Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Brian Quigley
Happy Spring! I hope you are all enjoying the returning warmth after a long winter. Just as the landscape shifts around us, PAM is entering its own season of transition – moving past a period of uncertainty and stepping into a spring defined by new beginnings.
At our most recent meeting, the PAM Executive Board approved the charge and membership for the PAM Transition Team, which will be exploring our options for continuing as a community within the ASIS&T organization. The team’s goal is to recommend the path that will best honor our legacy, preserve our unique PAM character, and maintain our strong vendor relationships while taking into account the ways in which members’ roles and capacity are changing. The team consists of the Executive Board plus three additional PAM members: Brian Quigley (chair), Kayleigh Bohémier, Nicholas Dehler, Jerrel Horn, Nastasha Johnson, John Kromer, and Henrik Spoon. We hope to have a recommendation ready by late April and plan to host a town hall in May to discuss it.
I am also pleased to announce that I have finished appointing our PAM committees for the year. Even during this transitional year, we continue to support each other through awards, professional development, mentoring, watercoolers, newsletters, and more.
Archives
Awards
Bulletin
Hospitality
Industry Partner Relations
Outreach
Professional Development
A huge thank you to our new and returning committee members! And to everyone who considered serving – we appreciate your dedication to PAM’s mission. It’s the collective energy of this entire group that makes our work possible. Here’s to a productive and rewarding year ahead.
Brian Quigley
PAM President 2026
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Brian Quigley
This summer’s Information Science Summit & Special Libraries Conference is shaping up to be a standout event. Between a timely keynote, a program packed with cutting-edge presentations, and a strong showing from our PAM exhibitors, the schedule is bursting with value. And, of course, the Dance Party tradition is back! A huge thank you to the Conference Planning Committee for their tireless work in bringing this vision to life.
PAM members have also been hard at work on our programming for the conference. We’ve had three proposals accepted as sessions:
While still in the planning stages, we will also have our PAM Dinner on either Sunday or Monday night plus an informal no-host dine around on the other night. Over the summer, after the conference, we plan to have a virtual business meeting plus three virtual roundtables for Astronomy, Mathematics, and Physics. Stay tuned for more information!
Hope to see you in Albuquerque this June!
Brian Quigley
PAM President 2026
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Meg Eastwood and Jeffra Bussmann
This year’s June ASIS&T conference will feature a combined Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics (PAM) Roundtable. Roundtables at our new conference are limited to one hour, so we’re going to split into three groups / tables, discuss separate topics, then come back together before the end of the hour to share out the discussion points from all three tables.
The first table discussion will focus on our experiences with generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) – how has AI changed our interactions with faculty and students? We will tackle questions such as, how are your faculty members discouraging or encouraging students to use AI in their work? How do you demonstrate the value of a library database when AI is freely and readily available? Has AI saved you time in any areas of your work? We’ll provide a selection of university policies on the use of generative AI in classrooms and in research.
The second table discussion will consider recent developments in the Open Access (OA) landscape. The Gates Foundation decided to stop paying Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Gold OA in 2025 and instructed grantees to post preprints instead – will other funders follow their lead? How are your faculty reacting to the cost of Gold OA? In the world of Green OA, how have publishers in PAM areas responded to recent agency implementations of the 2022 OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy) Public Access Memo? PAM publishers have led the way in pioneering models such as subscribe-to-open – is your library participating in any subscribe-to-open or other “Diamond” OA programs? Finally, what are your preferred methods for encouraging open access? We will provide statistics on the average cost of APCs and comparisons of current publisher policies.
Our third table discussion will talk over the year’s most challenging issues in reference, instruction, and collections. How have your reference practices changed? Are you using any new software or methods to enliven your instruction? In a time of drastic budget cuts, how do we prioritize spending our remaining funds? Do you have recommendations on collection analysis techniques, to prepare for upcoming budget cuts? This table will be organized in a more “unconference” style, where participants drive the topics, although we will provide a list of potential discussion questions.
Please feel free to reach out if there are particular discussion questions you’d like us to include – we hope to see you in Albuquerque!
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Jeffra Bussmann
We would like to welcome all Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics Librarians and related Industry Partners to the PAMily Discord.
