Scientific Organizing Committee
Local Organizing Committee
Conference Sponsors
Participant List
Conference Photograph
Reprints
Obtaining a Printed Copy of the Proceedings
The third conference on Library and Information Services in Astronomy (LISA III), a Euroconference, was held from April 21-24, 1998, in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, Spain, and was hosted by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). The conference motto ``Managing Change Gracefully'' emphasized the vast changes librarians and other information professionals are facing today, both in methods of information delivery and the kinds of information being delivered. While electronically available information is becoming more and more important, demands for traditional services and the importance of retrieval and archiving of older materials have not abated. Indeed, needs have become more acute as historic materials have become more fragile and preservation techniques have not kept pace with the variety of materials to be preserved. What has not changed is the basic function of the librarian: providing information to users in whatever format by whatever methods necessary.
LISA III provided an opportunity to examine the current state of the art of information maintenance, delivery, and preservation, as well as to learn from invited experts the directions in which our profession is moving. The conference brought together a hundred librarians, astronomers, publishers, and computer specialists representing astronomical institutes, observatories, and affiliated organizations worldwide.
The organizers are very grateful to all corporate and private conference sponsors. A special Thank You goes to the ``Friends of LISA III Committee'', consisting of Ellen Bouton, Brenda Corbin, Marlene Cummins and Ron Enders; thanks to their tireless work, we could welcome in Tenerife many colleagues who otherwise would not have been able to attend.
We would like to extend our sincere thanks to the Local Organizing Committee, who patiently dealt with the many requests before and during the meeting; their great experience and excellent service made the participants' time at the Puerto de la Cruz Conference Center as well as during the post-conference tours most enjoyable.
These proceedings were prepared using tools developed by editors of the ADASS (Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems) conferences, and we are very grateful to them for allowing us to use them. In particular Harry Payne at STScI made available software and produced the Web version of the proceedings. Richard Hook from ST-ECF provided a world of help both with getting started and understanding LATEX. Paola Amico (ESO) solved our various file conversion problems, and Jesús Rodríguez (ESO) scanned slides and photos. Special thanks are due to Gabriel Pérez from IAC who designed the conference poster and the cover illustration of this volume.
The Editors of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) kindly
allowed us to make an electronic version of these proceedings available on
the World Wide Web; it can be found at
http://www.eso.org/libraries/lisa3/
Last, but not least, we wish to thank all participants, speakers,
session chairs and
members of the SOC for their contributions which made LISA III such
an educational and stimulating meeting.
Uta Grothkopf, Heinz Andernach, Sarah Stevens-Rayburn, Monique Gomez
July 1998
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| (Photo by Miguel Briganti) |