News
PAMnet News
Dorothy Manderscheid
Book and journal donations to developing and war-ravaged countries were discussed in detail. The ACLS Manual for International Book and Journal Donations, published by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), describes the many organizations involved in sending books and journals where they are most needed. It is available in paper from the Society or in ASCII from http://www.indiana.edu/~oah/aclsman.html. Bridge to Asia (http:www.bridge.org/Books.html) accepts donations for developing countries in Asia. The Journal Exchange Program of the American Physical Society (APS) Forum on International Physics (http://plato.phys.ohiou.edu/~FIP/FIP.html) includes itemized lists of journal volumes and book titles that are available, cross-referenced with the addresses of the donors.
The library of the only astronomical observatory in Bosnia-Herzegovina was destroyed during the recent war. Books and journals are needed. New address is: State Meteorogical Institute, Astronomical Observatory, Bardakcije 12, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, ATTN: Muhamed Muminovic. Beatriz Garcia seeks donations for a new astronomy library, Centro Regional de Investigationes Cientificas y Tecnicas, Mendoza, Argentina.
ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS ONLINE
Liz Bryson provided the original letter from the editorial board of Astronomy and Astrophysics outlining their decisions regarding electronic publication. She also provided letters (in French and English) circulating in France commenting on the proposed changes. A bibliography on electronic publishing compiled by A. Heck is included.
ADS IMPROVEMENTS
Uta Grothkopf forwarded an e-mail message from Astrophysics Data System (ADS) abstract service (http://adswww.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html) announcing improved features and data sources. The e-mail address for ADS is ads@cfa.harvard.edu
ELSEVIER JOURNAL ALERTING SERVICE
ContentsDirect, a free e-mail alerting service for Elsevier journals, provides table of contents service to readers. To sign up, send e-mail to cdsubs@elsevier.co.uk with the following information: name, e-mail address, postal address, fax number, journal title(s) together with the journal code(s) for which you would like to receive the ContentsDirect service. Information about titles and "journal codes" required may be found from the Elsevier Web page at http://www.elsevier.com. Full information for Web access rather than e-mail service can also be found from the Elsevier Web page.
IOP BOOKS
The Institute of Physics (IOP) will have a "First for Physics" sale from Oct. 14 to Dec. 31, 1996. Participating booksellers will be listed on the IOP Web home page.
GEOMETRY CENTER
Concern was expressed with National Science Foundation (NSF) plans to phase out the Geometry Center. In response to a letter from the PAM Division to the 3 directors at NSF, Donald J. Lewis, Director, Division of Mathematics, indicated that the recommendation on the Geometry Center is currently under negotiation.
AMS MATHSCINET STATISTICS
David Stern suggests that subscribers who are interested in persuading the American Mathematical Society (AMS) to provide monthly MathSciNet use statistics send an e-mail message to Linda Guccione at eprod-support@ams.org.
MATH LIBRARY INVENTORY
Carol Hutchins requested statistics on stack searches done annually and books written off inventory or replaced in mathematics libraries. One library reported that a sample inventory of 3000 books purchased since installation of a security system showed that 1.4% of books were missing. Respondents indicated that books are stolen despite security systems and often security systems are compromised by patrons with key access during unstaffed hours.
PAMNET MESSAGES
David Stern, list owner for PAMnet, asks that those sending messages to the List please place their name, affiliation, and e-mail address at the end of their messages since some e-mail packages remove parts of the original header.
ADVICE ON BUILDING MANUAL COLLECTION
Ellen Bouton seeks advice on the organization and storage of a very large collection of instrument and equipment manuals for a radio telescope. Suggestions included using plug-ins (DWG/DXF Plug-in for Netscape Navigator by Softsource) to load and retrieve CAD drawings and using the Inmagic image based system to scan short documents and file them on the PC with keywords and other fields.
ACM COMPUTING LITERATURE CD-ROM
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is in the final stages of development for the ACM Electronic Guide to Computing Literature CD-ROM. This will include almost two decades of entries from the print ACM Guide to Computing Literature and the last two years of critical reviews from Computing Reviews.
CHILDREN ON THE INTERNET
Liz Bryson has compiled a booklet titled Children on the Internet that lists K-12 resources for educators, parents, and children using the Internet. It includes a brief description of the databases. Copies of the booklet are available on request.
UPDATED LC HEADINGS AND CLASSIFICATION
Bob Atkinson contributed a list of recently created LC Subject Headings of interest to those in physics, astronomy, and mathematics. Ellen Bouton reported that she keeps an electronic version of the Library of Congress QB (Astronomy) classification scheme. Those wishing to receive quarterly updates can make e-mail requests to her.
ARTICLES FROM CANCELED SERIALS
Deborah Kegel suggests the Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) as a source for articles from canceled journals. The CISTI catalog is on the Web at http://www.cisti.nrc.ca/cisti/docdel/docdel.html.
WEB SEARCHING TRICK
Judy Matthews points out that Web searches can be restricted to particular hosts using Alta Vista as your search engine and specifying the host in your search statements after your keywords. For example type: physics host: galileo.ifa.hawaii.edu. Alta Vista searches only the PAM Web pages and retrieves any pages that contain the keyword "physics".
