Hungry enough to eat a whale?

On Tuesday evening, join us for dinner at the Albuquerque Aquarium, part of the ABQ BioPark, along the majestic Rio Grande in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Our dinner site is next to the 285,000-gallon shark tank, which is home to five species of sharks, several sea turtles, dozens of manta rays and even a few barracudas. (Fear not! Our dinner menu will be different from the inhabitants of the tank! We do not plan to have fish on the menu Tuesday night!)

Another exciting case study…

The Unified Astronomy Thesaurus: Bringing Together People, Terms and Tools to Classify Infinity…and Beyond!

Justin Soles, McGill University, and Katie Frey, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

The Unified Astronomy Thesaurus (UAT) will be an open, interoperable and community-supported thesaurus that unifies the existing Astronomy &  Astrophysics thesauri into a single, freely available open thesaurus for astronomical objects and concepts. This talk introduces the UAT and describes the unique combination of conditions that led to its development, as well as the people, organizations and tools involved in its construction. Because astronomy and astrophysics are fast-moving fields (terms such as ‘exoplanets’ and ‘dark energy’ were relatively unknown not so very long ago ago), the talk will also describe the ways that the UAT will leverage expertise from astronomers, physicists, and librarians to keep the thesaurus current, accurate, and relevant.

Justin Soles is a part-time master’s student in his final semester in the School of Information Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He balances his studies with working as a programmer/analyst, technical writer, and librarian at the Montreal office of Smart & Biggar, one of Canada’s top intellectual property law firms. Justin’s interest in astronomy came from watching Star Trek and Star Wars as a child, as well as a (very) patient father who drove for 2-3 hours so they could enjoy seeing a night sky without light pollution. Justin is now happily married. He hopes to find a position with a scientific facility, library, or knowledge center after graduation and looks forward to traveling with his son to marvel at the night sky someday soon.

Katie Frey is a librarian at the John G. Wolbach Library of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston where she handles traditional library duties and also manages advanced projects such as the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus. She previously worked as a librarian at Gen-Probe and Verenium, both of which are biotech businesses based in San Diego. Katie holds a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor’s degree in astronomy from San Diego State University.

This is just one of the exciting case studies we have planned for you. See the full agenda here!