The November 2011 issue of the PAM Bulletin is generously sponsored by SIAM.

by Willow Dressel

It is hard to believe this is my last bulletin as editor. These past two years of service to the division have been really great. I am grateful for the opportunity to have participated in dissemination of information to the division. To echo what is often said on the list-serve, PAM is the best!

During the migration to the new website, I spent quite a bit of time going through all the past bulletins and uploading them to the new site. It was a lot of fun to go back over the division’s history and seeing what things have changed and what hasn’t. In particular I noticed that the bulletin website design hadn’t changed since 1999. As assistant editor, Robin Dasler was determined to end the 12 year reign of the old design regardless of changes made to the website by SLA. Robin has already done great work for the bulletin and website, now that she is taking over as editor I know she will continue to do good things for the bulletin.

Call for Suggestions for SLA 2012

We, Kim Hukill and Julie Arendt, are co-facilitating the PAM’s vendor update for 2012. From your comments regarding last year’s vendor update, we know that people appreciate getting the perspective of vendors regarding issues that affect both librarians and vendors. We also know that people like vendor presentations that save the sales pitch for other times during the conference.

Now we are in the process of figuring out a topic for the vendor update at SLA 2012 that will give you the kind of session that you would like to attend.

So we put the following questions to you:

• What topic will be one that physics, astronomy, and mathematics vendors would have something to talk about and that PAM members would want to hear about?
• PAM members, is there something that you’ve always wanted to ask library vendors but were afraid to ask?
• To our vendors, what issue do you wish librarians in physics, astronomy and mathematics were more concerned about?

Please send your suggestions to the co-moderators: khukill@aip.org and jarendt@lib.siu.edu

by Linda Yamamoto

The PAM Publisher Liaisons (aka Publisher Relations) Committee met on Tuesday, June 14th, at 3:35-4:55pm in the Division Suite. About 20 people were in attendance. Unfortunately, Jane Kinkus Yatcilla moved to another position and division in January, so Linda Yamamoto took her place as Chair.

Publisher Liaison Reports:

AAS (Molly White): See Molly’s full report (with correction) sent out to PAMnet on 7/21/11. The Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society (BAAS) is now online only and freely available. Subscription prices for 2012 have been set, and increases will be minimal, around 2%. In 2013 print costs will be shifted to print subscribers, which could be difficult for those institutions that still require print.

Turpion (Thurston Miller): IOP has 10 years of Turpion journal archives on their platform and the full archive back to volume 1, issue 1 resides on the Turpion platform.

INSPEC (Rich Hunt): has added its 12 millionth record. Inspec is adding citation information to their records, first on their platform then on other systems. Web of Science is not on board with adding citation information in their version of Inspec. They are also adding IPC (International Patent Classification) codes to records.

SPIE (Linda Yamamoto): The SPIE eBooks package has been launched on their Digital Library platform. At least one institution finds the eBooks package too expensive.

SIAM (David Marshall, SIAM) is now participating in CLOCKSS and Portico.

IAU Working Group on Libraries (Marsha Bishop): the group will meet at the IAU General Assembly meeting in Beijing at the end of August 2012.

IAU Commission 5 Working Group Libraries will host a bridge program at the IAU General Assembly in Beijing in August 2012.  The two-part program will consist of a panel discussion between scientists and Librarians on the topic “The Need for Libraries, Even in the Age of the Internet” followed by a second segment devoted to shared library-operated projects and programs between observatories.  We are presently working to raise funds to help defray the cost of travel for librarians to the IAU General Assembly Commission 5 Working Group Libraries program in Beijing.  If you are interested in participating in this conference or would like more information, please contact Marsha Bishop at mbishop@nrao.edu.

Mathematical Sciences Publishers (MSP) (Carol Hutchins for Martha Tucker): There have been changes in personnel at MSP. Carol Hutchins is on the Board of Directors along with Steve Rockey. Celebratio Mathematica, a new open-access scholarly web publication that honors the lives and achievements of scientists, will be published by MSP. Jim Pitman is interested in reducing the publication backlogs.

OSA (Karen Andrews): is showing greater flexibility regarding subscriptions.

Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) (Marsha Bishop): ASP Conference Proceedings will be archived at ADS. Author publication charges will increase next year. Asking for feedback regarding PASP journal access via University of Chicago Press on JSTOR, which will have 1 year embargo for deposit into institutional repositories.

World Scientific (Stella Ota): no meetings in the past year. Obtaining individual MARC records for ebooks has been slow (unless purchased as a package), although they are of high quality.

