"Birds of a Feather" Gathering

for Joint Meetings participants interested in

Mathematical Knowledge Management and

Digital Mathematics Libraries

During 2010 Joint Math Meetings, January 13-16, San Francisco
Friday January 15 at 5:20pm immediately following
MAA Contributed Paper Session "Publishing Math on the Web"
Room 2011, second floor of Moscone Center

organized by Tom Leathrum, Editor of Loci

In 2004, Mathematical Knowledge Management (MKM) was described as follows:

MKM is a new interdisciplinary field of research in the intersection of mathematics, computer science, library science, and scientific publishing. [emphasis added] The objective of MKM is to develop new and better ways of managing mathematical knowledge using software tools. MKM is expected to serve mathematicians, scientists, and engineers who produce and use mathematical knowledge; educators and students who teach and learn mathematics; publishers who offer mathematical textbooks and disseminate new mathematical results; and librarians and mathematicians who catalog and organize mathematical knowledge.
[from William M. Farmer, "MKM: A new interdisciplinary field of research," ACM SIGSAM Bulletin 38, 47-52 (2004).]

Five years later, there is an active and growing community of researchers in the field of MKM, centered mostly in Europe. I attended the Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics (CICM) in Grand Bend, Ontario, in July 2009. This group of conferences included the annual MKM Conference and a workshop "Towards a Digital Mathematics Library" (DML), as well as several other meetings. CICM was held in Birmingham, England, in 2008 and is scheduled to be held near Paris, France, in 2010. In spite of the CICM being held in North America in 2009, the percentage of participants from North America was rather small. There is a North American chapter of the MKM Interest Group, but its last scheduled activity was held during JMM 2004 in Phoenix.  The international interest group does maintain a mailing list server, with most of its activity occurring in the weeks before the annual conferences.

So I have scheduled this informal "birds of a feather" gathering to assess the interest among JMM 2010 participants in issues related to MKM and DML. There are several ways we could proceed, depending on the interests and preferences of those who attend -- we could:

1. attempt to revive the activities of the North American chapter of the MKM Interest Group, perhaps including activities at future JMMs
2. organize interest groups within JMM participating organizations
3. organize e-mail lists and communciations, but otherwise keep gatherings informal

I hope to discuss these and other topics during the gathering.