These proceedings of a conference held in Pune, India, in February 2010 offer views of the possibilities and challenges that astronomy librarians are facing during a time of transition from the familiar observatory libraries into larger entities that might exist largely online.

The theme “21^st Century Astronomy Librarianship, from New Ideas to Action” reflects the wide range of skills of these information professionals. 21^st century librarians use Web 2.0 tools to create a high-tech Library 2.0 and perhaps soon we will even begin to see a Library 3.0. Librarians today help astronomers to find out how productive telescopes are. Their skills are essential for curating large amounts of data and bringing it to the astronomy community in a well indexed and searchable form.

Jayant V. Narlikar, founding director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), describes this gradual triumph of virtual library services over print collections. While a hardcopy edition of a classic work of astronomy to thumb through will be a more attractive option than the digitized version, bringing such volumes online ensures a wider readership, and the metadata added by the collaboration of librarians
and astronomers will ensure that such milestone works stay in our virtual astronomy heritage.