IN THIS DOCUMENT:

Reorganization and Management

Activities

Cooperation

Visits and Participation in Conferences and Meetings by the Programme Director

Courses Followed by Staff

Visits

Activities of the Regional Centres

IFLA Core Programme for Preservation and Conservation (PAC)

Annual Report 1997

and

Virginie Kremp,
Programme Officer

Reorganization and Management

Creation of a new PAC Centre for Eastern Europe and the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States)

After the closing down of the Leipzig Regional Centre in January 1997 a call for tenders was distributed among Eastern European libraries. Three libraries in Russia sent back proposals to host the new PAC Centre: the Russian State Library in Moscow (former Lenin Library), the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg and the M.I. Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature (LFL) in Moscow. In July, the PAC Director visited the three libraries, their premises and preservation facilities. She was accompanied by the chair of the Section on Preservation and Conservation, Beatrix Kastaly. The results of their meeting with the three library directors and preservation teams, as well as the results of a detailed questionnaire that had been distributed were summed up in a report presented to the IFLA Executive Board in Copenhagen. The decision was then taken to establish the new Centre at the Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow and Galina Kislovskaya, the Deputy Director, was appointed Director of the Regional PAC Centre for Eastern Europe and the CIS.

PAC in Africa

The International PAC Centre in Paris serves as Regional Centre for Western Europe, the Middle East and Africa. With the creation of the JICPA (Joint IFLA/ICA Committee for Preservation in Africa) in 1996, the role of the International Centre has increased. Though PAC is no longer the only preservation authority for libraries in Africa, it is very much involved in the development of JICPA and has been very active throughout 1997 in raising funds, organizing a preservation workshop in Dakar and assisting JICPA Secretary General with translations. PAC has been more often than expected the indispensable "go-between" for communicating information between the different African countries. Two JICPA meetings were held in 1997: one in Dakar in February and another one in Copenhagen in August to which observers from the CPA (Commission on Preservation and Access) were invited. Discussions mostly dealt with the creation of National Preservation Commissions and with the organization of preservation workshops.

Appointment of new PAC Directors

Three new Directors have been appointed:
• Yoshitaka Nishimiya in Tokyo to succeed Takao Shimamura
  
• Galina Kislovskaya in Moscow
  
• Cliff Law in Canberra to succeed Jan Lyall.

In Washington, Amparo de Torres, though not having any official position within the PAC Regional Centre, has shown her commitment and has been an efficient partner throughout the year.

Meeting of the PAC Directors in Copenhagen

As usual the IFLA Annual Conference gave the PAC Directors the opportunity to meet. All of them were present except Diane Kresh (Washington) who was represented by Winston Tabb, the Deputy Director of the Library of Congress. Beatrix Kastaly and Ralph Manning, officers of the Section on Preservation and Conservation, were invited.

Most of the discussion ran on the Medium-Term Programme 1998-2001, the use of permanent paper, the updating of the Guidelines on the Care and Handling of Photographs written by Mark Roosa in 1992 and the lack of visibility of the PAC Programme in some areas of the world, particularly in the Middle East. The creation of new PAC Regional Centres was considered but not actually discussed.

Activities

Publications

• Three leaflets were distributed during the IFLA Conference: a French-English bilingual one on permanent paper and two on the PAC Programme and its activities: one in English, the other in French.

• Three posters were presented at the booth of the BNF during the conference exhibition.

• IPN (International Preservation News), the PAC newsletter, has developed considerably during the last two years. It has increased in size, most issues having now more than 30 pages. An effort has been made to include summaries of the main articles or even translations of whole articles into French and Spanish. Three issues a year are now being published. We try to publish them on a regular basis but we are very dependent on the availability of the printing team of the BNF. No. 14 - May 1997 was mainly devoted to the preservation of audiovisual carriers. No. 15 - August 1997 dealt with permanent paper and No. 16 - printed in January 1998, is devoted to Eastern Europe. IPN is distributed free of charge through the various Regional Centres which are progressively updating their mailing lists. New requests for subscriptions are arriving regularly at the International PAC Centre, proving the growing interest of the library community for the publication. More than 7500 copies are published and distributed yearly.

