Astronomy News Melissa Hilbert
Astronomy
On December 18, 2003, the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) was formally renamed the Spitzer Space Telescope, in honor of the late Dr. Lyman Spitzer Jr. Spitzer was responsible for the development of the first space telescope, thanks to his scientific vision of images undistorted by the Earthıs atmosphere, and his successful efforts to lobby NASA and the US Congress for funding. On the same day as the announced name change, the first Spitzer Space Telescope images were released, showing spectacular sights. For more information see the Spitzer Space Telescope website at http://sirtf.caltech.edu. Publishing
In her role as PAM Liaison to the American Astronomical Society, Sarah Stevens-Rayburn attended the AAS Publications Board meeting in Tucson, AZ, November 3-4, 2003. She reported that the Astrophysical Journal will be implementing data linking, providing connectivity to the original data on which a paper is based, early in 2004. Hyperlinks will be to the authorsı datasets and to related data in Simbad, NED, or other data repositories. Since this data is not standardized, the implementation will be gradual. AAS journals continue to contain increasing amounts of content. Papers are longer, and there are more of them. Publication times have decreased approximately 35% since 1998-1999; the refereeing process continues to be the most time consuming step in the publication process. The price of 2004 institutional subscriptions to AAS journals will reflect an increase of approximately 5%. The primary causes of this increase are financial losses as a result of the RoweCom bankruptcy, and a 4.7% decrease in institutional subscriptions. The AAS is considering implementing tier-pricing, and has promised to involve PAM in discussions about this possibility. Sarah also shared with the PAMnet discussion list other interesting details of her meeting with AAS, and may be reached at library@stsci.edu for more information.
David Bigwood, of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, announced that the Lunar and Planetary Information Bulletin will no longer be distributed in print after the current issue. The online version of this publication is available at: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/newsletters/lpib/current.pdf.
Sharice Collins, of the Institute of Physics, announced that IOP's new journal, Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP), which was freely available during 2003, will be available to institutional subscribers for $790 for 2004. More information about JCAP is available at: http://www.iop.org/Journals/jcap.
Two important resources for astronomy librarians, the Core List of Astronomy Books and the Astronomical Newsletters list, have been recently updated. These resources are available as follows:
mhilbert@cfa.harvard.edu
Searching tips
In the last PAM Bulletin (v.31, n.2), it was reported that ISI databases include varying titles for the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics (Astronomy and Astrophysics until 2001 and Astronomy & Astrophysics from 2001 on). This reflects an actual change in the presentation of the journal, but was problematic since ISI databases are not configured to recognize the equivalence of "and" and "&". For smooth retrieval of A&A articles around the time of this title change, it is necessary to search for Source Title (Astronomy and Astrophysics) or (Astronomy & Astrophysics). After this was reported by Dana Roth, a representative from ISI stated that the issue of recognizing the equivalence of "&"and "and" in a search has been forwarded to developers as an enhancement request.
Guenther Eichhorn announced a new full text search system in the ADS, allowing users to search the text of about 2.5 million pages in the ADS that have been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR). The ADS also introduced myADS, a tool that allows users to save multiple queries and automatically receive the search results from the latest ADS updates weekly. These services are available at: http://adswww.harvard.edu.
Announcements
A history of Mt. Stromlo Observatory has been published by the Australian publisher Allen and Unwin: Stromlo : An Australian Observatory by Tom Frame and Don Faulkner. Allen and Unwin, 2003. (ISBN 1865086592) Online ordering at: http://www.allen-unwin.com.au/shopping/product.asp?ISBN=1865086592&string%3Dstromlo.
Liz Bryson's CFHT oral history project, entitled: He Mo'olelo O Ka Hale Kilo : CFHT's Oral History Initiative, now has a website: http://cfht.hawaii.edu/Reference/Library/oralhist.html. Liz spoke about this interesting project at the 2003 SLA annual conference in New York City, and her new website enables us to follow along as she unfolds the legacy of CFHT and the people who made it all happen.
Editor's note: Mount Stromlo Observatory Library
Jessica Bryant, librarian at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson, reported that over 3200 pounds of books were sent to the Mount Stromlo Observatory. The books were collected as part of a project organized by the AAS to help the Mount Stromlo Observatory rebuild its library after it was destroyed by fires in 2003. The NOAO Library collected donations from libraries and personal donors across the United States. See the PAM Bulletin Archive for Jessica's message at http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=11083.
