The meeting is being hosted by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories. Posters and demos will be on display in the Meeting Rooms area, just a few steps from the Leo Rich Theater. The format of the individual BOFs is defined by the organizer. The resources available to scientists on the Internet now include electronic editions of the scholarly literature.
Researchers can start to interact with data and literature in the same framework.
The search and discovery mechanisms that enable systematic research on the Internet depend on systematic classifications of resources and standardized access to such metadata. The characterization of resource metadata is the focus of activity in many quarters, among the digital library initiatives, etc. Users will have an opportunity to question the software development groups and discuss problems or concerns. Contributions are also welcome from users who have developed software or procedures for IRAF that they would like to share with a broader audience. The main speaker in this BOF session will be David Stern of Research Systems, Inc., who will describe the new features in IDL V4.0, and talk about planned developments in the IDL language.