• The IFLA Principles for the Preservation and Conservation of Library Materials by Clements and Dureau have been under revision for two years and entirely rewritten by Edward Adcock, from the Bodleian Library, with the assistance of the PAC Director and Programme Officer. Edward Adcock twice visited the PAC Centre to discuss editorial issues and corrections to be brought to the draft. The new edition of those Principles deals with the care and handling of library materials, whether traditional or audiovisual and digital. It is much enlarged and more practical than the previous one. It has been purposely written to fit the needs and expectations of libraries and colleagues that have a limited knowledge of preservation. Thanks to the generosity of the Commission on Preservation and Access, PAC will be able to distribute those Principles on a wide scale. They represent No. 1 of a new series on preservation issues: IPI (International Preservation Issues). The Regional Centres have been approached to decide how many copies they will distribute free of charge. PAC is conscious that this kind of publication is usually being sold, but raising awareness on preservation issues stands as its major goal, and most of the colleagues for whose benefit it is written could not afford to buy it.

Permanent Paper

Strong emphasis has been put throughout the year on permanent paper with two major events and active publicity.
• European Meeting on Paper Preservation, The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 20-22 March 1997. Some 40 participants from 15 European countries attended this conference organized by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Sciences, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and the State General Archives of the Netherlands. The Conference issued a series of recommendations: to develop and implement a broad promotional campaign across Europe in order to enhance awareness of the risks threatening the memory of Europe; develop a concerted action of different parties from the private and public sector in order to stimulate innovative and competitive solutions to ensure the permanence and accessibility of information preserved in archives and libraries. Ms Varlamoff attended and participated in the conference, both as a representative of IFLA and of France.

• Adoption of the resolution on the use of permanent paper by UNESCO General Conference, November 1997. An active campaign to support this resolution was led by the different PAC Regional Centres and resulted in the adoption in November 1997 by the UNESCO General Conference. Leaflets and posters denouncing the dangers threatening the very important number of acidic paper collections held by libraries all over the world were distributed and exhibited. To implement a larger and more global use of permanent paper, further steps are being considered, such as the organization of a travelling exhibition in the main European libraries. PAC has been looking for sponsors and has started to draw up the main parts of the exhibition which should be available in 1998.

Training in Africa

A first JICPA conservation workshop took place in Dakar, Senegal, 7-11 April 1997. Organized thanks to a grant from BIEF the workshop gathered 13 participants from 12 French-speaking African countries. The workshop was held both in the premises of EBAD (Ecole des Bibliothécaires, Archivistes et Documentalistes) at Dakar University and in the conservation premises of the National Archives. In spite of the selection, the participants did not form an homogeneous group and there was some criticism concerning the contents of the workshop, which was considered to be too theoretical and not practical enough. These comments will be taken into consideration for the organization of future workshops.

During the JICPA Meeting in Dakar, it was decided to organize a conservation workshop for Arabic-speaking colleagues in Tunis, May 1998, generously hosted by the National Archives of Tunisia. Moncef Fakhfakh, the National Archivist, is in charge of the organization and funds are granted by Danida through ALP.

As a follow up of the Pan-African Meeting on Preservation, Nairobi, 1993, Musila Musembi, JICPA Secretary General and National Archivist of Kenya proposed holding an expert meeting on preservation training in library and archive schools. With the support of ALP and PAC he has been organizing the meeting which is to take place in March 1998.

Two workshops for English-speakers will take place in early 1998 in South Africa.

A workshop for Portuguese-speakers is also being organized by Björn Lindh (ICA) and Ms Varlamoff, to be held late in 1998.

The main problem related to the organization of these workshops is the difficulty in communicating with B. Alegbeleye from Nigeria, who is the coordinator for training activities. Though B. Alegbeleye's knowledge and experience in the preservation field is acknowledged throughout in Africa, it has proved very difficult to work with him on a stable basis due to communication impediments. A solution to this problem should be found quickly if we do not want to put training in Africa at a disadvantage.

Photography

CD-ROM of Latin American Photographs. In the framework of UNESCO's "Memory of the World" Programme a contract was signed between IFLA and UNESCO to produce a CD-ROM presenting 3,000 photographs of the 19th century featuring the construction of Latin America. The contract was signed late in April 1997 and the CD-ROM was expected to be produced before the end of the year. With some 10 countries participating in the project and with the difficulties in communication inherent to Latin America, only two-thirds of the project was completed by December 1997. Nevertheless PAC hopes to have the CD produced by April 1998.

The project, initiated by the PAC International Centre, has been regionally handled by the Regional Centre in Caracas. The coordinating team (including Ramón Sanchez, the Director and Sagrario Berti who were in charge of the photographic collections) gathered the photographs and their bibliographic descriptions from other foreign libraries. They completed missing items with photographs from the rich collection of the National Library in Caracas. They also had to settle technical issues with the University of Colima, Mexico, which was in charge of producing the CD-ROM.
The purpose of this CD-ROM is less to give access to so far unaccessible collections than to raise awareness among governments, decision-makers and library managers, of the importance, interest and fragility of the photographic collections held in libraries and of the necessity to take preservation measures to safeguard them.

