The Chicago conference past was a great success! Be sure to read the Message from the Chair about it, or visit the 2012 Conference Page for presentations and tidbits.

by Nisa Bakkalbasi

I am delighted to say that we had a very successful Annual Conference in Chicago this past July. Congratulations to all moderators, speakers, committee chairs, and board members, who worked tirelessly to put together a fantastic program.

I especially want to thank the Fundraising Committee, Chair, Uta Hussong-Christian and Co-Chair, Kiem Ta for raising a total of $26,225 from eleven individual vendors, publishers, and professional societies for PAM’s events, programs, and scholarships at SLA 2012 in Chicago. It has become increasingly difficult to sustain our sessions, especially those, which include food and A/V equipment such as color LCD projectors.

This was a very special annual meeting for our members, as this year marked the 40th anniversary of PAM division. The role of PAM to advance all aspects of the physics, astronomy, and mathematics librarianship should neither be under valued nor under estimated. We are held together today by what held us together 40 years ago; it’s our dedication to our profession, loyalties to each other, and our deep interest in the subject of physics, astronomy, and mathematics. We were all in a festive mood throughout the entire conference- many thanks to IOP for decking the hospitality suite with lovely ruby anniversary surprises; AIP for a beautiful and delicious anniversary cake at the Open House; and Peggy Dominy for a very special birthday gift: a brand new PAM banner to replace the lost one.

The conference week started with the Early Bird Dinner at Blackie’s on Saturday evening and ended with a tour of the Adler Planetarium on Thursday morning, both of which were organized by the Hospitality Chair, Jill Postma. Many thanks, Jill Postma, Cunera Buys, Barbara Kern, and Jenny Hart for their warm hospitality during our stay in Chicago. All of our social events and sessions were fully attended. Roundtables were a great success with interesting topics and lively discussions. Despite the challenges of high A/V, and food and beverage prices, and the distance between the convention center and hotels, we’ve had a very enjoyable and productive meeting. I am happy to report that we’ve managed to stay within our budget, yet still put together a wonderful program. More on the budget at the next bulletin, after we wrap up the conference invoices.

Congratulations on the achievements of the past 40 years, as we look forward to many years to come!

Nisa

by Stella Ota

The countdown is on for the 2013 SLA Annual Conference to be held June 9-11 in San Diego! The conference is shortened by one day, compressing the schedule, and providing all attendees with more opportunities for interesting interactions with colleagues, like a denser field of high energy particles colliding into each other leading to new knowledge and discovery. Now we just have to optimize on the field with programs and events to best support PAM. Sounds like we’re right on track with the conference theme: Connect, Collaborate, and Strategize!

As you begin envisioning your San Diego conference schedule, here’s the Saturday through Wednesday snapshot. The conference begins with a Saturday devoted to CE (continuing education) courses. Sunday through Tuesday is packed with conference programming and INFO-EXPO hours. Rounding out the conference will be a Wednesday reserved for tours only. Ready to go?

But first, a little strategizing on how to make the best use of our PAM programming time. Again, the number of programs that any unit may organize (lead) as well as co-host (co-sponsor) have decreased. Our “lead” sessions are down from 6 to 5, and our “co-sponsored” sessions are down from 4 to 3. Count on your subject roundtables (Physics, Astronomy, Mathematics, and Computer Science) and the business meeting (required) to be there. But, the compressed schedule does present a challenge for scheduling of our social and networking events (Vendor Update, Book Group) and the unofficial Publisher Liaisons meet-up. These non-programming events are not allowed during the “high-interaction” Sunday through Tuesday programming hours. So, let’s be thoughtful. What conversations do these events facilitate? Some topics may work into the roundtables and for the others, you may see a PAMNET-L poll seeking your input on options.

Meanwhile, there is still a lot of interesting work ahead in 2013! If you are interested to help PAM in 2013, opportunities are still available on committees! Contact me for more information.

Cheers,

Stella Ota
Chair Elect (& 2013 Program Planner)
skota@stanford.edu

by Ruth Kneale

This July, I had the delightful honor of hosting the Newcomer’s Lunch and welcoming several new members to PAM and to the conference. It was great seeing them all around the conference halls and in the Daily Retreat. I want to thank Stella for taking on the rest of the hosting duties at the Lunch for me, as I had to leave the amazing-smelling Russian Tea Time restaurant only a few short minutes after the lunch started. I had to attend a rehearsal/walk-through for what was, for me, the highlight of my year – the Fellows award ceremony.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you all, in writing. The support I have received from PAM in general over the years, and recently from Zari, Emily, Nisa and Stella, has been amazing. I would not be where I am in my professional career, either in my place of work or within SLA, without the encouragement and help I have received from you all. Being made a Fellow of SLA is an incredible honor, and I will do all I can to continue highlighting PAM’s efforts, work, and incredible members to the councils I’m now on, the Board, and Headquarters.