Royal Society of Chemistry (Thurston Miller): The RSC Library Advisory Board meets virtually, but they were planning to meet in Philadelphia.

AGU (Flora Grabowska): it’s much easier to switch journal subscriptions to e-only. Unfortunately, the print version is unattractive since it’s printed 2 pages per side in landscape format. Eos is now offered separately from the “AGU All Content” package.

Project Euclid (Steve Rockey): the advisory board is mostly composed of mathematicians. Selected titles must be indexed cover-to-cover. Project Euclid is financially stable; there have been discussions regarding payments to small journals.

Steve also reported that Cornell e-book records will improve, and encouraged editorial boards to follow the IMU Best Current Practices for Journals. It was also mentioned that the Engineering Libraries Division of ASEE still has their ejournal standards online, “Best Practices for Electronic Resources.”

AIP Publications Policy Committee (Thurston Miller): meets in May and December to discuss the economics of publishing; the group is mostly comprised of editors.

Chair report (Linda Yamamoto): This year, we have vacancies with Elsevier, IOP Publishing, ACM, and EDP. The EDP liaison position is difficult to fill because EDP requires that the liaison speak French. Elsevier has not responded to inquiries about appointing a new liaison. Several people made suggestions for possible candidates for these vacancies. NOTE: Linda is still working with Springer on appointing a PAM member on their Library Advisory Group, as the person in charge left Springer since the conference.

Discussion:
It was felt that we need to encourage more participation from the general PAM membership. There was some confusion as to whether or not this was an open meeting, which it was, but this was not made clear on PAMnet.

There was much concern expressed over AIP’s announcement that non-member society journals will no longer be hosted on the Scitation platform in a year or two (for the list of member societies and publishing partners, see http://librarians.scitation.org/librarians/publication_partners.jsp). How will this affect our subscription costs? What about all those resource URLs we have in our catalogs and discovery environments?

There was some discussion regarding the pay-per-view option offered by many publishers. Some find this as unacceptable since you don’t get perpetual access or the ability to maintain it on the library’s platform, assuming that the library has hosting capabilities; perhaps allowing this would improve sales of pay-per-view. If hosting is possible, then articles can be listed in the catalog with some sort of IP authentication. Scribd was mentioned as another possible solution.

Another point of discussion was the effect of Open Access journal costs to non-library budgets — will this be bad for library budgets in the long run? But OA journals can give local research more exposure so it may be worth it when you don’t need to maintain journal subscriptions.

Publishers would appreciate receiving ideas and comments from members funneling through their PAM liaison instead of being surprised by postings on the PAM list.

Finally, concerns were raised about preserving smaller e-journals such as the New York Journal of Mathematics, as Portico and LOCKSS/CLOCKSS already cover most major publishers and their publications.

by Cunera Buys

Work is starting to get underway for the next PAM Membership Directory.  Remember, I obtain your information from SLA, so please update your membership information with any changes. To update your information go to http://www.sla.org/ and log in using your SLA user name and password.  Click on “Update Your Information” under the Membership tab on the SLA home page.  You can then update your name or contact information.

The information I receive from SLA is your preferred mailing address. If your preferred mailing address is your home address, send me an e-mail with your work information if you want your work information in the listed in the directory.

SLA is currently in the middle of a recruitment campaign.  As part of SLA’s ‘Picture’ of Success Campaign.

• One prize each will be given to the chapter and division with the highest total member number increase between October and December 1.
• One prize each will also be awarded to the chapter and division with the highest total member percent increase in membership.
• The winning chapter and division will be announced and recognized at the SLA Leadership Summit 2012.
• A digital photo camera will be awarded to the winning chapter and division membership chair (or the volunteer that the unit selects).

PAM is currently holding steady at 216 members.

Please join me in welcoming new or returning PAM members since the last PAM Bulletin.  If you are new and not on this list, drop me a line and I will update my list and make sure you are included next time.

Allison Romanyshyn
Subscriber Relations Manager
SPIE Digital Library
allisonr@spie.org

Paul Paar
paulpaar@yahoo.com

Leah Johnston
lajohnston@gmail.com

by  Alison Verbeck

Uta Grothkopf, European Southern Observatory Library, has a chapter titled “Astronomy Libraries – Your Gateway to Information” in the book Scientific Writing for Young Astronomers, EAS Publication Series, 2011.