Second International Seminar on the Preservation of Photographs. Rio de Janeiro, 20-24 October 1997. Ms Varlamoff attended the seminar and presented two papers. Participants came mainly from Latin America but many speakers came from the USA or Europe. Preventive preservation and digitization were at the core of the discussions. The presentation of the CD-ROM project encouraged colleagues to participate. PAC has now enough contacts throughout Latin America to consider developing, in the framework of "Memory of the World", a much larger project on the preservation of photographic collections involving the whole region. Latin American photographs from the 19th Century have been put on the World Register of the "Memory of the World" by the International Advisory Committee in Tashkent, 1 October 1997.

Elaboration of the Medium-Term Programme

The MTP was developed jointly by the PAC International Centre and the Regional Centres after consultation with the Section on Preservation and Conservation, to ensure that the MTPs of both the Programme and the Section complement and do not overlap each other.

Cooperation

Within IFLA

Section on Preservation and Conservation. The Section is PAC's main partner on joint activities. Consequently, PAC published in IPN two of the Section's leaflets: on library disaster planning, IPN No. 13, and on permanent paper, IPN No. 15. PAC and the Section developed their respective MTP in concert and contacts between the Chair and the Secretary of the Section and the PAC Director are numerous and frequent.

Other Core Programmes. Except for ALP with which PAC has long been cooperating, especially in Africa, collaboration with the other Core Programmes is restricted to specific activities: producing information for UDT for IFLANET; a project of entering preservation data in the bibliographic description with UBCIM; or a project on the safeguarding and the accessibility of digitized publications with UAP.

Outside IFLA

ALA: American Library Association. Ms Varlamoff was invited to participate in the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Washington, 12-16 February 1997 where she delivered a paper.

BIEF: Banque d'information des Etats francophones. BIEF supported the expenses of the Conservation Workshop in Dakar and took all the practical initiatives concerning the travel and accommodation of the participants.

CPA: Commission on Preservation and Access. CPA recently merged with the Council on Library Resources and became one of the four programme areas of CLIR (Council on Library and Information Resources). The cooperation between CPA and PAC is twofold. There is a concrete editorial cooperation and funding for the publication of the Principles.

ECPA: European Commission on Preservation and Access. The European sister of the CPA is presently co-organizing with the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague and PAC an International Conference on Preservation Management, to be held in The Hague, 19-21 April 1999. Three meetings of the organizing committee have already taken place in the Netherlands and Denmark (March, August, December).

ICA: International Council on Archives. In 1997 cooperation between IFLA PAC and ICA essentially concerned joint activities in Africa (JICPA) and active participation in the International Committee for the Blue Shield (ICBS) a UNESCO Programme for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict or natural disaster. ICBS includes ICA, IFLA, ICOM and ICOMOS. IFLA is represented by the Secretary General and, when unable to attend, by the PAC Director. Ms Varlamoff attended two meetings in November and December 1997.

OAS: Organization of American States. Contacts were established with Susan Benson to support projects in Latin America.

UNESCO. Unesco is a privileged partner of IFLA PAC, especially the PGI and the "Memory of the World" Programme whose aims, activities and publications complement those of the IFLA PAC Programme. In 1997 cooperation essentially concerned the project of the CD-ROM of Latin American Photographs. Ms Varlamoff also attended three important meetings: 1) a meeting on the Subcommittee on Technology of the "Memory of the World" Programme, London, 15-17 May; 2) a Regional Meeting in Tashkent, Ouzbekistan, September 25-26 on the Conservation, Preservation and Promotion of the Documentary Heritage of Central Asia; and 3) the Third Meeting of the International Advisory Committee of the AMemory of the World@ Programme. Tashkent, 29 September-1 October 1997. A number of joint projects are actually pending and contracts should be signed soon.

Other. IFLA PAC also maintains links with organizations like the NDCC (Northeast Document Conservation Centre) USA, and the NPO (National Preservation Office) UK.

Financing and Funding

Expenses for the management of the programme are shared between IFLA and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Each library hosting a Regional Centre supports its own management expenses and activities. Complementary funding must be found for special projects or activities. During the report period BIEF supported a training conservation workshop in Dakar (USD 20,000); CPA signed a contract to support the publication of the "Principles" (USD 10,000), USD 4,000 of which were paid in 1997; and UNESCO signed a contract to produce a CD-ROM of Latin American photographs (USD 46,000). In 1997, USD 35,000 were effectively sent to IFLA.