Thank you, PAM. You all rock!

Stella Ota (Incoming Chair), Ruth Kneale (Past Chair), Nisa Bakkalbasi (Chair) at SLA 2012

by Elizabeth Brown

Chicago, Il, July 15, 2012

Present: N. Bakalbassi, E. Brown, D. Thompson, J. Bussman, S. Ota, U. Hussong-Christian, E. Poworoznek, C. Buys, M. Chesnes, K. Ta, L. Utley, K. Duong, L. Yamamoto, D. Kegel, R. Dasler, J. Matthews

Absent: R. Kneale, M. Peper, J. Postma, N. Tchanglova

Agenda:

Meeting was called to order at 1:30 pm.

Nisa Bakkalbasi thanked all the board members and volunteers within the Division who contributed to the 2012 conference program, particularly Peggy Dominy who created a new PAM banner to the Division to replace the former one. Ruth Kneale is attending a Fellows meeting and cannot attend the PAM Board Meeting. Stella Ota will report in her stead.

1. Secretary (E. Brown): 2011 minutes were passed with corrections.

2. Treasurer (M. Chesnes): The PAM Budget summary was shared with members. The latest balance, pending several conference expenses, is $27,309.84. Once conference expenses have been paid, the balance will be below $5,000. One expense that could be revisited is the Member Directory, with expenses of over $500. Sponsorship support was also briefly discussed.

3. Past-Chair (S. Ota): The PAM Newcomers lunch was held this year at Russian Tea Time, with 3 new members present. Thanks to Turpion for sponsoring this event.

4. Chair-Elect(S. Ota): Several changes to the conference program will be implemented with the 2013 conference in San Diego. Main conference programming will be from Sunday – Tuesday, continuing education courses will be on Saturday, and field trips will be on Wednesday. The conference theme is Connect, Collaborate, Strategize. PAM will have 5 lead sessions (down from 6 this year) and 3 co-sponsored sessions. At this time the plan was to have the four roundtables (Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Computer Science), and possibly combine the Board Meeting and the PAM-wide roundtable.

There will need to be some changes in the schedule, as some events (like the Vendor Update) can’t be held during the dedicated program time (Sun-Tues). More food events will also need to be ticketed, pending sponsor support and other program costs. This is more the norm for other divisions in SLA.

The 2013 conference proposal deadline is September 7, 2012. The Continuing Education course proposal deadline is August 17, 0212. If the division can host a course, this is potential income for the division and also another program for sponsor support.

5. Chair (N. Bakkalbasi): Primary activities have focused on budgeting and planning for the division. The impact of rising conference costs is becoming more acute. Due to high A/V equipment, and food and beverage prices, there will be no LCD projectors at the roundtables and no breakfast at the Astronomy roundtables. The IMA award support was also reviewed and a temporary award support was established for the 2012 winner. This was due to rising costs of the award and no sponsor support. The award was reduced to continuing education credits with SLA ($700); the membership dues support for two years remains the same. The Board considered providing access to the online conference, but that option wasn’t available for the 2012 program. Other expenses that might need to be reviewed or reconsidered include the Retreat costs, travel support for the Chair and Chair-Elect, and food costs for the Board Meeting and the networking breakfast.

The 40th anniversary of the division is this year – there are pins for each member. Thanks to Ruth Kneale who purchased and designed the pins, with support from her staff at the Solar Observatory.

6. Awards (D. Thompson): No member awards were selected for 2012.

7. Archives (L. Utley): PAM records will be digitized to eliminate the need for a physical location for the archive. The digitization will begin during the archivist’s term.

8. Bulletin Editor & Webmaster (R. Dasler): Reports for the two positions were delivered together, since one person currently hold both, and the duties are intertwined. The August 2012 Bulletin will be delayed since the conference was held later this year than usual. The SLA style sheets are overlaid with the PAM content on the website, and more content is organized as blog posts, since the site is powered by WordPress. Since the web content is more discoverable by search engines, some conventions will need to be reviewed. One example is emails on posts – it is recommended that we stop using them to eliminate spam email to members.

