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.
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, andwe 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.
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.
The minutes of the PAM Annual Business Meeting of 22 July 2024 are up for approval today:
Unanimously approved
Secretary Report (Henrik Spoon)
I took over in January 2023 from Ruth Kneale and have since attended all PAM Board meetings and provided all meeting notes.
Member at Large/Finances Report (Jordan Green) + Industry Partner Relations
I reached out to Kristen. She shared with me that she no longer works with SLA and is unsure what they’re doing moving forward as far as handling sponsorships.
I plan to write to SLA’s info email she shared to try to find us a new contact for finances, but want to wait to hear any new news after the merger vote coming up on August 12. I have nothing else to report.
President-Elect Report (Brian Quigly)
This has been a unique year for leadership transition, with a focus on monitoring the proposed merger and its potential impact on our Community.
My primary responsibilities—conference planning and committee recruitment—are on hold pending the outcome of the merger vote. This ensures our planning aligns with the future direction of our organization.
Should the merger pass, I will begin planning our participation in the ASIS&T practitioner conference, slated for next summer. Updates will be provided as more information becomes available from ASIS&T.
If the merger does not pass, we may consider other options for getting PAM members together next year.
Past-President Report (Sarah Siddiqui)
I was unable to attend the annual conference this year but coordinated with Jenny Mueller-Alexander and Kayleigh Bohémier for planning the community dinner with Melissa Gonzalez (AIP). Thank you to AIP Publishing for sponsoring the dinner.
On July 23, 2025, the PAM Board unanimously voted to approve the updated PAM Practices Manual. Many thanks to previous co-chairs Lance Utley, Chris Doty, and Donna Thompson for updating the manual over the years. This will be a helpful guide as SLA merges with ASIS&T to incorporate existing practices with the new structure. The updated PAM Practices manual has been added to the PAM Dropbox.
My upcoming goal will be to appoint members for the Nominations and Elections Committee. Please reach out if anyone is interested in volunteering and/or have recommendations.
President Report (Kayleigh Bohémier)
Annual Conference
The PAM community showed strong attendance at the final SLA conference despite challenges for many of our members due to travel funding freezes in government and academia. Most roundtable sessions were well-attended, and preliminary feedback in the session survey was positive. Thank you so much to all of our moderators, speakers, and attendees for your participation! Our moderators this year were Alex Manchester and Jenny Hart, Jenny Mueller-Alexander, Ben Mitchell, Emma Moore, and Sandy Avila. We greatly appreciated the important and relevant updates from our industry partners. The conference doesn’t go without all of you! There may be some summer (or early fall) virtual roundtables organized by the Professional Development Committee, so stay tuned.
The surprise PAM word search on the back of the Dance Card was well-received.
The Hospitality Committee, Sarah Siddiqui and Jenny Mueller-Alexander, was expert at collaborating with Melissa Gonzalez from AIP to have the PAM dinner in the Lotus Room at The Ritual House. Thank you so much for all of your hard work!
As we do not know the outcome of the proposed SLA-ASIS&T merger, we do not know what plans there are for future conferences. However, our industry partners are happy to work with us on an event for next year if the need arises. If SLA and ASIS&T merge, there will be a practitioner conference starting up, likely next summer.
Thank you so much to our PAM Community Sponsor at SLA 2025, SIAM, and to SLA’s conference sponsors who serve PAM disciplines, AMS and SPIE, and to AIP for sponsoring the PAM Dinner.
Volunteer Update
PAM committees rotate at the end of every calendar year. This year of transition was difficult for us due to both SLA’s uncertain future and many volunteers being at capacity. Thank you so much to everyone who has been serving on PAM committees for multiple years. If you are a newer member of PAM, volunteering on a committee is the best way to get to know other PAM members. Please let Brian Q. know if you would like to volunteer in 2026. Here is a list of our active committees:
Awards Committee
PAM Bulletin (we will need a new assistant editor)
Industry Partner Relations
Hospitality Committee
Outreach Committee (consisting of the Mentoring Committee, Membership Committee, and Networking Committee)
Professional Development Committee
… and our 2026 Roundtable Moderators
SLA update
As we all know, SLA is dissolving and (maybe) merging with ASIS&T. Many PAM members have been very active asking questions and learning more about how things might look if we do join ASIS&T. There will be room in ASIS&T for very active SLA communities to be fast-tracked as Special Interest Groups (SIGs), and we are very hopeful that PAM would be eligible for that. Thank you to everyone for your engagement, and we hope that PAM has a big showing at the live vote on August 14.
Watercoolers
These are continuing! They are on Fridays from 3:30-4:30 PM EST using Danny’s Zoom account. Please join!
Awards Committee (Nancy Curtis)
Thanks to the efforts of committee members NuRee Lee and Jeff Bond, and to thoughtful nominations from the PAM community, we were able to select both Achievement and Division Awardees this year. In light of expected changes to the organizational structure of SLA, as well as current and foreseeable events affecting the ability of honorees to travel, we recommend that the current and incoming committee members re-examine award procedures and propose changes to enhance sustainability. We also recommend that a future Awards Committee study the honors offered by any organization with which SLA merges, with the ultimate goal of recommending procedures both for selecting nominees, and for guiding their nominations through the organizational process.
PAM Division Award to Edwin Henneken of the NASA ADS.
PAM Achievement Award to Lance Utley of NRAO.