Visits and Participation in Conferences and Meetings by the Programme Director

• February 12-16. Washington DC. ALA Mid-winter Meeting; meeting with CPA
  
• February 19-23. Dakar, Senegal. JICPA Meeting
  
• March 20-22. The Hague and Amsterdam. European Meeting on Paper Preservation and meeting with ECPA
  
• April 21-25. Paris. Third Arsag Intentional Symposium on "Conservation: A Developing Theme"
  
• May 15-17. London. Meeting of the MOW Subcommittee on Technology
  
• July 9-16. Moscow and St. Petersburg. Visits to libraries wishing to host a PAC Centre
  
• July 18-21. Arles and Montpellier. Round Tables on Conservation
  
• August 28-September 7. Copenhagen. IFLA Conference
  
• September 25- October 1. Tashkent. Regional Consultation on the Conservation, Preservation and Promotion of the Documentary Heritage of Central Asia; Third Meeting of the International Advisory Committee of the MOW Programme
  
• October 20-24. Rio de Janiero. 2nd International Seminar on the Preservation of Photographs
  
• November 13. Paris. UNESCO Blue Shield Meeting
  
• December 5. Paris. International Committee for the Blue Shield
  
• December 7-9. The Hague. Joint meeting of the PB and Core Programmes; preparatory meeting for the International Conference on Preservation Management (The Hague, 1999); meeting of the organizing committee of the pre-Session Seminar (Bangkok, 1999)
  
• December 16-17. Paris. Symposium on the Future of Acidic Paper.

Courses Followed by Staff

Visits

Activities of the Regional Centres

Training and Raising Awareness

All the centres have continued to provide assistance on a regular basis to foreign institutions in their regions, either through expertise or by training conservators. Proper training performed by the regional centres can be divided into two kinds:
• Practical training for conservators from abroad, such as the Centre of Tokyo that welcomed two trainees from Taipei, Taiwan, China or the Centre in Moscow that welcomed 35 conservators and binders from other Republics.

• Educational courses, be it either in-house or external. Thanks to funds from UNESCO, the Centre of Caracas has been able to resume its annual course on paper conservation and set up a second level. Ten students from Colombia, Cuba, Uruguay, Nicaragua and Venezuela have begun the September 1997 session. The Centre in Washington has continued to team-teach "the Preservation of Library and Archival Materials", a course in the graduate curriculum of the school of Library and Information Science at the Catholic University, Washington. Amparo de Torres was one of the instructors in a week long seminar "Conservación Preventiva para Entidades Cientificas y Culturales" taught in collaboration with professionals from the Northeast Document Conservation Centre and the Canadian Conservation Institute at the National Archives in Cuba. Two new distance education courses have commenced in August 1997 at the University of New South Wales in Audiovisual Management and Library Preservation Administration. This latter was developed by Wendy Smith from the Centre in Canberra and will rely mostly on the Internet as a delivery mechanism. In this respect the National Library of Australia provided sponsorship to enable trainees from the Philippines to participate in the courses. Wendy Smith presented a two-week workshop on conservation in Western Samoa, last August. In-house training took place at the Centre in Tokyo where staff was taught the principles of conservation and how to do small repairs.

Raising awareness is one of the top activities of the Centre in Moscow, which organized many seminars and conferences. The Centre in Washington held its second Preservation Awareness Workshop intended for the public which received a very enthusiastic response. In Tokyo the Centre held its annual Preservation Forum. This year the topic dealt with the use of recycled paper and the preservation of library materials.

Publications, Translations and Dissemination

The rate of publications issued by the centres certainly depends on the number of preservation-related publications offered by other institutions in the same area. The needs in terms of publications in Northern America are obviously less than in the Southern part.

This explains why the Centre in Caracas is the most efficient partner for International Preservation News as information in Spanish is usually scarce. For this reason, it is now issued in three languages, English, French and Spanish and the Centre of Caracas has provided the translations of whole texts or summaries in Spanish.

The Centre in Australia continued to produce a flyer with each issue of IPN with local information. This is an initiative which will be adopted by the newly created Centre in Moscow which intends to issue a flyer in Russian.

Efforts by other Centres must not be overlooked. For the first time, the Centre in Tokyo published an English-Japanese version of the proceedings of its 1996 Annual Forum on Preservation, dealing with environment and disaster preparedness.