Discord is a technology tool like Slack and Facebook that allows group conversation and sharing around topics of interest. In our Discord, there are multiple areas for people to have conversations about specific topics — or even to share photos of pets, plan and take pictures of spontaneous PAMily meetups at other conferences and events, and share optimism and fun.
If you have questions about the PAMily Discord, contact/email the Discord PAMily Moderators: Kayleigh Bohémier, Jeffra Bussmann, or John Kromer.
Let us know if you have any questions. You can find our PAMily Code of Conduct documentation here.
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Ruth Kneale
It’s been a nerve-wracking fiscal year so far for all of us in the (US-based) PAM libraries. After the President was elected, he and his new Cabinet were extremely clear in their anti-science bias. That led to the utter massacre that was DOGE. Between that disaster, and some organizations’ anticipatory cutting of budgets, massive damage has been done to science in the US. For example, NASA’s astrophysics research division was facing a 44% cut1, which would have defunded an astonishing 41 programs, including OSIRIS-APEX, Keck Observatory, and Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Additionally, all money going towards STEM engagement (which includes REU programs) would be cut. The budget threats across the board were, frankly, terrifying from a science point of view.
Thankfully, albeit with a lot of effort and strain, the 2026 Appropriations budget was approved at a nearly-flat rate for the NSF and NASA2. However, that didn’t mean the crisis was over…
Many organizations, whether hit by the DOGE chainsaw or suffering from the enactment of as-yet unapproved budget cuts, began FY2026 by cutting their budgets and laying off staff. I’ve heard back from a few folks to my PAMnet message who shared similar stories: their institutions restructured in some way, or faced loss of grants (note: NSF-wide, there have been almost 2,000 grants cancelled so far3), that required astronomers and other scientists to take a serious hit to their salaries. This led to the departure of said staff, and we all know if the staff numbers go down, so does the library’s budget. A couple of librarians reported they’d had to cancel subscriptions as a direct result. Thankfully, no one has reported they had any layoffs of staff, but tension is high as we approach budgeting for FY27.
One of the most visible impacts late last year was the abrupt closure of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) library, which was nominally part of a planned physical reorganization of the campus, but came as a surprise to a lot of the scientific and library community4. According to an article from the New York Times5, “a NASA spokesman said the agency would review the library holdings over the next 60 days and some material would be stored in a government warehouse while the rest would be tossed away.” I’m sorry, tossed away? That library contained not only many older paper-based resources that aren’t available online, it also had “specialized equipment and electronics designed to test spacecraft [that] have been removed and thrown out”. This is just horrifying to me. The library is not the only part of the GSFC being targeted; between the DOGE layoffs, the office and building closures, and the sudden closure of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, there’s a fear that the entire shebang will be gone by the end of FY2026.
Closer to home are cuts to the NSF that can possibly impact what I consider “my” observatories – cuts to both the National Solar Observatory, which runs the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), and the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratories (NOIRLab), which runs the Gemini Observatories. Both observatories skinned through the FY2026 budget approval process, but are in the process of having to plan for the worst. NOIRLab could be facing huge cuts, at the levels where Gemini will be operationally reduced by 50%, making it hard to actually operate it; ownership of Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro Tololo International Observatory would actually be transferred somewhere else; and the brand-new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is transitioning from construction to operations and was expecting an appropriately-sized budget increase, will get, at most, half of that6. As for DKIST, still my home and only operating for a couple of years, the threatened FY26 budget was for only $13M. “To put it bluntly,” [DKIST Director] Keller said, “for DKIST, at $13 million, we cannot operate. There’s no way for us to operate such a complex facility.”7 I just can’t wrap my mind around the possibility that the NSO would have to mothball the world’s most powerful solar telescope only a couple of years after bringing it online.
So, what can we do? Right now, not much, it seems. Protect our budgets as much as possible, continue to keep our scientists and senior administrators aware of our values, and write to our representatives and senators of our concerns. Handwritten letters, especially, carry a lot of weight, but even e-mail and typed letters are taken seriously.
