PAMwide Roundtable

Moderator: Cynthia Holt, George Washington University.
Scribe: Scott Warren, North Carolina State University.

Approximately 80 PAM members made it to the annual roundtable. Following introductions and an announcement of the location of the PAM suite in the Hilton, six main reports were delivered followed by a General Question and Answer Session.

Physics Translation Database Project
Bob Michaelson, Northwestern University

Bob mentioned that this group includes Kristine Fowler (U. of Minnesota), Dana Roth (Caltech), and Tim Cole (UIUC), who designed the database structure, substantially improved the data input web site (restricted by userid/password),and has had student assistants working on data input. The current database can be viewed at:

http://rama.grainger.uiuc.edu/PAMtranslations/SearchFormApp3.asp

The group has decided to continue with data entry and also to move beyond just the history of physics as far as content is concerned. Sarah Stevens-Rayburn (Space Telescope Science Institute) wanted to know if the database will track the Astrophysical Journal translations. The answer was no, as this task is too complicated given the scope of the project as it currently stands. David Stern (Yale) suggested that the database be made OpenURL compliant so that it can be searched simultaneously with other databases to avoid duplicating results from other sources.

Image Research Follow-On Study
Ruth Kneale, National Solar Observatory

This research consists of surveying patrons about their perceptions of public images of librarians. The survey will be taken at Tucson-Pima Public Library, AZ public libraries and included standard demographic questions and also topic-specific questions about librarians. More information can be found at:

http://atst.nso.edu/library/perception/

This follow-up study is being done after a tremendously strong, worldwide response to Ruth’s first study that focused on librarians’ own perceptions of our images. If there are any questions, please address them to Ruth at rkneale@nso.edu

Prague Flood Disaster Relief Efforts
Carol Hutchins, New York University

After torrential floods in central Europe in the summer 2000, Charles University’s Physics and Math Library was devastated. The faculty put up a website showing the damage. The PAM board voted to donate $2,000 which was acknowledged by the Czech math professors. The faculty there now has access to JSTOR and other e-resources due to a variety of funding sources including the SOROS Foundation. The American Mathematical Society donated back sets of their journals and the estates of two Syracuse University math professors were donated. All together, 4000 lbs. of materials were shipped. Much of the difficulty came in the logistics of collecting, storing and shipping these disparate materials such a long distance.

Carol reported that during all this time and after numerous inquiries she has never had a response from the science librarian at Charles University. In October a PAM member will be visiting Prague and Charles University and may be able to investigate this silence and report on the progress made in restoring the library.

PAM Strategic Plan
Greg Youngen, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Strategic Planning Committee set out to revise the strategic plan over a three-year cycle and solicited ideas for the plan from the PAM membership. Response was low.

The committee has 4 primary goals:

1. Communication/Networking with members
2. Planning dynamic programming for SLA conferences
3. Mentoring
4. Liaison activities with vendors and publishers

For communication, the specific goal is to have 100% of PAM members subscribe to PAMnet. The paper PAM Bulletin will be phased out by 2005 and the current website will be revised and updated. David Stern (Yale) reported that there are 520 members of PAMnet (whom he has individually entered) and he estimates that 75% of PAM members are on the list. However, only about 50% of the PAMnet subscribers are actually PAM members. Nancy Curtis (University of Maine) suggested adding new members automatically to the list. David Stern (Yale) responded that he manually adds everyone and that each new member is informed about the list and give a choice. The idea of being added automatically upon membership and then given an opt-out choice was also suggested.

David Stern (Yale) announced that SLA will be adopting ‘community of practice’ software that might include threaded discussions. Since PAM tends to be an early adapter of new communication methods, the Division will probably test it at some future point.

For conference programming, the session feedback form may be revised. Due to low feedback from later sessions compared to earlier sessions, a survey may be done electronically after the entire conference. Barbara Hamilton (Center for Communications Research) voiced a concern about the response rate to an electronic survey. Brenda Corbin (US Naval Observatory) added that post-conference surveys would lose the immediacy of in-session feedback forms and that presentations may be lumped together in the response.

Mentoring and Liaison activities with vendors will remain essentially unchanged under the new strategic plan.

The entire strategic plan appears to be on target. The revised Plan is available on PAM’s website.

Memorial Tribute to Fritz Whitcomb (University of Chicago)
Kristine Fowler (University of Minnesota)

Kris led the memorial tribute for Fritz whose untimely death in February 2003 saddened PAM members. Fritz joined PAM only 2 years ago, but had already made a very large impression on members. Both Liz Bryson (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation) and Brenda Corbin (US Naval Observatory) spoke about their memories of Fritz. Liz mentioned his help with compiling the Core List of Books in Astronomy. Fritz’s unique talents included graphic design and public relations and his optimistic spirit will be missed.

Revised PAM Website
Cynthia Holt, George Washington University

Cynthia gave a report from the Networking Committee on the revised PAM website. Plans include updating pages, removing duplicate pages, updating the site to use style sheets and changing the underlying directory structure. The team working on this is distributed, but Cynthia has written much of the actual code. The new pages will mirror the Bulletin look in appearance.

New pages can be seen at http://home.gwu.edu/~holt/index.html
Send comments to holt@gwu.edu

Jane Holmquist (Princeton University) asked if there are style sheets. The answer is yes. Joe Kraus (University of Denver) wondered if the old URLs will point to the new. The answer is that all of the old internal pages will redirect to the new.

Questions and Answer Session

Maria Gomez (European Southern Observatory) had several questions that spurred discussion. In particular she wondered what other libraries were doing regarding putting in coffee bars and other public reading/browsing areas.

Pat Viele (Cornell), Debra Bailey (Rice), Zahra Kamarei (University of North Carolina), Sandy Ward (Holyoke College) and Bob Noel (Indiana University) all mentioned that their institutions had recently installed coffee/commons areas or were planning to do so. Those who had already installed such areas thought they were very successful at getting faculty back in the library and at encouraging the formation of spaces for knowledge sharing across disciplines. Some institutions were even planning on having Starbucks manage their coffee facilities.

Joe Kraus (University of Denver) reminded everyone about the Mt. Stromlo Observatory (in Australia) fire and wondered if anyone knew if someone was handling donations. No definite person or group was mentioned.

David Stern (Yale) summarized the SLA voting procedures for attendees. Members can pick their cards up at the registration booths. Voting will follow parliamentary procedure and the Association’s rules require that it be done in this fashion. There will be (at most) 3 votes. The first two votes will be for running either the acronym SLA or the name Information Professionals International. If either of these two gets a majority vote, it will be voted against the current name, Special Libraries Association. If neither of the two suggested replacements gets a majority vote, the third vote will not take place and the current name continues. The vote will take place by members present at the annual business meeting on Wednesday after Madeleine Albright’s speech.

Finally, Michael Fosmire (Purdue University), the new Chair-elect, asked for volunteers for helping with Division meetings and to join division committees in order to help keep PAM vibrant and active.

Page last updated: July 31, 2003