There is a need for feedback from the members on the website, and also a social media role within the website. This role would monitor and update social networking sites for the division. The division could also explore the role of the regular blogger or other regular contributions to the site.

9. Fundraising (U. Hussong-Christian): The goal for 2012 was to cover conference session costs. 11 vendors supported the Division with $26,225 raised for session expenses. All but $2,000 has been received. Some of our support has been from in-kind donations: the Open House, directory printing, and retreat support are examples.

For the 2013 program sponsorship/ticket combinations were discussed. There was a comment that this would be more attractive for sponsors, rather than co-sponsors.

There are some additional sponsorship opportunities – the February 2012 Bulletin issue could not be sponsored.

A new committee co-chair is needed.

10. Government Relations (N. Bakkalbasi): No news to report.

11. Hospitality (J. Postma): The Early Bird dinner, at Blackie’s, was a great success with almost 30 attendees.

12. International Relations (K. Duong): The 2012 IMA award winner is Narendar Wadha, from India.

The award support was reduced to a $500 Click University stipend, plus $200 additional support when the online annual conference for 2012 wasn’t available. The 2013/2014 membership will also be provided ($228 total).

Previous IMA awards have totaled over $4,000 with travel and visa support. Award support will be reviewed and determined for 2013. One question which impacts this award is the future of the online conference.

The criteria and PR support for this award may also need to be reviewed, as the pool of applicants has decreased over the years, and some applicants do not qualify for the award.

13. Membership (C. Buys): There are approximately 200 members in the division. AMS prints the PAM member directory. Postage mailing costs is an additional expense. There was discussion on mailing the print Directory on request only, rather than automatically mailing to all members. Book rate mailing was also suggested as a way to save costs.

14. Nominations (D. Kegel): Chair-Elect and Secretary positions are open for the upcoming election.One Nominations Committee member is needed – the Past-Chair appoints this member with input from the Secretary and Treasurer. The election should be completed and new officers announced in the November 2012 Bulletin.

15. Practices Manual (J. Matthews): The practices manual will be checked for compliance with the SLA Best Practices Manual.

16. Professional Development (E. Poworoznek): The IOP travel awards will be presented at the Business Meeting. The winners are: Rebeca Befus (Michigan State University), Elizabeth Cheney (UCLA), Laurie Hunter (UNC-Chapel Hill), and John Kromer (Miami University-Oxford). Each winner received $1,000 in travel support for the conference.

There is a survey currently active on the PAM listserv to solicit suggestions for a continuing education course for the 2013 conference. Thomson Reuters would be a sponsor.

The incoming chair of the Professional Development committee will be Margaret Lam.

The 2012 PAM conference buddy program was a success – 12 buddies were paired with 7
member guides.

17. Public Relations (D. Thompson): Sponsor signs have been placed at entrances to session rooms, and extra dance cards are available for everyone.

18. Publisher Liaison (L. Yamamoto): EDP, Springer and Elsevier liaison positions remain open. Liaison meeting reports could be given in the Roundtable sessions at the 2013 conference, to reduce conflicts with dedicated programming time.

19. Strategic Planning (J. Bussman): 50% of members responded to the strategic plan survey. The committee consulted other SLA division strategic plans and the SLA mission statement for guidance. A draft of the 2012-2015 strategic plan was sent on July 9 th to the PAM membership. There will be more discussion on the draft plan at the Business meeting prior to approval by the
PAM Board.

Meeting was adjourned at 3:15 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Elizabeth Brown, Secretary

by Elizabeth Brown

July 16, 2012

The meeting was called to order at 12:04 pm.

Nisa Bakkalbasi welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked all PAM members who contributed to the conference planning and support.

1. Secretary (E. Brown): the 2011 Business Meeting minutes were approved with no corrections. The board meeting was held yesterday. Main topics of conversation were support for conference programming and the draft strategic plan.

2. Treasurer (M. Chesnes): There is currently a $56,000 balance in our account. The budget for this year’s conference was tighter than in previous years. This is reflected in food being offered at fewer sessions.

3. Past-Chair (R. Kneale/S. Ota): The Newcomer’s lunch was held at Russian Tea Time, and sponsored by Turpion. 3 new members were present. 40th anniversary pins are available for all members. There is a sheet to mark your name when you take your pin.

4. Chair-Elect (S. Ota): The 2013 SLA conference will be in San Diego, CA on June 9-13, 2013. The conference theme is: Connect, Collaborate, Strategize. The conference program schedule will be different than in previous years: for 2013 Saturday will be devoted to Continuing Education courses, Sunday through Tuesday is solely devoted to conference programming, and Wednesday is reserved for tours. PAM will have the four roundtables (Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy and Computer Science), as well other programs. There has also been vendor interest in supporting a continuing education course. The Business meeting may be combined with the PAM-wide roundtable.