UNION LIST OF ASTRONOMY SERIALS
The Union List of Astronomy Serials is searchable online at http://sesame.stsci.edu/lib/union.html. The abbreviations are available at http://sesame.stsci.edu/lib/ULASlist.html.
JOURNAL PRICE INCREASES
David Stern asks what we can do when faced with unreasonable journal price increases, to help publishers understand what may result. Reciprocal ILL will probably not solve the problem long term. He suggests that the following may result: (1) document delivery, (2) reduction in the amount of material in each journal, or (3) a move away from the buy-back of freely created scholarly material if it becomes cheaper to create other delivery mechanisms. Other suggestions from PAMnet readers included writing editorial boards as representatives of PAM and making sure that scientists who publish in these journals realize that this will affect accessibility of their work.
SEPARATE AND CONSOLIDATED MATH LIBRARIES
Mary DeCarlo has compiled a list of institutions with separate mathematics libraries and institutions that have consolidated science libraries (including math).
A&A SUPPLEMENT SERIES
Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series will be available electronically in 1997, "free" with institutional print subscriptions.
BINDING ALTERNATIVE
Alicia Rodas reports that they use INTA Library (Buenos Aires) very firm boxes of a special format instead of binding periodicals. Please contact her if interested in the design.
COMPUTER LAW OBSERVER
The Computer Law Observer is distributed free each month by Challenge Communications, Baltimore, Maryland. To subscribe, send e-mail to ChallComm@aol.com requesting that you be put on the list. Each issue contains an article discussing a legal development relating to the Internet and computer technology in general.
PHASES OF MOON SLIDE SETS
An inquiry on locating phases of the moon slide sets resulted in just one vendor, Lick. The contact person is DeAnne Lago at (408) 459-5095.
PUBLISHER CONTACTS
The PAM Executive Board has contacted INSPEC, IEEE, ACM, and Springer-Verlag, indicating that PAM would be interested in providing library consultants to work with their organization. Liz Bryson has also contacted SIAM urging that communications lines be kept open.
SLA AWARD NOMINATIONS
PAM members are encouraged to submit nominations for the SLA 1997 Association Awards and Honors. For additional information or nominating forms, contact Joanne Goode.
ELECTRONIC PHYSICS JOURNALS
American Institute of Physics (AIP) will launch Online Journal Services, a new AIP venture, in 1997. It will support both Class B and Class C IP address validation for institutional subscriptions only. It will be possible to specify a range of Class C subnetworks as well as to exclude a range of addresses. No user ID or password will be required.
IOP Publishing indicates that Class B registration became available about two months after they launched their electronic journals. If anyone was unaware that they could register Class B addresses, they can contact custserv@ioppublishing.co.uk
ASTRONOMY REPORTS
Marlene Cummins suggests that astronomy librarians urge the directors of their observatories or institutions to submit annual reports for the AAS Bulletin January issue. She points out that the Bulletin will preserve material from an archival/historical perspective whereas the Web will not.
WEB FUNDING SOURCES
In response to an inquiry from Donna Cromer regarding Web information on funding sources in physics and astronomy, Community of Science (http://cos.gdb.org/) and SPIN (Sponsored Programs Information Network) (office@infoed.org) were suggested. The former requires membership for full access and the latter is subscription based. Donna also found: http://apollo.osti.gov/procure/fahome.html and http://web.fie.com/ntdoc/fed/all/any/any/menu/any/index.htm.
ARTICLES NOTED
[APS electronic preprint server.] Science, 19 July 1996, p.304.
"Fast Lanes on the Internet." Science 273, 2 August 1996, p.585.
Harter, Stephen P. "The Impact of Electronic Journals on Scholarly Communication: A Citation Analysis." Public-Access Computer Systems Review (http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v7/n5/hart7n5.html)
"High-Speed Network Will Link Russia's Far-Flung Universities." Science 273, 2 August 1996, p.594.
James-Catalano, Cynthia N. "Cyberlibrarian : Look to the Librarian." Internet World, August 1996, p.28.
John, Nancy R. "Putting Content on the Internet: The Library's Role as Creator of Electronic Information." First Monday. (http://www.first.monday.dk)
Okerson, Ann. "Who Owns Digital Works?" Scientific American 275, July 1996, pp.64-68.
[Physics electronic journals.] Science 273, 9 August 1996, p.734.
"The Web Maestro." Technology Review 99, July 1996, pp.32-40. Interview with Tim Berners-Lee about his vision of the future of the Web.
"Working the Web with a Virtual Lab and Some Java." Science 273, 2 August 1996, p.591.
INTERNET SITES NOTED
Information of interest to astronomical researchers and educators from the
UCSB Astrophysics Group's Web site: http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/
The Elsevier TULIP final report on electronic journals is available at: http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/tulip/
A site for high tech news: http://www.news.com
A site that searches several types of dictionaries: http://www.onelook.com
A site concerning HP Virtual Reality Language and Viewer: http://www.software.hp.com/software/modelviewer/
Travel information: http://www.reservations.com
Astronomy education resources: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/meech/education/asted.html
Full text of Science research and news articles is available free from late October through 1996 at this site. Selected information will remain available after January 1, 1997. http://www.aaas.org, then follow the Science link.