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!
PAM Bulletin 