February, 1997

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Message from the Chair Joanne Goode

I am writing this letter having just returned from the SLA Winter Meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There were several PAM members present at the Meeting and we managed to get quite a bit accomplished despite the temptations of the warm weather and the scenery. If you have never attended an SLA Winter Meeting, try to find the chance to do so. It provides a nice opportunity to meet Board members and candidates for the Board as well as to observe how the business of the Association gets done. The Winter Meeting next year will be held in Washington, D.C. There were a number of changes announced at the Winter Meeting this year. Among the most visible were the introduction of the new SLA logo and the premiere issue of Information Outlook, SLA's new monthly publication. Speaking of Information Outlook, check out the article on SLA Discussion Lists on page 25 in the January issue. PAMnet is recognized as being the oldest SLA Discussion List. There is also an interview with Eugenie Prime, Manager of the Hewlett Packard Libraries in Palo Alto. She will be the featured speaker at a new conference wide event in Seattle. Other news regarding the upcoming Annual Conference - Bill Gates is now "firmly confirmed" as the General Session speaker for Monday morning in Seattle. A record number of abstracts (82) were submitted for presentation, 32 were accepted, 16 of the papers will be presented at a poster session on Tuesday afternoon of the Conference. In addition to the six traditional roundtables, the PAM Division will be co-sponsoring two additional programs both dealing with serials and collection development issues. Sunday night we are planning a wonderful Open House at the new Physics-Astronomy Library at the University of Washington. Monday night will be the traditional Open House in the Division Suite, which always provides a nice atmosphere to relax and visit informally with each other and with our vendor and publisher representatives. The Division Suite this year will be in the Westin, one of the two primary Conference hotels. On Tuesday night, we will be joining a group of divisions in co-sponsoring a reception at the Pacific Science Center - a not too be missed event. Regarding other PAM Division news, Liz Bryson, your current Chair-Elect, has already begun the process of planning for the '98 Annual Conference which will be held in Indianapolis. The Nominating Committee, chaired by Alice Primack, has announced two excellent candidates for PAM offices. On the slate are Brenda Corbin for Chair-Elect and Jane Holmquist for Secretary. During the year, PAM Board members have been exploring the establishment of additional liaison relationships with a number of PAM related publishers. As announced earlier on PAMnet, Molly White has been appointed to a newly created liaison role with INSPEC and we hope to add a least two more appointments within the year. The liaison relationships, including the established ones with the AMS, APS, and AAS along with the new one with INSPEC, will help the Division continue to build relationships with our PAM related publishers and vendors and foster communication in both directions. Two very recent examples of success in that relationship building are the poster session on the PAM Division which Marlene Cummins presented at the American Astronomy Association Meeting held the week of January 15 in Toronto and the invitation to Pam Yorks from the new Treasurer of APS, Thomas McIlrath, to attend a meeting of the APS Subcommittee on Journal Pricing which was also held in January. Hope to see everyone in Seattle in June!