Due to the tighter budgets, there might be ticketing for some events next year. There was also a call for volunteers for the 2013 conference. Contact Stella Ota if you would like to contribute.

5. Chair (N. Bakkalbasi): The PAM conference program and budget were the main area of focus, with an emphasis on balancing goals and expectations from members and attendees. The goal was to support conference programs without using any of the savings in the PAM budget. Due to high A/V equipment, and food and beverage prices, there will be no LCD projectors at the roundtables and no breakfast at the Astronomy roundtables. Sustaining programs and awards will continue in the coming years. There are also 40th anniversary activities planned at the PAM Open House and the Daily Retreat. Nisa also thanked the many sponsors who have supported programming and event support.

6. Awards (D. Thompson): No PAM awards were given out this year. Submissions are now open for 2013 awards.

7. Travel Stipend awards (M. Lam, S. Collins): The 2012 IOP Travel Stipend awards winners were recognized: Elizabeth Cheney (UCLA), John Kromer (Miami Univ.-Ohio), Laurie Hunter (UNC-Chapel-Hill), and Rebaca Befus (Michigan State Univ.)

8. International Membership Award (IMA) (K. Duong): Narendar Wadha (National Physical Lab – New Delhi) is the 2012 IMA winner. He will receive membership dues support for 2013/2014 as well as a $700 Click University professional stipend. This year support was reduced for this award as it has not receiving sponsorship support.

9. Strategic Plan (J. Bussman): The strategic plan committee members consist of Lauren Gala, Ruth Kneale and Dorothy McGarry. The committee began by reviewing the current plan in June 2011 and conducted a survey from Sept – Oct 2011. There were 108 responses to the survey, and the results will be made available in PDF format on the PAM website. Individual responses will not be included.

Demographics from the survey showed the majority of the members have more than 16 years experience, there are a mix of second masters represented, and the majority of librarians handle more subject areas than in the past. The committee reviewed plans from other divisions and also the SLA mission statement. Any feedback on the plan can be sent to Jeffra Bussman by August 15, 2012. The PAM board will approve the final version of the strategic plan, which will then be posted to the PAM website.

Discussion on the strategic plan:

A communications officer will be created to update and monitor PAM’s social media presence. This is becoming more important as members may have limited time to monitor social media and alerting services.

A vendor has expressed interest in helping sponsor a continuing education course for the 2013 conference. There was support for having a CE course but no topic was selected. It was stressed that attendance will need to be high enough to offset costs (there is a guaranteed minimum number of attendees required for these sessions.) There are half day and whole day time slots for the CE courses. The CE course will also need to attract interest from other division, especially if fewer PAM members attend.

A webinar was offered as a substitute for an in-person CE course or retreat. This could be a single webinar or a series of webinars on various professional development topics chosen by the membership.

There was discussion on conference session locations and fees for events for the 2013 annual conference. Some SLA rules make holding events on non-conference hotels during dedicated program time impossible. The retreat, for example, would now be considered a non-conference activity and must be held at the conference center or a conference hotel. Conference programming will reflect these newer rules.

10. General announcements:

R. Kneale: The ASTV program is starting.

E. Poworoznek: Emily would like to recognize Bob Kelley of the APS upon his recent retirement on behalf of PAM. Contact Emily if you interested in contributing.

M. Bishop (NRAO): The IAU Commission 5 Working Group has been formed. http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/IAU/

C. Erdman: The 2013 LISA conference location has been announced (Hawaii). The ADASS (Astronomical Data and Analysis Software Systems) will be linked to LISA in the future and hold joint programming.

S. Ota: Congratulations to Ruth Kneale for being selected as a 2012 SLA Fellow.

Meeting was adjourned at 1:02 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Elizabeth Brown, Secretary

by Margaret Lam

Monday, July 16, 2012, from 7:30am – 9:30am

Moderators: Marsha Bishop & Margaret Lam

Sponsor: SPIE Digital Library

Topics/Speakers

E-science and data management by Christopher Erdmann

Data curation and the impact on astronomy librarianship by Lance Utley

ADS update by Donna Thompson

Developments in scholarly communication by Molly White

The Astronomy Roundtable began bright and early on Monday, July 16, 2012, at 7:30am at the McCormick Place Convention Center. When the 55 attendees arrived and settled into their seats, everyone did their
best to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for this early event. Moderators Margaret Lam and Marsha Bishop started off the roundtable with a brief introduction of the agenda and the speakers.