More than ever, I think we need to save as much data as possible (i.e. LOCKSS). We need to be civically involved so our Senators and Representatives know how much we value science. And we can remember the song “Light One Candle,” by Peter, Paul & Mary from 1982. It’s a peace anthem and struggle for justice, and the chorus gave me goosebumps:
Don’t let the light go out
It’s lasted for so many years
Don’t let the light go out
Let it shine through our love and our tears
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Ruth Kneale
Ah, the 70s. The time of Elvis and his Hawaiian concert (the first worldwide telecast by an entertainer watched by more people than watched the Apollo moon landings!), LexisNexis, Skylab, the completion of the world’s tallest building (Sears Tower, 1,451 ft), the publication of The Princess Bride by William Goldman, and the launch of Pioneer 10, which later sent back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
And the publication of Bulletin #1 by the provisional PAM Division in September 1973!
The SLA Annual Conference was held in Pittsburgh, June 11-13, 1973. Our Executive Board, 1973-74, was:
We sponsored 3 programs. Attendance ranged from 20-30, a nice showing for provisional programs! They were titled:
Our Acting Chairman, Jack Weigel, presided over the 1973 Business Meeting:
Other Highlights from the Bulletin include:
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Curious about upcoming events? Have a look!
Also, don’t forget to check ASIS&T’s Upcoming Events calendar for Committee meetings. Know of another Boot Camp or conference that the PAMily might want to hear about? Let Ruth Kneale know!
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Ruth Kneale
A huge welcome to Lorna Mitchell, who has joined Royal Observatory Edinburgh as the new Librarian! We wish the best to Karen Moran, who retired in September last year.
Following his supervisor’s retirement, Brian Quigley has been serving as the Interim Associate University Librarian for Educational Initiatives & User Services at UC Berkeley since early January. His interim role is expected to last 12-18 months. Brian also participated in a recent oral history project, Librarians Navigating Change, in which he discusses his perspective on change over his 25 years at Berkeley.
PAM Bulletin of Choice
Join the PAMily Zoom on Fridays at 3:30 – 4:30pm Eastern Time!
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Ruth Kneale
OK, my dear PAMily. I want you to stop what you’re doing – or reading – and go get this book. I’ll be honest, I don’t care what the container is – just get it. It’s about a guy who just broke up with his girlfriend but is still watching her snooty cat for her for the weekend – and then the alien apocalypse arrives.
Carl has had enough. Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk has had more than enough. How are they going to get through the alien-wrought dungeon and survive? Let me tell you: it’s messy. It’s bloody. And it’s hilarious.
I had a friend recommend this to me earlier this year. I ripped through it in a weekend and had read the entire series by the end of the month. And – AND – I bought it in both e- and physical formats. I’ve since read it through again, and I can’t promise I won’t do it a third time before Book #8 arrives in May.
Read this book!
Constantly Evolving Business Models and Publishing Initiatives
Volume 53, Issue 2 —— Spring 2026
Sandy Avila and Chris Doty
The time-constrained and relatively generic description of the PAM Industry Partners Roundtable at the 2026 Information Science Summit and Special Libraries Conference can be found at the conference website. [ https://www.asist.org/iss-slc26/iss-slc26-accepted-presentations/ ]
Since the submission deadline, the co-moderators have been lining up representatives from AIP Publishing, APS, and IOP Publishing to discuss the Purpose-Led Publishing (PLP) [ https://www.purposeledpublishing.org/ ] coalition. Topics will include the history of how the coalition came together and its goals, its interactions with major funding agencies (NIH, NSF, etc.), lessons learned from the peer review assistant trial [ https://www.purposeledpublishing.org/post/peer-review-assistant-trial ], which evolved into Alchemist Review [ https://www.hum.works/review ], and how publishers decide to engage with large-scale projects, such as IOP’s partnership with Elsevier on LeapSpace [ https://www.elsevier.com/products/leapspace/introducing-research-grade-ai ].
If you have additional PLP topics (or non-PLP topics) you’d like to see covered, please reach out to Sandy or Chris. They are also seeking input on the session’s format. Do people want a standard format for this type of session – 30-40 minutes of presentations, followed by 20-30 minutes of open discussion and audience Q&A – or something more interactive?
Hello PAMily!
The second half of the year has been a whirlwind, with the SLA-ASIS&T vote happening at about the same time that our campuses were stirring into vibrant vitality. As we wrap up the year, let’s look at how far we have come!
