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The Physics, Astronomy, Mathematics (PAM) and Computer Science Libraries, Asia/Pacific Forum (PAM-APF)

Text of the report presented at the PAM Roundtable Session,
SLA Annual Conference, June 1999
By Christina Louis, Assistant Librarian, Indian Institute of Astronomy

PAM's International Relations Committee realised that communication between members of PAM was very productive and decided to take up the development of as Asia - Pacific regional forum for PAM and Computer Science Libraries. During the past two years the International Relations Committee has been working with the Australian Libraries and Information Association in the formation of PAM - APF as an extension to PAM.

Countries covered in the Asia / Pacific Region:

Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, India, Malaysia, New Zealand,
Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam Aims of the Project : Special attention has been placed on fostering information exchange amongst colleagues and informing the publishers of technological weaknesses in the developing world, especially in the Asia - Pacific Region.

Activities of PAM - APF :

An announcement was made on the 13th November 1998, of the establishement PAM - APF, since then, the committee has accomplished five tasks;

i) Letters of invitation and questionnaires were sent in November 1998 to 425 librarians and information specialists in the Asian, Australasian and Pacific regions. Where relevant the letters included Chinese translations. In February 1999, another 132 letters were distributed to libraries throughout Latin American and Carribean. These letters included Spanish translations. An interactive copy of the questionnaire was also mounted on the Web in November 1998.

ii) A website for PAM - APF was established in April 1999. Chinese translation of these pages have been mounted to facilitate easy access for our Chinese colleagues. A Spanish translation will also be added soon. iii) PAM - APF discussion list was established and now has participants from 15 different countries. iv) PAM - APF will be holding its first meeting as a focus session at the conference " Strait to the Future" to be held in Hobart, Austarlia, in August 1999. v) The SLA - PAM International Membership Award has been established to enable an information professional from a developing country to participate in the SLA annual conference as a member of the SLA - PAM for a 2year period.

Results of Survey

A study was undertaken to analyse the PAM- APF questionnaire which was distributed with letters of invitation. The purpose of the questionnaire was threefold : i) to enable the PAM - APF to communicate effectively, the committee needed to ascertain the level of access to computers; ii) to ascertain what level of Web access our colleagues in the developing countries have, and so inform publishers of the basic access problems that information professionals and researchers may be having with electronic databases and online resources; iii) to find out if libraries in the developing countries are interested in forming a consortia.

The respondents were advised that they were not required to complete all questions. Conclusions from the analysis of the questionnaire as follows :

557 questionnaires were distributed. Of these there were 46 respondents. From general knowledge it can be assumed that those from developed countries did not respond to the first four questions as these relate to basic computer and internet access.

Question 1

This question pertains to personal particulars. All respondents provided their details.

Question 2

Willingness to join PAM - APF. All respondents stated 'yes'.

Question 3

Computer access.
a) all respondents have access to a computer.
b) over 50% share computer facilities.
22 respondents share a computer on a daily basis.
1 respondent from Haiti has access every other day.
2 respondents from China have access infrequently.

Question 4

E-mail access.
a) all respondents have access to e-mail.
b)17% share this facility.
c) 23% of libraries do not provide e-mail to all professional staff.
d) it is at least reliable for all except 2 libraries.
* Web Access
e) 2 respondents from China do not have access to Web.
f) 37% of respondents share Web access.

Question 5

Electronic Journals.
a) 90% have access to E-journals.
b) out of this 90%, 78% of the respondents have access to the electronic journals provided by the library.
* Consortium
a) 28% of respondents already belong to consortium.
b) 72% do not belong to any consortium.

Conclusion

It is difficult to draw conclusions from this initial questionnaire. However, it is very encouraging to know that all respondents have access to computer and e-mail facility. The fact that not all respondents have access to Web is very disconcerting. There is a possibility for the promotion of the consortium concept with more explanation and effort especially in the developing countries. We believe that PAM - APF will be a very useful medium for networking, but it will need much publicity within the developing countries to enable our colleagues there to become aware of its existence and use it effectively as PAM members have with PAMnet.

Report on issues in India

In India we already have a Forum of Astronomy libraries formed in the year 1979, called FORSA (Forum for Resource Sharing in Astronomy). When the PAM-APF was being formed, we were invited to join this regional forum to have an extended information exchange facility, not only within the astronomy libraries, but also with Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science Libraries. This was a good opportunity for us, to form a more formal forum within the country and also to represent ourselves in the Asia Pacific Regional forum. Since India is a developing country, we constantly work towards improving the technology and infrastructure to meet the demands of our researchers within the country by taking the lead from the developed countries.

PAM-APF is an opportunity for us to interact with like minded librarians outside our country.

Though our network is small, comprising of only 9 astronomy libraries, there is already move to widen the areas of discipline to include a larger number of libraries.

We are working towards forming a consortium, which can be a step towards the formation of the regional consortium when it is formed.

I would like to mention here, that as a preliminary attempt, we have been able to convince the Kluwer publishers, to consider our present FORSA forum as a consortium, and we have been granted free access to Kluwer Online journals with the print subscription now.

In future, we do hope that we will be able to benefit more and more from the PAM-APF, by participating in its discussion list, to have a better exchange of communication and also to fully utilise the resources available within the forum member libraries.

Page last updated: July 7, 1999