Due to budget constraints, no computer and projector options were made available for the speakers. However, a podium with a microphone was provided for the speakers, and a hand-held microphone was available
for the audience during the Q&A session, if needed. Without the aid of the AV equipment, the speakers had a bit of a challenge to visually engage their audience about their topics.

First speaker was Christopher Erdmann, Head Librarian, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and he spoke about the latest tools in data management and the current projects that are currently happening at his institution. One project was the Seamless Astronomy group that involves a variety of people, from astronomers, computer scientists, information scientists, librarians and visualization experts, who are working together to develop the tools and systems that will study and facilitate online astronomical research for the future. Among the projects that are currently happening are the following: how to seamlessly integrate the raw scientific data with the literature, the appropriate linking of annotated scientific resources, and the study of how social media and networking sites, such as Mendeley, has influenced the dissemination of scientific information. In the past, the citations of data sets were either inconsistent or nonexistent, so access and scholarly recognition were difficult to determine and identify. Hence, the Dataverse Network project was started, so that there would be standardization in citations, a step forward in trying to resolve this issue. This particular project powers the Astronomy Dataverse Network, the Astronomy data repository for Harvard University and its affiliates.

U.S. funding agencies, such as NSF, now require researchers to provide detailed plans for managing their research data, called Data Management Plans, in their grant proposals. Harvard University, as
well as other universities, has been using the DMPTool to assist researchers to create these data management plans. The DMPTool provides guidelines to create data management plans that are catered
to specific funding agencies and to meet the necessary requirements.

Chris also briefly covered the interview process for a data set that is to be incorporated into the open data archive hosted by Harvard University. Those who are interested in creating links to data sets
with records on the ADS can do so by completing an online form. Another option is to contact ADS directly at ads@cfa.harvard.edu. His speaker notes can be found in this Google document.

Next speaker was Lance Utley, Librarian, National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Since he knew he was going to speak without the assistance of a PowerPoint presentation, he took matters into his own hands and was rather innovative in using paper signs as visual aids. He started off with a candid overview of his life journey in becoming an information professional and then explained how integral an information professional is to the data curation process. In order to understand data curation, he covered some basic terminology: data, information, and curation. He emphasized that the importance of good data curation is that information can be accessed with relative ease, and information professionals play an important role in this process. It is the duty of an information professional to be involved in the data curation process and to show that they are capable of assisting astronomers and other scientists in making their data available to other researchers. He mentioned a couple of references that are relevant to this topic, which can be found in his speaker notes.

The following speaker was Donna Thompson, Librarian, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, with an update on ADS. ADS has introduced ADS Labs, a testing area for the upcoming new interface for ADS. Featured capabilities of ADS Labs include a one box search, which allows for narrowing of search results from the beginning (e.g. most cited, most popular, most recent). Filtering by object, author, date range, refereed status can be easily accomplished by selecting from the facets offered on the results page. Also available are options to view your results as paper or author networks, word clouds, and sky maps for articles with object data. Metrics (e.g. cites, reads, h-index) are also available by choosing the Metrics option from the pull-down “More” menu. Another interesting option is “citation helper” which gives a researcher 10 articles cited by papers in the list that do not appear in the list.

The abstract page now also has a more modern look utilizing tabs and links to full text sources. Also available here are links to popular social media outlets to allow easy posting of your selected article
The newly revised full text search allows searching the full text of published journal literature. Most publishers are allowing ADS to access their full text for searching. AGU and AIP journals are now
being added to the literature that is searched and should be available soon. Easy filtering options are also available here. Searches can be narrowed by journal title, author, keyword and publication year. In
the new version of the ADS, the streamlined search and the full text search will be merged.

A quick explanation of the historical literature project was given, and Donna asked for help obtaining permissions to add metadata and scans for the Observatory Publications to CrossRef. Donna will post a
list of publications soon to PAMNET. She also asked that folks contact her while weeding their collections as the ADS is still scanning books and journals for inclusion in the ADS.

