Madeleine Needles
mneedles@haystack.mit.edu

It is difficult to think about summer in New York while Boston seems to be in a state of permanent deep-freeze, but information about the SLA conference in June is beginning to appear. For those making hotel reservations, Karen Croneis reports that the PAM Hospitality Suite will be in the Hilton. If you are planning to see some of the sites, Brenda Corbin reports that the astronomical ceiling in the Williamsburgh Bank Building at One Hanson Place in Brooklyn is really impressive. Marlene Cummins notes that the American Museum of Natural History in NY is going to have an exhibit on Einstein while SLA is in session. (And, I personally hope that there will be some kind of event at the Rose Center and Hayden Planetarium!!).

The IAU Commission 5 is sponsoring a new newsletter, Preservation and Digitization of Photographic Plates. The editor is Elizabeth Griffin, and the newsletter can be found at http://www.inasan.rssi.ru/iau/iau5/tgpdpp.html.

The Indian Institute of Astrophysics Library at Bangalore, India, organized a two-day round table meeting to discuss the various issues related to the emerging Consortia Models in Indian Libraries. Christina Birdie reports that the presentations are available on the following website: http://www.iiap.ernet.in/library/proc.html.

The Indian Academy of Sciences, which produces 11 journals, is providing free fulltext access to recent issues of many of these journals at http://www.ias.ac.in/journals.html. Two that may be of interest to astronomy librarians are Proceedings--Earth and Planetary Sciences, http://www.ias.ac.in/epsci/, and Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy, http://www.ias.ac.in/jaa/.

As this column is going to press we are just beginning to hear of the tragic fire storm that has swept through Mt. Stromlo Observatory in Australia. While the full extent of the destruction is not yet known, the damage reports are staggering. As we learn the distressing details, we keep the entire staff in our thoughts and prayers.

Editor's note: There have been several postings on PAMnet about the Mt. Stromlo fire. Virginia Smith at the Gemini Observatory, HI, is maintaining a list of links about the fire at http://www.gemini.edu/science/mtstromlofire.html. Mary Guerreri followed up a note from Joe Kraus about an effort lead by Kevin Marvel at AAAS to re-supply the Mt. Stromlo library. For more details about this effort, see http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0302&L=pamnet#9.