Even with all the merger questions swirling in late spring, we had a wonderful conference. A few of us gathered to visit the dinosaurs in the Carnegie Museum before the conference programming began on June 7th. The surprise word search on the back of the Dance Card was well-received. Sarah Siddiqui and Jenny Mueller-Alexander collaborated with Melissa Gonzalez from AIP to host a wonderful PAM Dinner. Our resourceful PAM Roundtable moderators (Alex Manchester and Jenny Hart, Jenny Mueller-Alexander, Ben Mitchell, Emma Moore, and Sandy Avila) facilitated discussions and presentations and did a wonderful job of bringing people together to talk about our work and learn from one another. AMS and SPIE were among SLA’s conference sponsors, and SIAM was our PAM Community Sponsor.
At the beginning of August, we held our PAM Annual Business Meeting, just over a week before the dissolution and merger vote.
On 21 August, we learned that the vote to merge with ASIS&T had passed both associations. In mid-autumn, the PAM Board met to discuss our options — which include becoming our own SIG (Special Interest Group) or merging into the ASIS&T Sci-Tech group in some capacity. We held a PAM-wide meeting to discuss our options as a community.
The finer points of the transition will be worked out in the coming months, and Brian Quigley, our Chair-Elect, will be leading our PAM transition team in the coming year. We have a lot going for us, whatever our decision — PAM members have been lively and engaged throughout the entire dissolution/merger period, with members serving both within PAM and in the larger SLA organization at all levels. We have another eight months (until late summer) before we need to finalize our plan and submit any paperwork.
During the first town hall at SLA in late spring, we had learned from other members that ASIS&T and SLA have discussed mergers before, so perhaps this was going to be as certain as a Milky Way merger with a neighboring galaxy.
We remain hopeful and optimistic that PAM can continue on in a new form — we definitely impressed with how strong, engaged, and eager we are to continue our mission in the new structure. There are already some program ideas from PAM members for the next iteration.
As in any galaxy merger, there will always be traces of SLA in ASIS&T, visible in the trails and patterns of stars.
Many PAM members have put decades of volunteer work and commitment into making excellent professional development opportunities happen for specialized librarians everywhere. Thank you for your volunteer time and your engagement.
Thank you especially to our PAM members who have been on the SLA Board during this rocky, penultimate year, Emma Moore and Andy Shimp, and to all members who have given SLA feedback over the past few years and/or have served on central SLA committees as our organization fought to survive despite the foreboding headwinds.
Thank you all for everything you do to keep PAM vibrant and forward-looking, and let’s make the merger starburst bright. 
Chair-Elect Brian Q. would love to hear from you about volunteering in 2026.
For PAM,
Kayleigh Bohémier
2025 PAM Chair
Many things may be changing, but some things remain the same! As I prepare to start my term as PAM President, I am looking to appoint dedicated volunteers to our standing committees for the coming year.
While we are entering a period of transition to determine PAM’s future within the ASIS&T structure, there is still plenty of work for our committees to do! We will still recognize excellence with awards, foster connection with watercoolers, webinars, and conference dinners, and engage new members through welcome messages and mentoring programs. We remain a vibrant community, and we need your support to ensure that our essential work continues!
Whether you are a current committee member interested in continuing your work, or a new volunteer looking to get involved for the first time, please contact me at bquigley@berkeley.edu to share your interests. We particularly encourage newer PAM members to volunteer so that you can get to know colleagues in the PAM community.
Committee Opportunities
My goal is to appoint one Chair and 1-3 additional members for each committee. Appointments for the Awards Committee Chair and the PAM Bulletin Assistant Editor have been confirmed; all other committee positions remain available.
Awards: Manages the nomination and selection process for the PAM Achievement Award and PAM Division Award, and encourages PAM member nominations for ASIS&T awards.
Hospitality: Organizes community-building social events including the PAM conference dinner(s) and tour.
Industry Partner Relations: Develops relationships with industry partners to secure vital funding for the PAM Bulletin and major conference events.
Outreach: Combines the Membership Committee, Mentoring Committee, and Networking Committee to drive membership recruitment and retention, facilitate the mentoring program, and boost engagement across all PAM communication channels (including the PAM watercooler).
