Astronomy Roundtable Madeleine Needles The greatly anticipated LISA IV conference was held in Prague in July. A report on the meeting can be found at the end of this column. Thank you to Jane Holmquist for taking notes and reporting on the event. The participants appreciated the hospitality of their Czech hosts, and were greatly distressed at learning about the floods that swept through Prague after they left. More information on the floods can be found in Carol Hutchins announcement above. One exciting announcement from Prague was that the European Group of Astronomy Librarians was revived during the LISA IV conference in the form of a listserv discussion list. EGAL-L is a list for everyone involved with European astronomy librarianship. For more information and instructions about how to join: http://www.astro.helsinki.fi/egal-l/. The listserv Web interface for EGAL-L is http://www.listserv.funet.fi/archives/egal-l.html. Many in the astronomy community were stunned to learn that effective October 1, 2002, NASA terminated all support for the Astronomical Data Center at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Access to existing astronomical data catalogs and data tables will continue to be served from the ADC Web server, but with no further support, maintenance, or upgrades. NASA will route ADC users to other sites that perform similar services. A new online-only journal was announced recently in the AAS Newsletter (March 2002). Astronomy Education Review expects to publish about two issues per year, and two issues will constitute a volume. Articles will be published as they are received, and at a predetermined time the issue will be closed. It can be accessed at http://aer.noao.edu/. The Digital Research Library, a department of the University of Pittsburgh Library System, now provides online access to historic star data and calculations compiled and published by the Allegheny Observatory. The Parallax Project Website (http://digital.library.pitt.edu/parallax/) makes available over five decades of the observatory's valuable research, which represents one of the largest systematic, ground-based studies of star distances ever conducted. LISA IV in PRAGUE-—Reported by Jane Holmquist. Last July 2-5, 105 librarians, publishers, database experts and astronomers from 25 countries gathered in Prague, Czech Republic for the 4th international “Library and Information Services in Astronomy” conference. Among the participants were 21 PAM members, including three past and present PAM International Member Award winners: Christina (Louis) Birdie (‘99) and Sunita Barve (‘02) from India, and Myrna Koch Cifuentes (‘01) from Chile. Also in attendance was Guenther Eichhorn, winner of the 2001 PAM Award. Liz Bryson served as co-chair of the Scientific Organizing Committee (along with Françoise Genova from Strasbourg, France), which also included PAM members Christina Birdie, Brenda Corbin and Uta Grothkopf. Marek Wolf, an astronomy professor and research scientist at Charles University in Prague, chaired the Local Organizing Committee. LISA IV was hosted by the Astronomical Institute of Charles University and the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Papers presented by PAM members at LISA IV included the following:
mneedles@haystack.mit.edu
Posters presented by PAM members included the following:
- “Recent trends in radio astronomical research in India,” Sunita Barve et al.
- “Lowell Observatory archive image database,” Antoinette Beiser et al.
- “Physical vs. virtual astronomy libraries,” Marlene Cummins
- “Communicating and networking by astronomy librarians,” Marlene Cummins and Uta Grothkopf
- “Annual reports of observatories,” Uta Grothkopf and Liz Bryson
Brenda Corbin, who organized the first LISA meeting in 1988 in Washington, DC, closed the conference with a brief history of LISA meetings held, and encouraged everyone to start thinking about LISA V!
Other PAM members attending LISA IV included Maria Eugenia Gomez, John Grula, Sandra Kitt, Dorothy McGarry, Molly White and Greg Youngen.
PAM members not attending but who, along with others, donated funds to Friends of LISA IV in memory of Joyce Watson included Karen Croneis, Irene Laursen, Pat Molholt, Jeanette Regan and Pam Yorks.
Friends of LISA IV sponsors included the American Astronomical Society, American Physical Society, Institute of Physics Publishing, ISI, Kluwer Academic Publishers, and the Special Libraries Association Endowment Fund.
The Friends of LISA IV Committee, which consisted of Ellen Bouton, Marlene Cummins and Brenda Corbin (with Ellen’s husband Ron Enders as treasurer), gratefully acknowledged those who donated funds to provide financial assistance for 29 librarians from 12 developing countries. The presence of these colleagues greatly enriched the meeting for all attendees.
LISA IV conference photographs, including the official group photo and shots taken at the opening reception at the Carolinum, the conference venue, the concert at the Carolinum, dinner at the Nebozizek restaurant, and post-conference visits to Ondrejov Observatory and Library and the Strahov Monastery Library have been collected and posted at the Observatoire de Bordeaux website http://www.observ.u-bordeaux.fr/public/lisaIV by Simon Pasquier, and Eva Isaksson, the University of Helsinki, has posted her collection of photos http://www.astro.helsinki.fi/~eisaksso/lisa4/images/.
Unfortunately the official LISA IV website is not currently available because of the flooding which occurred in Prague in early August. The conference proceedings will be published later this year by the U.S. Naval Observatory; an electronic version will become available on the Web at http://www.eso.org/libraries/lisa4/.
