I.A.U. Symposium No. 133, "Mapping the Sky: Past Heritage and Future Directions" was held at Paris on 1-5 June, 1987. The rationale for this meeting is to combine historical and modern aspects of mapping the sky; historical in that the meeting celebrates the initiation of the carte du Ciel at the Observatoire de Paris in 1887 and evaluates its impact on astrometry and astronomy in general. And modern in the sense that now in optical, radio and other wavelengths the sky is and needs to be charted in detail. The Symposium also commemorates the 150th anniversary of the first trigonometric parallax. The proposal for the meeting closely involved the sponsoring I.A.U. Commissions 24 and 41 and their respective officers. The Scientific Organizing Committee included the two current presidents of these commissions as co-chairmen (A.R. Upgren and J.A. Eddy, respectively) along with V. Abalakin. S. Debarbat, Ch. de Vegt, R.L. Duncombe, H.K. Eichhorn, M. Hoskin, J.A. Hughes, C. Jaschek, P.G. Kulikovsky, C.A. Murray and P.A. Wayman. The L.O.C. consisted of P. Charvin (chairman), S. Grillot, L. Garin and R. Weinstein; they were helped by M. Alibert (secretary), G. Rault, S. Seguier, J. Counil and S. Debarbat. Additional financial support was provided by the Division of History of Science, International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science.

The IAU Symposium 109, sponsored by IAU Commission 2( and co-sponsored by Commissions 8 and (0, was originally scheduled to be held in Merida, Venezuela, but eventually took place at the University of Florida in Gainesville from January 9 to January 12, 1984. The Scientific Organizing Committee consisting of Peter Brosche (FRG), John Davis (Australia), Jean Delhaye (France), Erik H9Sg (Denmark), James A. Hughes (USA), C. Andrew Murray (UK), Dimitri D. Polozhentsev (USSR), Jurgen Stock (Venezuela), Catherine Turon (France), Arthur R. Upgren (USA), Gart Westerhout (USA), Arno Witzel (Germany, FR), and Shu Hua Ye (PRC), was chaired by Heinrich Eichhorn (USA). The Local Organizing Committe (chaired by Robert J. Leacock) included, in addition, Jeanne Kerrick, Carl Cole, Billy Cooke, Lance Erickson, Mary Jane Taylor, Wan-xian Wang and James Webb. The following chaired sessons during the Symposium: Shinko Aoki (Japan), Wilhelm Gliese (Germany, FR), Bernard Guinot (France), Kenneth Johnston (USA), Jean Kovalevsky (France), Kaj Aa. Strand (USA), George Teleki (Yugoslavia), and William van Altena (USA). All papers included in this volume were refereed. A significant part of them were not appropriate for publication as originally submitted, mostly for reasons of language. Some were therefore heavily edited. The papers originally submitted in Russian were translated into English by Eva Eichhorn. Many of the papers were retyped at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Florida."