Professional Development: Identifies member needs, plans and hosts webinars, and manages the feedback process for conference sessions.
Beyond those standing committees, we also need 2 volunteers to serve on a Transition Team alongside the Board. This team will investigate the options for PAM’s future in ASIS&T, present its recommendation to the members, and manage its final implementation.
I look forward to hearing about your committee interests and partnering with you to shape PAM’s next chapter.
Brian Quigley
2025 PAM President-Elect
Hello PAMily!
August has been a whirlwind for many of us, with campuses stirring into vibrant vitality, the last bursts of vacation time, and the wait for the results of the SLA-ASIS&T merger vote. As we wrap up the summer season, let’s take a moment to reflect and look forward with optimism!
On 21 August, we learned that the vote to merge with ASIS&T had passed both associations. While the finer points of the transition will be worked out in the coming months, PAM members have been lively and engaged at all of the town hall sessions over the summer, including the one at the annual conference and the many Zoom feedback opportunities. Based on what we have been told, the alignment of SLA communities with ASIS&T special interest groups (SIGs) is about to take place, led by the Board with feedback and input from us. During the first town hall at SLA in late spring, we had learned from other members that ASIS&T and SLA have discussed mergers before, so perhaps this was going to be as certain as a Milky Way merger with a neighboring galaxy.
We remain hopeful and optimistic that PAM can continue on as a SIG — we definitely impressed the ASIS&T leadership with how strong, engaged, and eager we are to continue our mission in the new structure. There are already some program ideas from PAM members for our post-merger future.
And even with all the merger questions swirling, we had a wonderful conference. A few of us gathered to visit the dinosaurs in the Carnegie Museum before the conference programming began on June 7th. The surprise word search on the back of the Dance Card was well-received. Sarah Siddiqui and Jenny Mueller-Alexander collaborated with Melissa Gonzalez from AIP to host a wonderful PAM Dinner. Our resourceful PAM Roundtable moderators (Alex Manchester and Jenny Hart, Jenny Mueller-Alexander, Ben Mitchell, Emma Moore, and Sandy Avila) facilitated discussions and presentations and did a wonderful job of bringing people together to talk about our work and learn from one another. AMS and SPIE were among SLA’s conference sponsors, and SIAM was our PAM Community Sponsor. Finally, we had a no-sponsor, impromptu Last Night dinner, followed by a chance encounter with 30-50 therapy dogs in the Pitt Cathedral of Learning.
At the beginning of August, we held our PAM Annual Business Meeting, just over a week before the dissolution and merger vote.
ASIS&T and once-SLA (are we allowed to say the name after dissolution? 🫢) will likely give us many updates in the weeks and months to come, so please keep the questions flowing to them.
As in any galaxy merger, there will always be traces of SLA in ASIS&T, visible in the trails and patterns of stars. Many PAM members have put decades of volunteer work and commitment into making excellent professional development opportunities happen for specialized librarians everywhere. Thank you all for everything you do to keep PAM vibrant and forward-looking, and let’s make the merger starburst bright. ✨ Our Chair-Elect, Brian Quigley, would love to hear from you about volunteering in 2026.
For PAM, Kayleigh Bohémier 2025 PAM Chair
Meeting called to order at 3:06pm EDT
Agenda
| Community | 2025 | 2024 | Change |
| Science-Technology | 221 | 166 | +33% |
| Engineering | 97 | 77 | +26% |
| PAM | 88 | 65 | +35% |
| Biomedical & Life Sciences | 82 | 62 | +32% |
| Pharmaceutical & Health Technology | 67 | 48 | +40% |
| Chemistry | 55 | 44 | +25% |
| Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Resources | 45 | 31 | +45% |
Meeting adjourned at 3:50pm EST
PAM Awards Presentations (Nancy Curtis)
2025 SLA PAM Awards Committee: Nancy R. Curtis (Chair), Jeff Bond, NuRee Lee
27th PAM Achievement Award
The purpose of the PAM Achievement Award is to recognize those Community members who have made outstanding contributions to the Community. The professional work of recipients is marked by distinction and dedication to librarianship in astronomy, mathematics, and/or physics.
