AWARDS IN MATHEMATICS
Janice Jaguszewski is the editor of "Recognizing Excellence in the Mathematical Sciences: An International Compilation of Awards, Prizes and Recipients", soon to be published by JAI Press. It is a much expanded and indexed version of Marge Voelker's "Prizes in Mathematics."
SERIAL CANCELLATIONS
Carol Hutchins reports a "restructure our list" journal cancellation method that worked well. All faculty were asked to list (1) the essential journals, (2) journals not held that should be in the library, and (3) journals that had changed in quality in recent years. A list of essential journals was developed and the committee added journals that they felt should be considered "keepers." A very long list of proposed cancellations was circulated, asking faculty which ones should be saved from the axe. The library was able to add less expensive titles that people had been requesting.
CURRENT INDEX TO STATISTICS
Information on Current Index to Statistics CD can be found on the CIS Web page. Martha Tucker reports that the University of Washington has it mounted on their Web site. Use is restricted to UW people or visitors on site.
PRICING/LICENSING PRACTICES
Librarians affiliated with independent (non-university) astronomical research institutions have expressed concerns regarding package-deal electronic journal access with some publishers. They point to discriminatory pricing for smaller independent institutions as compared to large university libraries or consortia. If they were allowed or could sign up, they would have to support large numbers of journals of marginal or no interest in order to gain access to a few.
Their second concern is limitation in licensing agreements on rights granted under copyright law and CONTU guidelines. License agreements frequently prohibit interlibrary lending of digital materials. They have in some cases modified licenses to read "...transmission to non-subscribers or non-subscribing institutions (such as in interlibrary loan) are prohibited except in accordance with current US Copyright laws and CONTU guidelines."
A&A ACCESS
Electronic access to Astronomy and Astrophysics, Springer, will be available in 1997 to everybody for trial purposes, regardless of whether or not one subscribes to the print or electronic version.
AUTHOR SEARCHING ON SPIN
HIGH PRICES OF MATH JOURNALS
CONFERENCE ON ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS IN MATH
CATALOGING E-JOURNALS
ASTRONOMICAL ALMANAC 1998
FIRST SEARCH PROBLEM SOLVED
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY DIRECTORY
MESSAGE FROM THE PAM CHAIR
PAM MEMBERS VS. PAMNET SUBSCRIBERS
DEFECTIVES COPIES OF IAU SYMP. 178
ILL & LICENSES
INTERNET SITES NOTED
ARTICLES NOTED
Return to Contents page
Created by: Laurel Kristick, August 1, 1997
Tim Ingoldsby, AIP, has provided clarification on searching authors for AIP's new Verity search engine, used for searching SPIN and online journals mounted on the AIP Online Journal Service. Searches for "smith, john" do not find authors named "John Smith." One must use the Advanced Search form and search as shown below since the ORDER operator is not on the Simple Search form. Changes will be made in future versions to correct this difficulty.
To find "John Smith" use: ((
The latest version of a letter by Rob Kirby, UC-Berkeley, on the high prices of some math journals is available at http://math.berkeley.edu/~kirby/journals.html. This version contains a table on price per 10,000 characters, and a plea that authors retain copyright for purposes of electronic distribution when giving a journal the right to publish their paper.
In a response to the Kirby letter, Silvio Levy agreed with Kirby that journal prices exhibit a very wide variation, not strongly correlated with quality, that the prices near the top are unjustifiable, and agreed that it is up to the mathematical community to change this. Levy discussed how to judge whether the price of a print journal is fair, what effect electronic publishing will have on prices (pull down prices), made suggestions on how to respond to publishers so they get the message, and issued some caveats.
Martha Tucker provided a brief overview of the Conference on Electronic Communications held in Minneapolis, May 29-June 1, 1997. There are Real Audio recordings of some of the talks and links to some of the presenters' slides at: http://www.geom.umn.edu/docs/cecm [updated].
A message forwarded from Mailbase, a UK listserv, reported that cataloging of electronic journals was often being held back by lack of human resources, necessitating re-organization of staff time. A number of places are cataloging individual journal titles but giving the URL of the address of the service, e.g. IDEAL. The "real" URL would be given only for e-journals accessed from outside one of the services.
