During the past year, I had the distinct honor of residing as Chair of the Physics-Astronomy-Math division of the Special Libraries Association. As one of many responsibilities, I was in charge of planning the division's annual programs held in Indianapolis, Indiana this June. Here is a snapshot of some of the workshops I organized and attended:

Sunday Physics: - Astronomy - Math Vendor Update.

This years PAM Vendor Update had several unique organizations represented - such as the Society for Scholarly Publishing and the National Federation of Abstracting & Information Services. Some of the other regular scientific publishers were also represented.

• INSPEC / IEE (http://www.iee.org.uk/publish/inspec/inspec.html)
• American Mathematical Society (http://www.ams.org/)
• SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing) (http://www.edoc.com/ssp/)
• NFAIS (National Federation of Abstracting & Information Services) (http://www.pa.utulsa.edu/nfais.html)
• Blackwell's Information Services (http://www.blackwells.com/) Monday: Physics Roundtable

  The Physics roundtable had a wealth of statistical data presented this year.

• Most notably, a representative from J-Stor (http://www.jstor.org/about/) showed some broad based usage statistics for their service. The person also demonstrated what kind of statistics can be generated for local usage as well.
• Greg Youngen Also presented a statistical study of citations to physics electronic pre-prints. He mentioned the noteworthy Los Alamos E-Print server. (http://xxx.lanl.gov)
• A representative from the American Physical Society (http://www.aps.org/) also mentioned some of their new services.
• ISI Reception at the Eiteljorg Museum (http://www.eiteljorg.org/) Tuesday: Mini General Session - Doris Kearns Goodwin

• I had the opportunity to attend the Mini General Session with Doris Kearns Goodwin. (http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1995/history/bio/) She had some great stories to tell concerning some of the Presidents that she interviewed. Astronomy Roundtable
• Michael Kurtz from the Astrophysical Data Service [ADS] (<a href="http://adswww.harvard.edu/">http://adswww.harvard.edu/) presented a report showing some of the statistics that are available from their system.
• I gave a talk on the ASDS, Astronomical Sofwatre & Documentation Service (http://asds.stsci.edu/asds/), a network service to help you find astronomical software or telescope manuals to solve your problems.
• Oracle at ADS (http://adswww.harvard.edu/abs_doc/whatsnew.html#may4)
• There was a report about the LISA III (Library and Information Services in Astronomy) conference. (http://www.eso.org/gen-fac/libraries/lisa3/)
• Sarah Stevens-Rayburn from the Space Telescope Science Institute presented information concerning their preprints database. (http://www.stsci.edu/science/preprints/)
• I had a great time at the Slippery Noodle later on that night. (http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/5036/slipperynoodle.html) Wednesday: Electronic Serials choices

  This is an intriguqing site at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. They are taking several commercial databases and creating links to many publisher's journal articles. (http://lib-www.lanl.gov/edata/edata.htm) With this functionality, the scholars at LANL can use a database like Biosis or SciSearch to link directly to a journal article. (http://lib-www.lanl.gov/ejournals/ejart4.htm) Frances Knudson, the representative from LANL, put her powerpoint presentation on the web. (http://lib-www.lanl.gov/public/fksla98.ppt) Please note that this is almost 4 megabytes.

  Two other commercial database and journal publishers were there to present their products.

• A representative from Elsevier Publishing talked about their ScienceDirect Service. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/)
• John Wiley & Sons presented information about their Interscience electronic journals product. (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/) CS Roundtable
• We discussed the pricing changes to the INSPEC database. (http://www.iee.org.uk/publish/inspec/inspec.html)
• The Association for Computer Machinery said that they might consider consortial arrangements for access to their Digital Library. (http://www.acm.org/dl/) Liz Bryson, CFHT Librarian