Early in their professional career, our recipient received a travel stipend from IOP Publishing to attend the 2010 SLA Annual Conference in New Orleans. They have continued to volunteer for our Division and Community, chairing or co-chairing committees including the Hospitality Committee and the PAM 50th Anniversary Taskforce, co-moderating a Roundtable, and serving a full leadership arc on the Executive Board as President-Elect, President (for two consecutive years), and Past-President.
Our awardee has documented both our professional discussions and our less formal networking by serving as PAM Archivist for nearly 15 years. Additionally, they have ensured that we can build and maintain networks with our colleagues by migrating the PAMNet listserv to a new platform in 2016 and continuing to manage it since. We are confident that this solid foundation our recipient has built up and maintained will continue to benefit all members of PAM for the foreseeable future.
Their supervisor at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) highlighted the awardee’s maintenance of NRAOPapers (the Observatory’s publications bibliography), an “essential resource for tracking scientific output and institutional impact,” and extolled the awardee’s “dedication, vision, and leadership,” as well as their exemplary commitment to service as well as their collegiality. Colleagues at NRAO note that they “quietly and unassumingly serve…at multiple locations in multiple states with diligence, dedication, and unflappable good cheer. For those of us authoring books, [they are] always able to find obscure articles or arcane books via [their] library network or via more formal interlibrary loan.”
Colleagues also highlighted the awardee’s management of the publication and preservation of over 80 internal memo and report series, as well as maintenance of proceedings of the International Symposium on Space Terahertz Technology (ISSTT) annual conference. These efforts have extended the reach and impact of NRAO to astronomers, astrophysicists, science historians, and technical support personnel across the world.
Last year, with a group of international colleagues, our recipient published the open access article “Assessing Your Observatory’s Impact: Best Practices in Establishing and Maintaining Observatory Bibliographies.” By providing experience-tested advice applicable to any librarian, archivist, or information professional contemplating development and maintenance of a comprehensive database of institutional works, their contributions extend beyond PAM and SLA to our profession as a whole.
With great pleasure, the Awards Committee presents Lance Utley of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory with the 2025 PAM Achievement Award.
Presented at the 2025 SLA PAM Annual Business Meeting
36th PAM Division Award
The PAM Division Award is given to recognize significant contributions to the literature of physics, mathematics, or astronomy or to honour work that demonstrably improves the exchange of information in physics, mathematics, or astronomy. The contribution should also significantly benefit libraries or enhance the ability of librarians to provide service.
The awardee has a long working history at the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), where they play a pivotal role in the indexing and curation of scholarly content ingested into the system. Their work ensures the seamless ingestion of over 100,000 articles each week, maintaining the integrity and accessibility of one of the most vital resources in astrophysical research.
The awardee has authored more than 144 scholarly publications which include topics such as the evolution of academic publishing, the analysis of scholarly literature, and the role of ADS in supporting these developments. Their research also delves into innovative approaches for representing digital research outputs—such as datasets—within the ADS framework, helping to shape the future of open science and data transparency. Recently, the awardee has also co-authored papers exploring machine learning, large language models and the use of AI in information retrieval.
Beyond their work and research, the awardee is a key contributor to several collaborative initiatives, including Asclepias—a collaboration between the American Astronomical Society (AAS), Zenodo and ADS to “promote scientific software into an identifiable, citable, and preservable object.” The awardee also contributed to Astrolabe, a collaboration between the AAS and the University of Arizona, works to identify and ingest uncurated astronomical data, developing tools for data processing and analysis. Lastly, the awardee also worked on PHaEDRA, in collaboration with the Wolbach Library, aims to catalog, digitize, transcribe, and enhance the metadata of over 2,500 logbooks and related materials. Notably, their co-authored paper with Michael Kurtz, “Measuring Metrics—A 40-Year Longitudinal Cross-Validation of Citations, Downloads, and Peer Review in Astrophysics,” was honored with the 2018 JASIST Information Science Paper of the Year Award by the Association for Information Science and Technology.
The awardee has also maintained a personal blog, “Meters, Metrics and More,” where they share thoughtful reflections on infometrics and bibliometrics, further demonstrating their commitment to advancing the field.
