Brenda Corbin
corbin.brenda@usno.navy.mil

I have enjoyed compiling Members' Corner news since the column's inception in the PAM Bulletin, v. 27 no. 1, August 1999. This job has been fun and rewarding as it allows you to keep up with PAM members and their accomplishments. Thank you for your cooperation in sending information over the last four years. Molly White will be taking over for me, so please send your news to mwhite@mail.utexas.edu.

Sunita Barve (sunitab@ncra.tifr.res.in, Library, National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Pune, India) received the "Bibliothek and Information International BII grant" from IFLA to attend the World Library and Information Congress: 69th IFLA General Conference and Council from August 1-9, 2003, in Berlin, Germany. This grant is available for a developing country librarian Congratulations to Sunita! She was chosen for the PAM International Membership Award in 2002 and attended the SLA meeting in Los Angeles.

Marlene Cummins submitted the following on Ellen Bouton's retirement:

"AU REVOIR ELLEN
The world of astronomy librarians will be smaller and poorer after the end of April when Ellen Bouton retires as National Radio Astronomy Observatory Librarian.

Ellen has been at NRAO since 1975 and was appointed Observatory Librarian in 1983. She is responsible for 5 libraries and 4 library staff.

An active PAM member, she served as Chair of the Division in 1993-1994 and as Nomination Chair in 2001-02. The first PAM Achievement Award was jointly awarded to Ellen in 1997. These details, however, hardly indicate her activity, influence and helpfulness.

She has visited many astronomy librarians around the world in her frequent travels and e-networks with them continuously.

One tangible result of some of Ellen's efforts has been the attendance of many international librarians at the series of Library and Information Services in Astronomy conferences which are held every few years. In advance of the second LISA conference a small, formal 'Friends of LISA' committee was set up to raise funds from vendors and individuals and to use those funds to assist librarians from resource-poor countries to attend the conferences. (For LISA I this task was done informally by the conference organizers.) Ellen has been on the FOL committee for LISAs II, III, and IV and as a result of her efforts (and those of the rest of the committee) many librarians have had the opportunity to travel, network and learn that they otherwise would not have had.

After LISA I in 1988, 'ASTROLIB', a moderated international e-mail distribution for astronomy librarians, was set up by Ellen, and she's been running it ever since.

Ellen was on the team that developed the Astronomy Thesaurus and on NASA's STELAR committee, which led to the development of ADS.

Making sure the user gets whatever is needed has been the hallmark of Ellen's career and has led to her interest and work in preprints and electronic access to the literature.

Ellen won't be disappearing altogether. After she 'retires' she will become NRAO's first official archivist. Ellen says, "NRAO has had neither archives nor archivist before, and materials related to our institutional history are spread throughout our sites in four states. Collecting and organizing those materials-not to mention finding them in the first place-will be a real challenge!" Although the appointment is for only ten hours per week, she is looking forward to the position."

Ellen Bouton announced her successor:
"I am pleased to announce the appointment of A. Kathleen (Kathy) Robertson as NRAO Librarian. Kathy has been librarian at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, for the past 13 years, and thus has great familiarity with astronomy libraries and the astronomical community. Before going to the Institute for Astronomy, Kathy was subject specialist for a range of science and social science disciplines at the University of Calgary, and had served as librarian at two engineering firms in Calgary. In addition, she has worked as a research affiliate at archaeological excavation sites in Sudan, Zambia and Ghana. Kathy received her BA from California State University at San Francisco, her Master of Library Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and has a Master of Arts in Archaeology from the University of Calgary. Kathy is active in SLA, having served in various capacities in both the Hawaiian-Pacific Chapter and the PAM Division. She is also active in the Hawaii Library Association and in ALOHA.

Kathy will join NRAO on 6 June, and will be representing NRAO at the annual SLA conference, 7-12 June; her first day in the library in Charlottesville will be 16 June."

Joe Kraus attended the 2003 AAAS Conference in Denver (http://www.aaas.org/meetings/MPE.shtml) earlier this year. He placed an interesting report concerning the conference on his Web site--http://www.du.edu/~jokraus/SLA/AAASreport2003.html. There are many links to conference abstracts and Web sites. Joe mentions that the session on the National Science Digital Library (http://www.nsdl.org) was particularly useful. He was also able to meet with fellow PAM member Dorothy McGarry for lunch one day.