Subject: upcoming meeting Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 12:29 PM From: Oleg Yu. Malkov To: Cc: Dear Peter, To my great regret I will not be able to attend the Munich Jan 2004 meeting. At the moment I stay in the University of Barcelona and will be here till Feb 8. As a short report about RVO activity I send you the following few lines: 1. A project of digitazing of Russian and fSU glass libraries is initiated in the frame of the RVO activity and in a close collaboration with Sofia Sky Archive Data Centre. We have bought and should shortly receive (perhaps we have received by the date of the meeting) two Epson Expression 1640XL scaners, which allow us to scan plates up to 30x30 cm. This specimen will allow us both make scans in the Centre for Astronomical Data (Moscow) and to construct a portable version of the tool. Similar scaners are widely used in Bulgaria as well as in Hungary and Germany. Besides Russia, astronomical organisations of Latvia, Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine express their interest to participate the project. 2. A mini-symposium called "Future telescopes and virtual observatories" is organized in the frame of the All-Russian astronomical conference (Jun 3-10, Moscow). Besides, one of the plenary (invited) talks of the conference is "International Virtual Observatory". Both events will be used for advance and discussions of VO ideas. As to new WGs, I would be glad to join a scientific application WG, if such a group is created. Please, do not hesitate to ask me any quesions concerning the RVO report, or other business, where I could give my opinion. I am sorry again for my absence. Sincerely yours, Oleg