The final speaker, Molly White, Head Librarian, Kuehne Physics Mathematics Astronomy Library at the University of Texas-Austin, rounded out the morning’s discussion with developments in scholarly
communication. She briefly reviewed the definition of scholarly communication according to ACRL and suggested that scholarly communication is code for open access. Open access is embraced in the Astronomy subject discipline; however, the determination of who should pay for the publishing costs has been highly debated recently, and continues to be a controversial topic. Points were raised on the
sliding scale of page charges and whether a flat fee, for example, $3000, for a published article would be more equitable. In addition to page charges, the charges for figures were also noted as being
exorbitant in these times. Although open access is encouraged in Astronomy, faculty have been hesitant to publish in open-access journals due to fears that they are not as reputable as more
established journals, which can affect tenure. If tenure committees do not hold open-access journals in high regard, then tenure-bound faculty will be reluctant to publish in them. Another issue concerned
changes in collaboration and discovery of information amongst the science disciplines. Scholars no longer depend on the published journal to disseminate their information. With pre-print depositories,
such as arXiv, scholars have quicker access to data relevant to their research and discovery of new information. In addition, it can not be denied that Google has become a very popular tool of information
retrieval among researchers as well. The diversity of information retrieval tools and search strategies among the sciences will continue to evolve, but talking to your peers and experts will always be
important. It will probably remain as one of the most important ways to learn about new research in any field.

The discussion on the various scholarly communication issues, as well as the previous topics of data management and data curation, was still in high gear near the 2-hour mark. However, it had to be called a wrap as 9:30am drew closer. At the close of the discussion, SPIE Digital Library was acknowledged as the sponsor of the event and a couple of house-keeping announcements were made. Before everyone departed, the roundtable ended with the introductions of the attendees.

by Andrew Shimp

The Math Roundtable at the Annual Conference in Chicago was organized as an open discussion among participants on issues surrounding mathematics libraries and librarianship. About 35 people attended. Open discussions at individual tables occupied the first 20 minutes. At the end of that time, the group gathered as a whole for introductions and to mention a topic of interest and continued discussion for the last 20 minute discussion segment. The participants were offered the opportunity to continue the discussion in themed groups or as a whole. They voted to continue discussion among the entire group.

Topics of interest and further discussion included:

• Mathematician use of e-books. Participants found mixed preferences: users want both e-books and print. They dig into the content with print but appreciate the searchability of online. The usability of the interface impacts the acceptance of e-books. On the other hand, one university noted that e-books were accepted by faculty, providing a comfort level with the purchase of online version in place of print.
• Getting MARC records for e-books into the catalog.
• Author fees; open access journals
• Communicating to users about not all publications being electronic or available electronically at your library.
• How necessary is it to have print journals?
• Math Department reaction to Elsevier boycott organized by Timothy Gowers.
• New Elsevier journal on astronomy and computing
• Outreach: relationships with math departments; difficulty getting into departments and connecting with undergraduates.
• Piracy: how it impacts smaller publishers.
• Budget, open access, smaller publishers; how tenure and review affects demand for resources and budgets.
• Patron-driven acquisition
• How can Mathematical Reviews play a role in research instruction? Tutorials are available for bibliographic instruction.
• Library use of on-demand services for articles. Some libraries are cutting journal subscriptions based on usage when it is less expense to obtain the article via interlibrary loan or document delivery services. The just-in-time model offers more flexibility than just-in-case subscriptions. A library instituting a document delivery service received negative feedback from faculty who perceived that the change would more severely impact maintaining subscriptions important to the math department. Pubget was mentioned related to offering different levels for buying an article.
• Librarians are becoming more divorced from users, with patrons getting articles from friends or colleagues, or going to other libraries.
• Mathematics of Planet Earth. An article about the project appeared in the January 2012 issue of Notices. Could we be involved in outreach activities?
• Joint Mathematics Meeting, January 9-12, 2013: special registration rate for librarians; opportunity to meet graduate students. Librarians would like to be involved in a session with graduate students.
• Mira Waller announced a redesign of the Project Euclid Website that includes the ability to export citations, print books on demand, and provides compatibility with mobile devices.
• PAM Chair Elect Stella Ota is seeking ideas for 2013 conference planning.
• Tony Stankus, editor of Science & Technology Libraries, is seeking papers on topics such as (1) how to acculturate and teach searching in math; (2) relative acceptance in math of e-books over paper and (3) does having a math library correlate with the ranking of the department? Some interest was expressed in gathering contributors for an article on surveying users about e-book usage.
• Beth Ayer, Web editor for AMS, noted that she does feature articles on math librarians.
• We would like to thank Beth Ayer for providing her notes of the session.

by Kathleen Lehman and Michael Chesnes

Brian Simboli, Michiko Tanaka, Emily Poworoznek, and Kris Fowler at PAM’s Physics Roundtable session at the SLA 2012 Annual Conference.

