The Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC) in conjunction with the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) and the Japan-Vietnam Geoinfomatics Consortium (JVGC) will tackle information technology's role in cultural and environmental preservation at its annual conference this year.

The theme of the conference, which will be held in Ha Noi, Vietnam from December 4 to 6, 2008, will be "Information Technology for a Sustainable and Creative Humanosphere."

The "humanosphere" is a term recently coined by researchers in Kyoto, Japan, to refer to four regions that are vital to human existence: the ground human habitat, the forest-sphere (arborsphere), the atmosphere and space. The rapid expansion of the world population and its increasing living standards have created many concerns, which may endanger these indispensable regions and become a great threat to the survival of mankind.

Digitization is part of the infrastructure required for the long-term preservation and sustainability of the world natural and cultural environment. How information technology can be used to enhance preservation and promote sustainability will be the main focus in the program of this year.

Cultural Atlases, Humanity Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Data Management, Digital Archives, Digital Libraries, Digital Museum, Digitalization SOPs, e-Learning, GIS Technology Applications, Intellectual Property Rights and Representation of Context will be among the lecture topics on offer at the three-day conference. The 2008 series of Technology Enhanced Learning (TELearn) workshops will also be part of the program.

Among the sessions, three sessions will address the cooperation and digitization of libraries, strategy for digital archive development and the integrated Buddhist archives network; three sessions, entitled "Digitization 101", will share TELDAP experience in developing SOPs on Digitization, Database and Display Platforms, and Sustainable Management: the e-Learning sessions will discuss the practices of improving digital divides, how the concept of Web 2.0 can be used to improve e-Learning, and the development of the Chinese language e-learning industry under Web 2.0. In the science section, two sessions will address the application of GIS tools for data analysis of environment disasters and one session will be a round table session for researchers who are interested in creating historical digital gazetteers and or calendars to discuss the solutions to incompatible character codes, element-sets, data descriptions.