Director's Matters

By H. Frederick Dylla, Executive Director

Governance matters

Last week AIP's Governing Board convened at ACP for its fall meeting. Each year during this meeting the board considers management's proposed budget, which will guide Institute's programs and services throughout the succeeding year. As nothing of value comes without the expenditure of resources, the proposed budget brought forth for the board's review and approval was the result of months of careful preparation. I am pleased to report that the Executive Committee, which met the day before the Governing Board, spent a major portion of the afternoon examining the proposed 2012 budget in detail and subsequently forwarded a recommendation to the full board that the proposed budget be adopted. The Executive Committee's recommendation was accepted, and the board approved an operating budget of $72 million and a capital budget of $2.6 million for the Institute in 2012.

In addition to the budget discussions, management provided the Board with program developments since the spring meeting. Of foremost importance was discussing with the board AIP's refocused and strengthened mission to concentrate its publishing program on the journals of its five Member Society publishing partners and AIP's core journals. This refocus of AIP's publishing mission, endorsed by the Executive Committee and management last June, necessitates a significant change to AIP's current structure as we disengage from providing publishing services to more than 20 non-member societies. However, the strategic shift enables AIP to simplify its business model and concentrate its resources on a cohesive set of AIP and Member Society journals. In my view, this change has given the AIP Publishing Center its clearest and most defined mission since I have been associated with AIP, as a board member in the 1990s through my last four and a half years as the Executive Director.

There have been increased interactions between many board members and AIP management in the past months to reach crucial decisions and to plan for the future. Engagement on the analysis leading up to our refocused mission is a superb example of collaboration. Likewise, the ongoing effort to develop three-year business plans has been collaborative. The Publishing Center's plan is near completion, having started early in the summer with a joint Executive Committee–Publishing staff team. That planning process was very valuable and informed our effort to arrive at a three-year budget forecast for the Institute, rather than our usual single-year outlook. As these plans are very important to AIP, it is important to take the time needed to co-develop the plans with attentive input from both board members and staff.

More than half of last week's Executive Committee meeting and several hours of the subsequent Governing Board meeting were devoted to the topic of AIP governance. A board-formed task force is in place to review AIP governance, which may need to evolve to better serve the organization that AIP has become since its founding in 1931.

I thank everyone who helped prepare for last week's meetings, and I especially thank the members of our Governing Board for their time and efforts on behalf of AIP.

Own the past to create the future

The history of modern physics is written in the pages of AIP Journals - Discover the AIP Digital Archive

AIP's information-packed online archives give AIP customers permanent access to a broad range of AIP content dating back to our first journal issues in 1930, all for a one-time payment. These backfiles provide library patrons with more than 300,000 papers from AIP journals and conference proceedings, and more than 55 years of fascinating features from Physics Today.

The AIP Digital Archive provides access to the complete backfiles—more than 250,000 articles—of AIP's eight wholly owned journals for the years 1930 to 1998. To complement this package, we also offer the AIP Digital Archive Supplement. When added to the AIP Digital Archive, the supplement completes a library's collection of AIP backfile content, with access to more than 50,000 additional articles from AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data, and Low Temperature Physics. In 2012 AIP will fold the Digital Archive Supplement into the Digital Archive.

In addition, AIP offers the Physics Today (PT) Digital Archive, which contains articles from older than five years back to PT's first issue in 1948. To guarantee the integrity of the archive over time, AIP adds another year of content with each passing calendar year at no charge to archive subscribers.

ESVA's 2012 Calendar: Physicists at Work and at Play

Back by popular demand is the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives (ESVA) calendar, in its second annual printing. The ESVA's 2012 calendar features a new set of historic images, featuring legendary figures whose contributions have helped to shape our community and our approach to studying the physical sciences today. With representation from each of AIP's Member Societies, the calendar images have a unique caption produced by the AIP Center for History of Physics. The calendar makes a great gift for the holidays. Grace your colleagues with a year's worth of images of world-renowned physicists at work and play, such as Homer Dodge ice skating with his wife, Betsy Anker-Johnson as a student attending the Swabian–Alemannic Fastnacht carnival, and Robert Williams Wood displaying a jar of fluorescing liquid. Calendars may be purchased through the Emelio Segrè Visual Archives. Please support ESVA by promoting the calendar to your colleagues.

Remembering Norman Ramsey

Norman Ramsey (right) with Luis Alvarez at Oxford University. Credit: Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.

The AIP community mourns the loss of Norman F. Ramsey (August 27, 1915–November 5, 2011). Ramsey was an important figure in the scientific community and an important leader for AIP, having served on a number of committees and as chairman of the AIP Governing Board from 1980 to 1986. Ramsey is most known for having won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 for his method of probing the structure of atoms and molecules to keep accurate time—work which led to the development of the atomic clock. See a note by Wolfgang Ketterle about Ramsey on the Physics Today's website. A formal obituary is currently being prepared for a future issue of the magazine.

Monday, November 14

Physics of Plasmas editors meeting and reception for invited paper and review speakers, during the APS Division of Plasma Physics 53rd Annual Meeting (Salt Lake City, UT)

Tuesday, November 15

CrossRef Annual Meeting (Cambridge, MA)
Cosmic Café, 7 pm. Hosted by students from Georgetown University. Discussion with NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn in promotion of NOVA's new program, The Fabric of the Cosmos. (RFD Washington, Washington, DC)

Wednesday, November 16

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Quantum Leap, airing on PBS at 9 pm. Take a wild ride into the quantum realm, where even the impossible seems possible.

November 17–20

New Physics and Astronomy Faculty Workshop; AAPT/APS/AAS (College Park, MD)

Through November 18

Open enrollment. All forms due to HR by close of business on Friday, November 18.
ACP food drive (College Park, MD)

Monday, November 21

Physics of Fluids associate editors meeting, during the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics 64th meeting (Baltimore, MD)

Through November 30

Long Island Cares holiday food drive (College Park, MD)