Background

The WG originated at the General Assembly meeting of the IAU in Buenos Aries in August of 1991 and was created from the amalgamation of two former Working Groups: the formal IAU WG on "Astronomical Photography" and the informal group on "Digitised Optical Sky Surveys". It was original known as the "Working Group on Wide Field Imaging", but it quickly expanded to incorporate spectroscopic projects so that at the 1997 General Assembly it was renamed the "Working Group on Sky Surveys".