and MultiMedia Schools. For more information contact Information Today, Inc. at 800-300-9868 (outside U.S. call 609-654-6266), fax 609-654-4309, e-mail custserv@infotoday.com, or log onto the ITI Web site at https://www.infotoday.com.