Bulletin Editors Report (Jerrel Horn)
Emma Moore stepped down as editor in December 2024. At that time, I became the editor of the PAM Bulletin
The WordPress account for the PAM Bulletin was upgraded to the Business subscription level in February 2025, thanks to the sponsorship of SIAM. This business level allowed the Bulletin to get a dedicated domain: pambulletin.com , and offers much more flexibility and opportunities for the newsletter.
The Bulletin now has an assistant editor: John Kromer, who stepped up in the spring to donate his time and efforts for the Bulletin
The Bulletin is currently being published 4 times a year, with the current issue due out by the middle of August. The Chair’s Message, news of conferences, and current announcements are regular items. We have been looking to expand the news reported in the Bulletin. The biggest issues have been hunting down news items for the Bulletin and getting members to submit items for the Bulletin.
Professional Development Committee (a joint effort)
The Professional Development Committee was off to a late start this year, with no chair due to volunteer capacity limits and the news from SLA about its dissolution, yet with several members serving on the committee. The PAM Chair created a survey to distribute at the conference for feedback on PAM sessions and shared the results with PDC members. There might be virtual programming coming up depending on the merger vote with ASIS&T and PDC members’ capacity.
Membership Committee (Kira Wyld)
As of late July, current reports show that PAM has 70 members. Compare with 83 members in December 2024.
Focus has been on encouraging people to stay connected with PAM, even as SLA is expected to dissolve
For new members (there have been a few!) we let them know about PAMNet, the Discord server, the bulletin, and the leadership team.
For expired members, remind them that staying a member would allow them a voice in the future of PAM, as well as the fact that PAMNet remains open to non-members.
Haven’t been focused on recruiting new members.
Future plans:
Update our email templates to reflect the results of the dissolution/merger vote.
Investigate if our current committee structure will still work given the results of the dissolution/merger vote.
Mentoring Committee (Jenny Hart)
We had two buddy pairs at the SLA 2025 conference. We do not presently have any mentoring pairs.
Networking Committee (Chris Doty and Lance Utley)
Webmaster (Chris Doty)
As a recap, the SLA website and community Connect sites went offline at the beginning of March 2024, and the new website went live in early April 2024. There are currently 85 members in the PAM Community, compared to 65 members last year and 131 members in the old PAM Connect community in June of 2023. For comparison with other SLA science communities:
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%
The Open Forum: SLA Connect community has 1,715 registered members, compared to 2082 last year – a 18% drop.
There have been 8 posts to the PAM Community Group Feed/Forum since the last business meeting: 6 were duplicates of messages sent out on PAMnet regarding PAM business, 1 job announcement, and most recently an SLA Dissolution/Merger FAQ.
We learned at the 2024 Annual Conference that SLA’s new membership software (powered by YourMembership) has the capabilities to build out a website. The Taxonomy Community page has a website feel to it: https://sla.org/members/member_engagement/groups.aspx?id=255093. A few groups have welcome banners at the top of the group feed.
In May of this year, I put old PAM Bulletins in the PAM Dropbox as well as the html for the PAM Connect site.
There are 621 accounts subscribed to PAMnet, a slight increase over last year.
Activity on the listserv remains decent.
There has been a minor uptick in attempts to spam the list but the membership requirement continues to block such attempts.
Archivist Report (Lance Utley)
A PAM member offered to donate several years of PAM directories, but all years were already held in the PAM archives. No other activity to report.
Other Business
Kayleigh alerts members to the upcoming merger vote.
Jenny Mueller-Alexander asks the members to think about what they want to learn about AI, AI and data, etc.
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 toAstrolabe, 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!
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.
I love being a STEM Librarian. I get to channel my inner geeky science student and support students in STEM disciplines at my current institution. It is 1000% why I became a librarian. However, there isn’t another STEM-related librarian at my institution. While a lot of librarianship can be mirrored across disciplines, there are some peculiarities and nuances specific to STEM. When I started this job, another librarian told me that the science faculty at this school “can be quirky” – but really it takes a certain temperament to exist in a STEM field, and to be a STEM Librarian. When I found STEM Librarians Collaborative, I was delighted to find a group that was supportive, inclusive, and encouraging. There’s a fantastic Discord server where questions get answered and jokes get shared, and librarians can find resources to support their work with STEM. The Discord server for STEMLibCo is active all year, but it really shines during the annual virtual conference. There are channels for each day, as well as relevant (and potentially irrelevant but perfectly appropriate) channels for various topics of interest to the group. I have the pleasure of serving as one of three co-chairs for the annual conference, and 2025 was the second year of my three-year term as co-chair. In addition to the three co-chairs, there is a group of members who serve on the planning committee, assisting with the call for and review of conference proposals, moderating conference sessions, and many more tasks in between. I’m amazed at the amount of work that gets done, and how willingly everyone pitches in to put on our conference. It’s my favorite librarian-related conference, and I look forward to it all year. If you are looking for a STEM-related library group, check out our website (which will be changing locations in 2026 but we’ll announce that update) https://www.stemlib.co/
LISA (Library and Information Service in Astronomy) was the 2014 recipient of the PAM Division Award, and the award continues to pass from hand to hand at each conference. This year, Monique Gomez of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias passed the award on to Leslie Kiefer of European Southern Observatory at the 10th LISA Conference in Santiago, Chile.
Leslie Kiefer (ESO, left) receives the 2014 PAM Division Award from Monique Gomez (IAC, right). Photo credit: Henrik Spoon
Chair-Elect Brian Q. would love to hear from you about volunteering in 2026.
PAM Bulletin 