Comm ULO issues from No. 80 onwards are available online.
The Observatory's 'Communications'
began in 1938 as a serial presentation
of both original monographs and reprints of articles published
elsewhere. At its peak, the series was circulated in paper form to nearly
400 institutions and individuals around the world.
As UK Universities
fell foul of budget cuts, 'Comm. ULO' became an inevitable casualty,
and suspended publication in 1977. Moreover, less
material being published in this way, and more in the refereed
journals.
However, there was still room for the publication of
supplementary material, such as software listings, tables of data,
and special material related to teaching, which did not easily fit
into the usual journal format.
In 1984, the heirs of the late
Frank Norman Jenkins, a resident of Essex and a veteran of WWI,
generously donated a sum of 1000 pounds to University College
London for the express purpose of supporting the renewal of the
publication of the Communications.
Two issues of Comm. ULO were subsequently produced,
substantially draining the fund that provided for their preparation,
printing and posting. Comm. ULO then went into hibernation.
It is intended that the Frank Norman Jenkins Fund will be used for
special items of equipment and to support student research, with
part of it continuing to support the preparation and maintenance of
web-based publication of material in
the following categories:
PhD theses by UCL astronomy students not
planning to publish full details elsewhere;
Details of astronomical software or databases developed at ULO;
Descriptions of equipment and techniques in use at ULO;
Reports of research of a minor nature, such as outstanding
undergraduate projects;
Descriptions of archive material held by the Observatory;
Material (including pictures and recorded sound) related to the
history of ULO.
Scripts of original laboratory experiments devised at ULO.
Communications from the University of London Observatory will be
presented in the most appropriate format for the particular
item. For example, we will make documents such as theses or
monographs available in postscript formats, with compression such
as .gz which can be decompressed using the GNU gunzip command in
Unix and Linux systems. As new capabilities become available
to us we will try to develop additional formats.
The first publication in this new format is the 1997 PhD thesis
of Dr Caroline Sarah Allen, bearing the number 80 in the Comm. ULO
series.
Dr. Mike Dworetsky
Director, University of London Observatory
Communications