The PAM-Wide Roundtable convened on Sunday, June 8, 10:30 - noon, at the 88th Annual SLA Conference in Seattle, with Greg Youngen as moderator. Notes were taken by Laurel Kristick and Greg Youngen.
Forty two members and guests of the Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics (PAM) Division of the Special Libraries Association met for a division-wide roundtable discussion at the SLA Annual Conference in Seattle. The theme of the meeting was communication within the division with additional time allotted for a general question and answer period. Invited speakers included David Stern, PAM listserv coordinator, Thurston Miller, outgoing Bulletin editor, and Kathleen Robertson, Web page coordinator.
David Stern reported that PAMnet currently has 402 subscribers. The possibility of PAMnet's move to the SLA server was discussed. The attending membership generally agreed with Division Chair Joanne Goode's letter to SLA regarding the inappropriate and undesired advertising on posted messages. For the time being, and until this issue is resolved to the Division's satisfaction, the listserv will remain on the Yale server. The tradeoff is the inability to archive messages. This is a service SLA provides, but Yale does not. David also reported that responses to messages now default to the sender only. This feature will cut down on the number of irrelevant messages posted to the whole group.
If anyone has problems posting to PAMnet, send the message to David directly (david.e.stern@yale.edu) and he will put them on the listserv. A new information sheet was provided that describes how to subscribe to PAMnet as well as other features, such as stop mail, signoff, and see all subscribers. It was recommended this sheet be added to the PAM Web page.
Thurston Miller, editor of the PAM Bulletin, reported on the status of the Division's newsletter. The current circulation is 225. Each issue is costing between $300-400, and takes about 10 hours for the Assistant Editor and 20 hours for the Editor to produce. Thurston reported that the Web-based version of the Bulletin has been a success and that the number of hits per issue continues to increase. Thurston then introduced the new Bulletin Editor, Laurel Kristick, who will take over with the next issue due in August.
Kathleen Robertson, founder of the PAM Web page, described her efforts to establish the Division's web presence and provided tips on effective web page design. The PAM Web page is being turned over to the newly-formed PAM Networking Committee, consisting of Bert TePaske-King, (chair) Ellen Boulton, Carol Hutchins, David Stern, and Greg Youngen. This committee has been tasked with enhancing the design and content of the PAM Web page.
Before the session was opened up for questions, Michael Leach distributed a questionnaire to the audience seeking input on areas the Division should pursue in professional development. Copies of the questionnaire, for those unable to attend the meeting, can be obtained from Michael at: leach@phys2.harvard.edu.
There were several topics introduced in the general discussion session that generated a lively exchange among the attendees. The questions and comments by the audience are summarized below:
* What are the policies and practices for providing public printing from the Internet and Web sources:
A variety of responses, generally indicating the trend toward charging for laser printing at public workstations. Some institutions are providing free prints,
others are charging as much as $1.00 per page for color copies.
* Reference service in the age of the Internet - are users doing more on their own?
An observation was made that library users are not asking for help as much as in the past. This was generally agreed upon by the attendees. It was also noted that library users are probably not getting all the information they need or the quality of information they need through the Internet alone. Problems were noted in the drop of mediated searches, lack of feedback from users, and examples of plagiarism using information from the Internet. This prompted discussion on how services and instruction can be improved. Examples included, record-keeping of web site usage; providing help pages on the web; more proactive instruction in the classroom, rather than in the library; keeping office hours in the departments; reformatting instruction away from teaching individual resources (i.e. using INSPEC) to teaching people the art of finding
information.
* Other items discussed included:
Costs and licensing problems associated with online journals.
Availability and use of "free" software in the library such as Adobe Acrobat, Postscript viewers, etc. Most libraries are loading these products as necessary to read electronic documents.
A new web meta-search engine was noted: http://www.dogpile.com
The PAM-Wide roundtable was started at the SLA Annual Conference in 1994 with the purpose of providing a forum where members can discuss issues which are common to all and for which there was never enough time in the business meeting.
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Created by: Laurel Kristick, August 1, 1997
Modified by: Laurel Kristick, August 7, 1997