August, 1996

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Message from the Chair Joanne Goode

The Annual Conference, once again, provided a forum for exchanging and generating ideas and new projects, and for discussing the issues and concerns which challenge us all. Although the PAM (Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics) Division maintains strong communication links throughout the year via our Bulletin, Listserv and Webpage, the opportunities to interact at the Conference are invaluable. This year's conference in Boston, MA was the largest conference ever with an estimated record attendance of 7,706 participants. Although I don't have actual figures on hand to compare, I suspect we had record attendance at our PAM Division Roundtables as well. Next year's conference will be held in Seattle, WA and I urge you to plan on attending if at all possible. In addition to our traditional roundtable programming, we have preliminary plans underway to cosponsor a program with the Science-Technology (S-T), Chemistry (CHM), Engineering (ENG), Military (MIL), and Metals/Materials (M/M) Divisions on Contemporary Collection Development Issues. We will take the lead on sponsoring the Computer Science Roundtable in partnership with the S-T Division and we are also planning some different options for two of our Open House Suite events. The PAM Division has been recognized for its leadership roles in networking and its relationships with publishers and vendors. Ideas generated at meetings during the conference will help us further strengthen those areas of leadership. For example, in the area of networking, we are planning to establish mirror sites for our webpage and to use the webpage to highlight and facilitate PAM committee activity. Regarding ties with publishers and vendors, we established a goal of creating additional liaison relationships similar to what we already have with American Astronomical Society (AAS) and American Physical Society (APS). In addition, an idea was suggested to invite and include mathematicians, physicists and astronomers from local area universities of the conference site to participate in our roundtable discussions. They are the often talked about, but missing presence, in our discussions among ourselves and with our PAM-related publishers. The PAM Division Committees will be charged with carrying out the ideas and projects formulated at the Conference. These same committees may also generate other ideas that they would like to develop. I will be posting a list of the new committee chairs and their email addresses on PAMnet and I urge all of you to consider joining a committee and to become involved in what I hope will be a very productive year for the PAM Division. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the PAM membership who were involved in last year's Division activities and to give special recognition to a few of those members. I would like to thank Diane Fortner, our outgoing Chair, for all the work that she did last year and especially for her patience in mentoring me in my role as Chair-Elect. Great appreciation also goes to Thurston Miller for his work with the PAM Bulletin. He was challenged these past two years with continuing to produce the print version as well as developing the new Web version (Bulletin Online). I would also like to recognize Irene Laursen for her work as Assistant Editor of the Bulletin, and Mary DeCarlo who served as our Membership Chair chair for the past 4 years. I look forward to an exciting year for the PAM Division.