For the past two years Shaun Hardy has been working with Ruth Duerr at NSIDC on a project to digitize Carnegie’s extensive data archive from the 2nd International Polar Year. From a web announcement: In 1932-1933, Carnegie Institution scientists journeyed to Alaska and northern Canada to take part in the 2nd International Polar Year (IPY2) – a coordinated campaign of geophysical and meteorological observations by scientists from 40 nations. Now, thanks to a two-year collaboration between Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the original records from the Department’s IPY2 work have been digitized and are available online in NSIDC’s ROCS Archives Catalog (http://nsidc.org/rocs/archives-catalog/). Shaun Hardy (Carnegie-DTM) and Ruth Duerr (NSIDC) coordinated the project, which involved scanning thousands of instrument recordings, log sheets, photographs, and technical documents.

Uta Hussong-Christian is one of the authors of an article in The Digital Shift detailing an experiment at Oregon State University examining the use of ereaders – by academic librarians. “Four Librarians, Four Ereaders, One Month” by Evviva Weinraub Lajoie, Jane Nichols, Uta Hussong-Christian, and Laurie Bridges, October 11, 2011.
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/10/11/four-librarians-four-ereaders-one-month/

Bob Kelly, Director of Journal Information Systems, has announced his retirement after 18 years of outstanding service with the American Physical Society. Bob’s last day will be December 31, 2011. We wish the very best for Bob and his family.

Pat Viele, retired physics and astronomy librarian, gave a poster session at the joint New York State Sections of APS and AAPT on October 7th. The theme of the meeting was “Celebrating the 100th Year of the Discovery of Superconductivity”.  Pat’s poster, “Information Fluency: Where to Start” is based on the collection of materials in her comPADRE file cabinet. http://www.compadre.org/portal/filingcabinet/share.cfm?UID=31&FID=21329&code=7CE89E751B

by Muhammad Shahid Soroya, PAM International Membership Award Winner 2007

A few years back, I often wondered why organizations give awards to people and sometimes spend reasonable amounts on travelling grants as well. I could understand the efforts behind such activities, especially when the team of volunteers are people working behind the scenes. What is the overall advantage of these awards and scholarships? How does a specific community or public at large benefit from it? Spending time and money to recognize one’s efforts also raises these questions within the minds of other people.

I could easily remember the day when I received an email from Nisa Bakkalbasi regarding the announcement of the PAM International Membership Award for 2007. While sending my nomination, in my mind, I had a very few chances of winning such an award. But I did! The level of my happiness can never be expressed in words as I was getting a chance to visit abroad for the first time, to the USA. Everybody understands that this award is given to a person who is from a developing country and contributes something extraordinary in the areas of Physics, Astronomy or Mathematics. Most working professionals in developing countries are unable to get a chance to travel to the USA on their own because of high expenditures and visa issues, so this opportunity to get a membership in SLA and also a travelling grant definitely fulfills the dream of any person.

The first impression that I got from the PAM family was really unexpected and very positive, when Nisa personally called me.  She was very conscious about my Visa from the US Embassy and asked if I required any help in this regard. She remained in touch with me till the finalization of my Visa process. It was quite difficult to leave my son and family even for a very short period. But I must share with everyone that the PAM family provided me hospitality more than I expected. Care, Love and Affection given by the people of PAM Division is an asset for me. I am personally thankful to Nisa, Joe Kraus, Ruth Kneale and all other members of the PAM family who gave their time, shared their experiences and guided me in many ways.

My first professional experience was my presentation, which I tried to prepare at my level best, but I was little confused and again Nisa said, “Don’t worry” and it made me more relaxed. It was a quite satisfactory moment for me after completing my first international presentation. The participants shared their remarks and also pointed out a few areas for improvement.

Many people get such awards, travelling grants, medals and scholarships but very few get true benefit from such recognitions (from my point of view). I had detailed discussions on PAM and SLA structures, its funding and its activities. What I learnt from all these communications was that most important is your determination to do something, and finances never matter. During the stay of one week, the second thing which I observed from the people of United States of America that they are loyal to their country and committed to their nationhood. Individual efforts could be far better when transformed by an organization with clear vision and goals. I came back to my homeland with a decision that I would start my struggle for the betterment of my profession and professionals.

It is important to share with the readers that in Pakistan the Library profession is unfortunately neglected and libraries have never been important for the governments, which has resulted in different services structure in different organizations with different salary packages. The job market is saturated, and exploitation by the private institutions in terms of salary packages is there to disturb and frustrate the young professionals. At the same time the only national body for library professionals, the Pakistan Library Association (PLA), remained dead for a long period, and elections were held in 2007 after a gap of around 10 years.

