Both annual events feature visits to local industrial sites, both active and historical.

Industrial heritage study tours to other countries began in 1990 and occur on an irregular schedule.

The annual conference is typically accompanied by a custom guidebook profiling local industrial and cultural sites.

SIAN publishes articles about recent events, summaries of the Society's annual conferences and fall tours, news about local chapters, brief abstracts of articles on industrial archeology-related subjects, and other notes and queries.

The current quarterly publication schedule with Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall issues began with Volume 10 in 1981.