AVS has published a Newsletter since 1960, except for the 1965-8 period when Society news was published in JVST. The history of the Newsletters is covered in the e-book  "50 Years of AVS," available on the AVS website. Since 2004, the current Newsletter has been available on the web.

Since the newsletters provide details of the AVS activities and are therefore of historical interest, copies are held in the AVS Archives. To make this information more available, the AVS History Committee undertook a program to provide the information on the website.

All the newsletters from 1960 through 1989 have been scanned and converted to text files by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and are posted here as pdfs. The files contain all the information of the originals (misspellings included) although the format differs somewhat from the originals; they are all single column layouts although, from 1961 through 1988, the layout was dual columns, with triple columns introduced in 1989. This simplified the editing process but retains the content. Through 1988, color was used only in the banner; since 1989,
color has been used throughout the layout, but the pdf files are almost all black & white.
Again, we chose to provide the information rather than follow the original layout.

A short description of the editorial changes and contents of the Newsletters can be found in the e-book  "50 Years of AVS." From 1968, it contained chapter and conference information, calls for papers, some meeting reports, and a conference calendar. The program for the Annual Symposium was outlined. Short course schedules and job openings were advertised. Since 1969, an article by the President has discussed AVS current issues. The annual budget was published since 1973.

Since 1971, winners of the AVS Major Awards were announced and profiled & Student Award winners announced since 1979. The results (names & times) of the 5k run at the Symposium were printed since the first run in 1981. Obituaries of members were published [see the e-book  "50 Years of AVS" for a list]

Starting in 1989, people profiles were started; Oral History interviews with most of those profiled [Dick Brundle, Len Beavis, Lyn Provo, Rey Whetten, Dick Hoffman, Bill Westwood, Howard Patton, Nancy Hammond, Dave Hoffman, Bill Rogers, John Coburn, Paul Holloway] are available on the website.

To order your own copy of these issues on compact disk,
please e-mail Steve Barker, AVS Electronic Services Assistant.

AVS Newsletters on CD in Portable Document Format:

• 1960 - Volume 1, No. 1
• 1961 - May, July
• 1962 - April, June, September, December
• 1963 - February, April, September, December
• 1964 - February, June, November
• 1968 - April, June, December
• 1969 - April, August, October, December
• 1970 - May, September
• 1971 - January, April, June, September, December
• 1972 - 3 Undated
• 1973 - March, June, September
• 1974 - March, June, September, December
• 1975 - March, June, September, December
• 1976 - March, June, September, December
• 1977 - March, June, September, December
• 1978 - March, June, September, December
• 1979 - March, May, July, September, December
• 1980 - January, March, May, July, September, November
• 1981 - January, March, May, July, September, November
• 1982 - January, March, May, July, September, November
• 1983 - January, March, May, July, September, November
• 1984 - January, March, May, July, September, November
• 1985 - January, March, May, July, September, November
• 1986 - January, March, May, July, September, November
• 1987 - January, March, May, July, September, November
• 1988 - January, March, May, July, September, November
• 1989 - January, March, May, July, September, November