The 1998 Astronomical Almanac is available. Government Printing Office Stock Number is 008-054-00173-4 and price is $38. See: http://riemann.usno.navy.mil/AA/publications/docs/gpoform.html
Molly White reports that the problem with the First Search Wordlist function that was reported in June has been fixed by programmers. A rather complete re-design has taken place and there are now pull-down windows for things such as "author (exact phrase)" or "author (keyword)."
Commonwealth of Independent States: 1996-97 Directory of Physics & Astronomy Staff, covering physics and astronomy staff for all the Republics of the former Soviet Union, has recently been published by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Brief information is available at http://www.aps.org/apsnews/1296/11758.html.
PAM Chair, Liz Bryson reported that as a result of a 1991 audit, the IRS threatened to revoke the SLA group tax exemption and mandate that each unit operate as a single entity. Measures are being taken to improve procedures so as to maintain the group tax exemption.
Joanne Goode read a statement at the Seattle SLA division cabinet meeting regarding PAM's opposition to SLA's advertising trailers on e-mail messages. Other divisions agreed with PAM's stance by a vote of 18-4, but the 3-year contract cannot be broken. [PAM voted not to join SLA listservs as long as they were selling ads.] For details, see list discussion.
PAM Membership Chair, Kristine Fowler, recently compared the most recent PAM membership list with the PAMnet subscription list. Messages on PAMnet are not reaching nearly 40% of the PAM membership (118 members on PAMnet out of 193 PAM members). Of the 278 PAMnet subscribers not PAM members, about 70 are in countries other than U.S. or Canada.
Some of the copies of IAU Symposium 178, Ed. E.F. van Dishoeck, "Molecules in Astrophysics: Probes and Processes," Kluwer, may have random missing pages. For details on replacement, contact Dr. Eugene J. de Geus .
Martha Tucker brought attention to an interesting discussion regarding e-journals and ILL rights taking place on the liblicense-l listserv. To subscribe to liblicense-l, send e-mail to listproc@pantheon.yale.edu with the message: subscribe liblicense-l first name last name. In a forwarded message from liblicense-l, Ann Okerson outlined why she tries to have ILL included in Yale's contracts.
"Cargo Cult Science," by Richard Feynman: http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html
Spacetime wrinkles [black holes]: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/NumRelHome.html
Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia: http://www.obspm.fr/departement/darc/planets/encycl.html
Calendar FAQ: http://www.pip.dknet.dk/~pip10160/calendar.html
A Kinder, Gentler Validator: http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~gerald/validate/
First Monday, the Journal of the Internet: http://www.firstmonday.dk,
"The Serials Crisis in the Age of Electronic Access," by Ken Rouse. Focuses on the publishers' electronic package deals, specifically Elsevier, but also Academic: http://www.lib.unc.edu/prices/1997/PRIC177.HTML [updated]
Calendar, a quarterly electronic newsletter published by the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL): http://www.copyright.com/au/doc/calendar.html
Acronyms used on the Internet: http://www8.zdnet.com/pcmag/iu/toolkit/acronyms.htm
New electronic journal (Geometry & Topology): http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/index.html
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/pasa/
Solar eclipse timetables from now until 2035 and maps of the totality path for solar eclipses from now until 2020: http://www.earthview.com/
Measurement converter from Russia: http://www.mplik.ru/~sg/transl/
Search engines comparison study: http://www.winona.msus.edu/is-f/library-f/webind2.htm
AAS Women in Astronomy WebPage: http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/service/cswa/women
Annals of Mathematics on JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/journals/0003486x.html
New PAM web page: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~dstern/pamtop.html
Information on Information Futures: Thriving in the Electronic Age, an Institute for mid-career librarians and information professionals, August 27-30 or September 7-10, San Francisco and Berkeley: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/LHRD/ann&news.html
"Britain to Shut Down Venerable Observatory" Science Now (July 7, 1997), http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/archives.797.shtml
Harter, Stephen A. "The Impact of Electronic Journals on Scholarly Communication: A Citation Analysis" The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v7/n5/hart7n5.html
Liedes, Jukka. "Copyright: Evolution, Not Revolution" Science (April 11, 1997):223.
Morgan, Bruce. "Is the Journal as We Know It an Article of Faith? An Open Letter to the Faculty" The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v8/n2/mort8n2.html
Stern, David. "From the All-in-one Workstation to Seamless Networks: A Strategic Plan" Online 21(2) (March-April 1997):46-8.
Modified by: Laurel Kristick, August 6, 1997