In Moscow many articles have been translated into Russian amongst which, the paper by Alan Howell on the digitization of newspapers; the IFLA brochures on disaster preparedness and permanent paper; and leaflets on reformatting, issued by the Northeast Documentation Conservation Centre. The Centre in Moscow has also copied the tape Slow Fires. In order to meet the great demand, the video is lent to institutions on request.

Two articles were written by staff of the Centre of Canberra, one dealing with the preservation of polymers, the other with the properties of paper in naturally aged books.

Washington published a report on digitization and pursued, thanks to Amparo de Torres= initiative, negotiations to have the printing of the Canadian Conservation Institute's poster funded by a papermaker.

Although the Centre of Caracas has encountered several difficulties in having issues of Conservaplan printed, this did not prevent the Centre from continuing to translate important papers in view of prospective printings.

Coordination and Cooperation

On a national basis the Centre in Australia has been working with Australian Paper, the sole large producer of office and fine paper in the country, to promote the 1996 Australian standards for permanent paper. Papers have been tested for compliance with the standard and all those which comply will soon be labelled as such. A list of Australian made permanent paper is being compiled and will be disseminated in the next few months.

On an institutional level, the National Library of Australia has been coordinating the development of the "Statement of Principles for the Preservation of Digital Objects" since 1995. These statements were finalized in 1997 and the full text is available at:
http://www.nla.gov.au/archive/npo/natco/princ.html

The Centre in Moscow was actively involved in the working out of a National Preservation Programme at the request of the Ministry of Culture. It has also contributed to the EROMM base with 77 records on Russian microform masters. Import and export procedures are under discussion. Searching ways of storing microform masters filmed by and for Russian libraries is another issue that the centre has started addressing in 1997.

On a regional/international basis the Centres in Moscow, Caracas and Canberra have all begun the setting up of regional directories which should be very useful for all professionals in their respective regions, and also for different reasons.

In Russia and the CIS, such a directory has never been done before and there is a high need to gather professionals and help them communicate. A database will be developed once the compiling process is over.

This task has already been performed for Spanish-speaking professionals but the directory issued by ICCROM, CAL and APOYO is incomplete. However, this directory will serve as a basis for the one compiled at the Biblioteca Nacional de Venezuela, and hopefully the new one will be mounted on the Internet.

In South East Asia and the Pacific, communication through the Internet is increasing significantly because of the great distances between islands. Such a directory will be welcomed to help professionals communicate. This is especially relevant because the APACA group (Australian Preservation and Conservation Abroad) which was established to provide a forum for information exchange on Australian preservation and conservation activities in the Asia Pacific region, has ceased meeting. Communication is now established electronically which saves time and money.

The Centre in Washington sent several bibliographical references and other pieces of information relevant to disasters to libraries in Poland at the request of the National Library. Assistance from the Preservation Directorate was also provided to the Morgan Library at Colorado State University where some 425,000 books were damaged by the flood.

Research

The Centre of the Biblioteca Nacional de Venezuela started the development of an Emergency Management and Recovery Plan for three different buildings of the Library. Once it is finished it will serve as an example to the National Library System which will develop its own.

Much work and effort have been put in the creation of the CD-ROM of 19th century Latin American photographs by Caracas (see above).

The pH survey of current Japanese monographs and periodicals was conducted by the Centre in Tokyo in August. Acid-free paper was found to be used in 50.2% of official publications, which is 14.8% higher than the preceding year.

Several research projects have been carried out by the Centre in Washington. In November 1997, the Library awarded to Preservation Technologies, Pittsburgh, USA a contract to provide book preservation service to the Library of Congress for the next four years. The company will deacidify about 250,000 books with its patented Bookkeeper process.

Specifications for pressure-sensitive labels have been developed and should be read on the Preservation Directorate's Web page. Accelerated aging tests for binding adhesives were carried out. The Centre has also set up an unified strategy for the preservation of audio and video collections of the Library of Congress.

Fund-raising

Fund raising is becoming a full-time activity for carrying out specific projects that fall within the scope of the Centres.

Finding the sponsor which could both print and supply the paper for the CCI's poster translated into Spanish thanks to Amparo de Torres' enthusiasm, has been difficult and strenuous.

However, patience and persistency are usually rewarded but belated answers delay the execution of projects. For instance, after two years of expectation, the Centre in Caracas has been able to resume its course when UNESCO finally granted the money to finance it.

There is no recipe in this respect and each Centre has to find its own strategy according to private or public funds available. For instance, the Centre in Moscow has launched an appeal to the State Duma (a lower chamber of the Russian Parliament) to support preservation microfilming activities.