We had an online discussion group named Librarian Welfare Group for general communication which provided a platform to discuss and share the issues regarding PLA and played a very important role in the revival of PLA. I succeeded in gathering a few young sincere persons together and founded the Pakistan Librarians Welfare Organization (PLWO), taking the responsibility of President of said organization. The basic purpose was to help the professionals in many ways like indicating job opportunities, information sharing, continuing education etc.

Meanwhile the PLA announced elections and my nomination was sent in for Treasurer PLA, Punjab Branch. I succeeded in winning the position with maximum votes cast in the election. Immediately after taking oath I was given the assignment to Chair the Image Building & Public Relations Committee and also joined the editorial board of PLA Punjab Newsletter. The next task was the re-organizing and updating of PLA Punjab website (www.plapunjab.org). During the following two-year tenure I tried to deliver in given areas of the organization by organizing five Talk Shows at Pakistan Television, press conferences, contributed in Newsletter and tried to enhance the membership of PLA. The tenure was completed in April, 2011.

In the next phase, Pakistan Librarians Welfare Trust was established, with PLWO as functional part and we succeeded in forming a team of dedicated persons for PLWO and started our website (www.plworg.com). The first big event organized by PLWO was World Book & Copy Right Day on 23rd April, 2010 in collaboration with US-Consulate, Lahore, Pakistan. We also involved the media (Electronic & Print) and libraries by sending emails/letters to highlight the importance of the day.

In 2011, PLWO focused on continuing education and organized more than 10 workshops and seminars for training of librarians. For the first time, scholarships and Travelling grants for the participants/students were announced. Again April 23, 2011 was celebrated as World Book & Copy Right Day all over Pakistan, and PLWO organized a national seminar in collaboration with Allama Iqbal Open University. Media also highlighted the importance of the day through news and columns/essays. The Prime Minister of Pakistan announced 22nd April National Book Day.

PLWO has started its annual Research Journal titled ”Pakistan Journal of Information Science” with international members on the editorial board including Zari  Kamarei from the PAM team. The first issue is expected in January, 2012. A Quarterly Newsletter is also going to start in December, 2011. Membership in different categories has also been offered and people are getting onboard with enthusiasm. A new website (www.librarianswelfare.org) is under process, and a Face book group is there for people using social networking websites.

Although I am leading the PLWO team, everybody is contributing according to his/her capacity, and I have ensured those results and acknowledgement of their volunteer work. Many times I have heard the words “international exposure” but I really learnt from that opportunity given to me in the shape of the PAM International Membership Award and I dedicate all these outcomes, all these successes and standing to my PAM family, who gave me confidence to take such initiatives.

This year the PAM Wide Roundtable will be on July 16th from 10:00  to 11:30 am (1.5 hours).  We will have a totally traditional roundtable!  You will be talking about your institutions, cool projects, budget woes and whatever professional news that will help your colleagues in their institutions to move forward.  We will limit ourselves by subjects.  Therefore please email me the topics that you think should be discussed in this roundtable.  I look forward to your emails.

Zari Kamarei
Director of Science and Engineering Libraries
University of Rochester
zkamarei@library.rochester.edu

Plans are well underway for SLA’s 2012 Conference in Chicago. The PAM division is putting together ideas for many events including the roundtable sessions. This Conference’s Physics Roundtable will be held on July 17th from 2:00 until 3:00, and we invite you to join us! Michael Chesnes, an LAC contractor for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Kathleen Lehman, of the University of Arkansas Physics Library, will be facilitating the discussions. Current plans are to hold the session in the café style similar to SLA 2011’s PAM-wide roundtable, with a bit of a change. Rather than staying with just one topic for the length of the time, participants will be able to switch tables part way through the session and participate in a second discussion. A portion of the session’s time will be set aside for sharing discussion summaries and for having a brief question/answer time.

At this point, we are looking for your assistance with two things. First of all, what are important topics you would like to discuss with your PAM colleagues? We have several ideas such as library instruction, space planning, and institutional repositories, but are looking for a total of 7-8 topics that are of high interest to you. We encourage you to come prepared with questions you would like to ask or experience you would like to share about these topics. Secondly, would you like to serve as a table leader? Not every table will need to have a designated facilitator, but if you feel particularly interested in or knowledgeable about a topic, please share that interest! Designated table leaders will stay with the same topic for both discussions. Please e-mail us if you have topic ideas or wish to volunteer as a discussion leader. We look forward to hearing from you!

