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Pamela Yorks
Anne Quillevere of Les Editions de Physique (e-mail: web@ed-phys.fr, URL: http://www.ed-phys.fr) says that as of 30 Jan 1997, "password and username are no longer necessary to access our electronic journals."
PULKOVO FIRE, February 5, 1997
Excerpted from The Associated Press, Copyright 1997:
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) -- Fire engulfed Russia's oldest and largest astronomical observatory Wednesday, destroying many rare books kept there, news reports said. It took firefighters hours to put out the early-morning blaze at the Pulkovo Observatory near St. Petersburg, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The cause of the fire was not known. Many rare books that belonged to Vasily Struve, who founded the observatory early in the 19th century, were damaged by fire or water from the firefighters' hoses.
From Brenda Corbin:
A letter Feb. 18, 1997 from Maria Lapteva, Librarian at the Institute for Theoretical Astronomy in St. Petersburg says: "Library holdings amount to 200,000 items and the books damaged by fire and water which can't be restored make up approximately 2%. The most sad thing is that the collection of the founder of Wilhelm Fr. Struve observatory, consisting of 6,000 rare books from the 16th to the early 19th century was partly damaged by fire and water; approximately 1,000 books were completely destroyed and may be considered as irreparable. Fortunately, the most valuable books (incunabula) were removed from the collection some time earlier and housed in some other place; so they remained safe. The rest of the collection partly damaged by fire and water was evacuated to the Academy of Science Library which has special equipment and experience for dehumidifying and subsequent restoration."
From R. McCutcheon: "There is an article about the Pulkovo Obs. library fire in the St. Petersburg News (in English) at http://www.spb.ru/times/235-236/fire.html. {It}include[s] several photographs of the damage."
ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE PACIFIC WINS IAU PUBLISHING CONTRACT
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) is pleased to announce that the Society has been selected to issue the publications of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The ASP will assume the publishing responsibilities from the present publisher in January of 1998. In its new role as publisher, the ASP will print and distribute a number of IAU Symposia Proceedings each year, and the Highlights and Transactions according to the present schedule. The IAU mailing list will be maintained by the ASP, which will also publish the Information Bulletin. As with the ASP Conference Series Proceedings, uniform rates will be charged for each IAU Symposia Proceedings sold by the ASP.
Information regarding new publication prices will be mailed to IAU members and libraries before the Fall of 1997. To receive a publication price sheet, call Wendy Eck at (415) 337-1100 or write to: ASP/IAU Publications, 390 Ashton Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94112 USA.
HELEN SAWYER HOGG
Marlene Cummins has compiled a set of web pages about the eminent astronomer, the late Helen Sawyer Hogg. They can be found at http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/hsh.html.
ASTRONOMY CITATIONS
An article on astronomy citations mentioned in Nature was printed in: Science Watch, Vol 7 No 6, Nov/Dec 1996, pp 1-2 ("NASA soars, Royal Astronomers star," S.Mitton). It gives a brief synopsis of the most-cited papers and those papers having the most impact (citations per paper). Research was based on 1359 papers published in ISI-indexed space science journals between 1993-1995. Contact Ingrid Howard, Librarian, Royal Greenwich Observatory, for more information.
INMAGIC DOS PRODUCTS AS FREEWARE
From: Marlene Cummins, U of Toronto Astronomy Library. Great news for underfunded small libraries - INMAGIC is going to offer their DOS database products as FREEware! The reason for this is that they have upgraded these products to Windows based ones and are no longer supporting the DOS products. Note however, that the DOS products work fine on Windows machines- in fact I decided to not upgrade because there are some features of the DOS product I like better.
You may NOT just copy your licensed INMAGIC software, but must get the freeware (which may then be copied) from: http://www.inmagic.com [look under products - at the bottom of the page].
LISA III UPDATE (SUMMARIZED FROM PAMnet)
Dates and location for the third Library and Information Services in Astronomy Conference (LISA III) are given below. Names of the members of the Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC), and the preliminary program may be obtained from one of the contacts listed. A Call for Papers will be sent out in the near future. Suggestions for additional topics may also still be submitted, but the sooner the better (the draft agenda is already quite full!). Should you have any questions or suggestions, please contact
Monique Gomez
Uta Grothkopf
Sarah Stevens-Rayburn
LISA III
DATES: Tuesday 21st - Thursday 23rd April 1998: Conference
The meeting will be hosted by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) and will be held at the Conference Centre of Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. The conference will include invited and contributed presentations, panel discussions and a poster session. Optional post conference visits to IAC's Headquarters and Teide Observatory (Island of Tenerife) and to Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma Island) will be organized.
More information will be available within the next few weeks on the IAC web server.
WEB SITES OF NOTE
Astronomical Sky Calendar generates a calendar for the given range of months which contains, for each day: the Julian Date, Sun rise & set times, Moon rise & set times and percent illumination.
Comet Hale-Bopp Magazine. Articles provided are full-text and include numerous photographs and images of Hale-Bopp and other comets. Contact: Russell Sipe.
Expanding Universe: A Classified Search Tool for Amateur Astronomy. Produced by the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library for the amateur astronomer, K-12 student or teacher to find quality sites quickly. Organized by Dewey Decimal Classification (or an alphabetical term list), with main entries for: general astronomy sites; observatories, telescopes, and equipment; deep sky and solar system bodies and phenomena.
Project Galileo has an extensive collection of just-released images and data from Jupiter, including Europa Ice Rafts and a summary of possible "Wet and Wild History for Europa."