With all the contributions made by the awardee to the realm of information in astronomy and astrophysics, the Awards Committee is happy to present Edwin Henneken of the NASA Astrophysical Data System with the 2025 PAM Division Award.
Presented at the 2025 SLA PAM Annual Business Meeting
The first question we discussed is when do we stop listening to our probes and satellites in space. This question was part of looking at all the space probes we have sent out or planned to since the 1960s and the current cuts at NASA. The question was also to consider when do we allow AI to monitor the data collection. To illustrate the volume of probes and exploration, we linked to the NASA poster: https://science.nasa.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2024/10/smd-master-fleet-07-29-2024.pdf
Our last lively discussion question was on how do we prepare for the 25-year maximum solar flare event currently in progress. The fact that the aurora borealis can be seen in many of the lower 48 states – even parts of Arizona – underscores the potential for all electronic communications to fail. Several failure events, however short they were, were discussed and several of the observatory librarians talked about their preparations with isolating backups and other possible solutions. We truly are unprepared for a total electronic system failure.
Jenny Mueller-Alexander
Astronomy Roundtable Moderator
It was great to see everyone at the Mathematics roundtable, especially at a time when we are all navigating big changes, both with the likely merger of the SLA with ASIS&T and with our home institutions navigating the disruption caused by the Trump administration. I was glad to hear from Kivmars at SIAM about how publishers are updating their author guidelines in light of new accessibility legislation in the USA and EU, and I’m sure this will be helpful for us to know as our researchers come up to date with the new guidelines. And it was also helpful to hear discussion about what LaTeX outreach people are doing and planning. I also had lots of fun going to the museums in Pittsburgh with PAM folks, and especially enjoyed the theremin in the Carnegie Library! I am looking forward to seeing you all again at the next conference, whatever form it takes!
Alex Manchester
Mathematics Roundtable Moderator
As one of the last sessions of the SLA 2025 Annual Conference, Industry Partners capped off a weekend of highly successful PAMily content. The theme, “Publishers and The Evolving Scholarly Ecosystem”, was developed in concert by moderators Sandy Avila (SPIE Publishing) and Emma Moore (Institute for Advanced Study). They were fortunate to recruit a great panel of speakers: Kivmars Bowling, of SIAM; Ruth Esehak-Gillespie of APS; Susan Pastore, of AIP; and Tyler Kane, of AMS. The session itself was structured around three main themes: Responsibility, Credibility, Sustainability. There was a great mix of prompts from the moderators, questions from the audience, and riffing between the panelists themselves. Like many sessions at Annual, a critical approach to the opportunities and pitfalls of LLMS and AI was threaded through the discussion. Each panelist discussed both what their organizations were doing internally to maintain credibility in particular, as well as industry-wide partnerships and initiatives. The last part of the session, called Quo Vadis?, discussed the future state of SLA and the PAM Community, as well as the potential embodied in the proposed merger with ASIS&T.
Emma Moore & Sandy Avila
PAM Industry Partners Roundtable Moderators
The 88th Annual meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) took place this past month in Crystal City, Virginia. The theme was “Difficult Conversations: The Role of Information Science in the Age of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence”. This was also a year filled with difficult but ultimately fruitful conversations, resulting in the merger of ASIS&T and the Special Libraries Association. While there have often been joint members of the two associations, there was this year a small but notable group of SLA folk (including this author, and past PAM award winner Jenny Hart) attending to further the future of the merged group. The “human-centered” element of the year’s theme was very much on display. While AI in general and LLMs in particular were threaded through many of the conversations, the panels, posters and paper sessions on offer displayed a broad range critical approaches to such issues. Memorable session topics included the future of the academic research project and how students use AI in their work and personal life. One very optimistic element was the amount of grad students and young professionals presenting, with the support of their senior faculty and mentors. There was also a sense of possibility in the informal discussions during coffee breaks and receptions, as leaders of ASIST Special Interest Groups (SIGs) discussed the new insight that the specialized and experience practitioners of SLA could bring to their year-round activities. PAM itself is still exploring the future formal possibilities that this merger offers. However, going to this conference suggests both opportunities to continue what PAM is strongest at, as well as seeds of new programming and experiences for the PAMILy.
Emma Moore & Jenny Hart
PAM Bulletin 