Michael Chesnes michaelchenes@gmail.com

Kathleen Lehman kalehman@uark.edu

by Jane Holmquist and Andy Shimp

2012 Journal Pricing

• American Mathematical Society (PDF)
• Cambridge University Press (XLSX)
• Duke University Press and Project Euclid
• Elsevier
• European Mathematical Society (PDF)
• De Gruyter
• International Press of Boston
• Mathematical Sciences Publishers (PDF)
• Oxford University Press
• SIAM
• Springer
• Taylor & Francis (PDF)
• Turpion
• Wiley (XLS)
• World Scientific

Mathematicians Receive Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE)

Two mathematicians were among the 94 recipients of the 2011 award, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. Joseph Teran is an associate professor of mathematics at UCLA and Maria G. Westdickenberg is an associate professor of mathematics at Georgia Tech.

2011 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO)

The 2011 IMO was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 16–24, 2011, with 101 nations competing. It is the world championship mathematical competition for high school-age students. Held over two days, participants take a 4.5-hour, three-problem exam each day. China took first place and 6 gold medals. USA took second place, with all six members receiving gold medals. Singapore came in third place.

National Academy of Sciences Elections

The National Academy of Sciences has elected four new members and one foreign associate who work in mathematics for 2011, in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. The new members are: James W. Demmel, University of California Berkeley; David Gabai, Princeton University; Stuart Geman, Brown University; Joseph Harris, Harvard University; and Jean Bourgain of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Scripta Manet

An editorial in the August issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society announced a new column focusing on the changing nature of mathematical publication. The first contributor to Scripta Manet is Peter Olver, who is the new chair of the Committee on Electronic Information and Communication (CEIC) for the International Mathematical Union. His topic is the changing nature of the mathematics journal. The article was published in the September issue: http://www.ams.org/notices/201108/rtx110801124p.pdf. Additional columns concerning the “author pays” model of journals by Ilya Kapovich and book publishing by Steven G. Krantz appear in subsequent issues.

MathSciNet Tutorials

The American Mathematical Society announced that tutorials are available at http://www.mathscinet.info/index.html. The tutorials include: Publications, Authors, Journals, and Citations searches, as well as tutorials on the Free Tools and Preferences options.

MSRI Workshop on Mathematics Journals

A summary report about the MSRI workshop on the changing nature of mathematics journals was published in the September 2011 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society: “Mathematics Journals: What Is Valued and What May Change” by James Crowley, Susan Hezlet, Robion Kirby, and Don McClure. The paper is available at http://www.ams.org/notices/201108/rtx110801127p.pdf. As reported in the May 2011 PAM Bulletin, reports of the talks are available at http://www.msri.org/attachments/workshops/587/MSRIfinalreport.pdf.

Author Authority Talk Published

Norman Richert of Mathematical Reviews/MathSciNet published a talk he presented at the PAM Vendor Roundtable at the 2010 annual conference in New Orleans. The paper is titled “Authors in the Mathematical Reviews/MathSciNet Database” and published in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, v. 49 no. 6 (August 2011), p. 521-7. It is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2011.603821.

Joint Mathematics Meetings and Call for Agenda Items

The next Joint Mathematics Meetings will be held in Boston on January 4-7, 2012. In a recent PAMNET message, Linda Yamamoto posted a call for agenda items for the AMS Library Committee meeting that has been scheduled for Wednesday, January 4, 2012 from 3:35 pm to 4:50 pm in Beacon D, 3rd Floor Sheraton. Please contact her with ideas at linday@stanford.edu or 650-723-0864. The meeting is open to all who are interested. If you wish to know more about this committee, see http://carma.newcastle.edu.au/jon/AMS.shtml. A special rate of $50 is available for librarians registering for the Joint Mathematics Meetings by December 15. Please let Linda Yamamoto or Jane Holmquist (jane@princeton.edu) know if you plan to attend and would like to get together for dinner. Information and registration is available at http://jointmathematicsmeetings.org/jmm.

Obituary

Steven A. Orszag, a mathematician who performed pioneering work in the field of fluid dynamics dies at 68.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/us/08orszag.html

First Call for Roundtable Discussion Topics

The Mathematics Roundtable is scheduled to be held at the annual conference in Chicago on Wednesday, July 18 at 10am. We would like to devote this session to group discussion about topics of current interest. We are looking for your ideas as we plan this session. Please contact Jane Holmquist at jane@princeton.edu or Andy Shimp at andy.shimp@yale.edu.