The Physics Roundtable Session, which was generously sponsored by OSA, took place on the Tuesday afternoon of the 2012 SLA Conference in Chicago. The session allowed for the PAM members at each table to discuss a common issue at their institutions. Topics included institutional repositories, faculty interaction, physics library instruction, space planning, and nontraditional services, as well and the popular “wild card” option. Attendees were given the opportunity of switching tables halfway through the session in order to discuss more than one topic. The session, which was attended by approximately 70 people, concluded with each table sharing the highlights of their discussions with the whole group. Thank you to everyone who participated and shared their notes!

Among the more vigorous discussions was one on the pros and cons of interdisciplinary vs. subject specific institutional repositories. For instance, general purpose search interfaces can retrieve subjects across a wide variety of disciplines, but some disciplines need to have their data retrieved by very specific search queries, for instance geographic coordinates.

There was also a big discussion of branch libraries at the Physics Library Instruction table, including the importance of using their own websites for outreach and creating distribution lists.

The Space Planning table discussed off-site storage options, as well as accessing and scanning documents from off-site facilities, while the Nontraditional Services table discussed embedded, concierge, house, and mobile librarians, in addition to data management through Dataverse.

Other topics that came up in multiple sessions were author disambiguation, faculty liaisons, food and coffee for library users – including parents of students.

Notes from the table discussions are below.

Institutional Repositories

• Interdisciplinary – how should we handle that?
• Discipline-specific repositories
• How to construct a search interface for a general IR?
  • If it can do term searching, is that enough?
  • If it needs to be searched with geographical coordinates
• Brookhaven Nat’l. Lab – closed repository for technical notes for certain departments. Must cooperate with IT Dept. and use Sharepoint (access is internal only).
• PEER Project – funded European project (on many aspects of IR’s)
• Supplementary data isn’t subject to copyright in the same way as text.
• Princeton has a DSpace IR w/ a funding model of having the provider fund (Serge Goldstein has her presenting about funding model (1.5 x needed – for year?))
• Author disambiguation will be an issue for IR’s.
  • Math reviews hopes that people will look to them to disambiguate mathematicians’ names. Authors have a vested interest in keeping their names identifiable in a specialized community – maybe not so much in the broader community that ORCID will serve
• Harvard has an IR (“DASH”); faculty are not seemingly committing to putting papers into the local school repository if they have access to larger/national/international repository.
• What is the sustainability of a local repository?
  • Dryad – bill publishers – someone has to pay!
  • SSRN = Social Sciences Research Network
  • REPEC = economics
  • AGECONSEARCH = int’l., successful solution for specific subdomain
• If repositories are highly dispersed, how will discovery be successful?
• UMinn – has institutional records, theses, working papers, conference proceedings, etc. Also has a separate image repository
• Can institutional repositories be considered permanent?
• The theses are a very successful repository item. But, does that make discovery difficult, if they’re not on Proquest Digital Dissertation?
• HAL – Thesis search (for artificial intelligence?)
• OPENDOAR – can search, but not specifically for theses – need to include a term for thesis or dissertation in search
• OAISTER
• Linked open data
• Eagle – I

Faculty Interaction

• Email distributor lists, newsletters ways of being embedded
• One or group or with faculty – so they know who we are they are and their work
• Personal connections as opposed to electronic
• “Coffee hour with Peggy”
  • Chat over beverages/coffee for 1 hour – what is going on in your area? – Way in!
  • Faculty started complaining about quality of student work and Peggy got involved (go see her poster)
• Email via Constant Contact service
  • Can track if they open email

Physics Library Instruction

• Do any of us do it? – hard to get buy in
• A way into department through citation management class
• Physics departments being dissolved- maybe step into this gap that is forming
• Ethics, communication scholarly communication sessions- orientations every month, size of audience differs
• Big discussion of branch libraries
• Ways to reach out for branch libraries- emphasis on their websites
• Creating own distribution lists

Space Planning

• Losing library space to departments- discussions on storage space
• We call it auxiliary and not storage
• Some ability to scan items there
• Spaces for users actually to work in facility
• Commitment to staffing- ILL, scanning
• Do it for everyone or certain people?
• Turnaround 24 hours for delivery of materials

Nontraditional Services

• Concierge librarianship
• Embedded librarianship – U Wisconsin, Madison- embedded in lab and helping them manage their data flow
• Harvard working with ADS, mining their records
• DMPS (data management plans)
  • Dataverse
  • Harvard using database, others using IR’S
• Outreach to departments, special prospects
• House librarians
• Breakfast for parents of incoming freshmen at Brown
• Mobile librarian- go to the lab, dorm, etc. with laptop
• Harvesting articles for IR, for faculty
• Delivery of PDFs to people
• Outreach to campus and the public (transit of Venus, event, displays)
• Proctor exams for department- gets undergrads to be aware of the library

Wild Card

• Elected Subscriptions
• SCOAP3
• Arxiv libraries and subscriptions
• What does the future hold for balance b/w library budgets and publishing cost/subscription rates
  • Profits vs. budgets
  • What’s going to give?
• How to influence budget planning – have no ability to change this
• Space at a premium- desire for more
• How do you feel about another IG
• How functional will the systems be?
• Who will manage libraries?
• Author ID – broad support but how to get it started? How functional will it be? How much work
  will we have to do?
• Interdisciplinary physics
  • NASA Goddard – many subjects related to Physics but almost always indirect
  • U. Penn – combined health sciences/medical imaging with Physics – library instruction including published
  • APS – hosts Physics events in building shared with other Physics societies. Some journal articles on physics of football, etc.
• Cancelling Inspec – ArXiv, rising costs
• Cancel Kovel because no way out of bundle

by Julie Arendt

Four physics and mathematics publishers provided their perspectives at the PAM Vendor update this year. The speakers were asked to present on the theme of “Practicing Agility in an Open World Economy” as well as report on any recent changes at their company. Although they did not coordinate their presentations, some common elements came up in all of the presentations. One common topic among the four publishers was a movement beyond simply providing pdfs of articles to including mobile access, additional content, and semantic enhancement. Other common topics were pressure to find the right pricing model and partnerships with other organizations. Below are a brief summary of the individual presentations:

David Marshall from SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) announced a supplementary materials policy. Articles may include electronic appendices, such as extra proofs or equations, which will be refereed. Electronic articles may also include supplementary materials, such as data sets or computer code, which will not be refereed. SIAM also plans to establish mobile pairing, so users will be able to more easily access SIAM journals from their mobile devices. In the area of pricing, SIAM is exploring DeepDyve and token systems for non-subscribers to access SIAM journals and expects changes in the next year or two. Among the partnerships that Marshall highlighted was a new journal, SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification (JUQ), published jointly with the American Statistical Association.

Eric Pepper from SPIE emphasized changes in their publications. In conjunction with a move to the SC6M platform from Silverchair, SPIE has created a taxonomy and is adding tags to articles in order to take advantage of the platform’s semantic capabilities. With this semantic enhancement, SPIE will be able to provide topical collections of articles associated with multiple conferences, to suggest related content based on the taxonomic tags, and to allow readers to apply facets and filters to their searches. For some conference presentations, multimedia will be associated with the papers. SPIE will also provide linking for mobile devices. In the area of open access, SPIE has a hybrid model, in which authors can pay $100 per page to make their papers open access within subscription journals. Subscription prices will be reduced based on uptake, and if a journal reaches about 80% or 90% open access uptake, the entire journal will go open access.

John Haynes from AIP (American Institute of Physics) described some of the semantic enhancement that AIP is adding to publications in the next generation of Scitation, so that their publications can include suggestions of similar articles based on semantic similarity. The enhancements will also aid in providing profiles to disambiguate authors. In the area of pricing and open access models, Haynes emphasized that the use of arXiv varies widely among subdisciplines within physics, with especially low use in applied physics. Haynes announced that AIP will launch two open access journals in the next year: JAP Materials and APL Materials. Haynes also reported that uptake for hybrid open access in AIP’s subscription journals is less than 1%. AIP’s change in strategic focus in the past year has resulted in greater partnering with other organizations for technology and other non-core services, so that AIP can focus on publishing.

Olaf Ernst from IOP (Institute of Physics) highlighted the trend in publishing from print to electronic to mobile delivery. Ernst discussed the move to the “article of the future” that is flexible for the different devices that readers use and that includes other enhancements such as the ability for readers to download figures separate from articles and for video to be imbedded in articles. In the area of pricing, IOP is examining whether continuing with an underlying business models based on historically print-based collections is an appropriate way to price current journals. IOP is also looking to emerging markets, such as China for new business. Like AIP, uptake for hybrid open access has been low in IOP journals, with just four articles published this way in IOP journals in the last year.

To see the full slide presentations from the session, visit: http://pam.sla.org/conferences/sla2012/