IN THIS DOCUMENT:

A. Reorganisation and management

B. Activities

C. Cooperation

D. Visits and participation to conferences and meetings

E. Financial statement and fund raising

F. Activities of the regional centres

List of annexes

IFLA PAC 1998 Annual Report

1998 was a difficult year for PAC since the Programme Officer, Virginie Kremp, went on maternity leave in May and did not resume working. She was not replaced until January 1999.

A. Reorganisation and management

Due to the departure of the BnF Secretary General and to a reorganisation at the BnF PAC passed in July under the authority of the Délégation aux Relations Internationales, which proved to be quite positive in the sense that PAC is now more associated with all international activities of the BnF and is more visible inside the hosting institution.

1- Appointments

• The appointment of a new Programme Officer to replace Virginie Kremp was a source of worry because of administrative constraints and took much longer than it should have. This was quite a handicap for PAC and the publication of the newsletter IPN had to be delayed for several months. Contacts were finally taken with Ania Zalenskaia and her contract was signed at the end of December, starting work in January.

Changes occurred also at the head of several Regional Centres.

• Jan Lyall retired after ten years as Director of the Canberra Regional Centre. She was replaced by Cliff Law.
• Ryuji Yonemura succeeded Yoshitaka Nishimiya at the head of the Regional Centre in Tokyo.
• Mark Roosa, the new Chief of LC Conservation Division, is now in charge of the Regional Centre in Washington.

2- Meeting of the PAC directors in Amsterdam, August 16, 1998

The annual meeting of the PAC Directors took place during the IFLA Conference in Amsterdam. All PAC Directors attended except Diane Kresh from the Library of Congress who was represented by Robert Harrimann. A detailed report of this meeting can be found in Annex 1.

B. Activities

1- Publications

• IPN 16 was published in January and mainly dealt with permanent paper. IPN 17, published in May, dealt principally with non traditional media (photographs, digitised materials). IPN 18 was expected to be published in August and IPN 19 in December but due to Virginie Kremp's maternity leave, they had to be postponed until a new Programme Officer was appointed.
• The "IFLA Principles on the Care and Handling of Library Material" were finally printed in July 1998. This was the happy end of a long and painful story. Started several years before, the reviewing of the 1984 IFLA Preservation Principles was conducted by PAC with the collaboration of a number of colleagues and specialists from the world over. Funding from the Commission on Preservation and Access from the Council on Library and Information Resources allowed PAC to contract an English speaking editor, Edward Adcock, conservator at the Bodleian Library and editor of Paper Conservation News, for the rewriting in English of those Principles. The Principles are the result of a constant collaboration between Adcock and PAC staff in Paris. Unfortunately it came out that the publication was constantly postponed, due to multiple delays on behalf of the editor. Finally 2500 copies were printed and sent for free distribution to the Regional Centres. A number of extra copies were sold by IFLA HQ. However, considering the mission of the PAC Programme, which is mainly to raise awareness on preservation issues, and considering the important amount of money spent on banking transfers and the time spent in writing invoices and keeping track of administrative tasks between Paris PAC and IFLA HQ in The Hague, I personally doubt it is worth selling them.

  The "IFLA Principles" were successfully presented at the IFLA Conference in Amsterdam. Many colleagues from various countries have expressed their wish to have them translated and proposals made for translations into the twelve following languages : Arabic, Bhasa Malaysia, Croatian, French, Greek, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish.

  IFLA Principles will be available on the IFLANET.

• The CD ROM on Latin American Photographs from the XIXth century was finally produced by the University of Colima and delivered just before the IFLA Conference in Amsterdam where it was presented on the booth of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The project funded by UNESCO was coordinated by the National Library of Venezuela. For more information on this CD ROM see IPN 17 pp 14-16 in annex. On the 1000 copies produced, 250 were sent to UNESCO, 250 to PAC in Paris, 400 to the PAC Regional Centre in Caracas which conducted the project and 100 to the University of Colima. The CD ROMs are available on request and delivered free of charge at the PAC Centre in Paris.

2- JICPA (Joint IFLA/ICA committee for preservation in Africa)

PAC activities in Africa can be divided into three parts:

Annual Meeting of JICPA, Tunis, May 25-27

The JICPA meeting was organised by the National Archives of Tunisia and was the occasion for the participants to visit the preservation workshop that had been organised in May 18-28 in Kairouan. For more details see annex 2.

Expert Meeting of Educators from Library and Archives Schools in Nairobi, Kenya,

March 23-25

The meeting was attended by twelve participants, most of them being university lecturers in information sciences. Ms Dale Peters from South Africa had prepared a draft curriculum working document which allowed us to come up, after three days of extensive work, with an excellent final document : "Preservation and Conservation of Library and Archival Materials in Africa : a JICPA Model Curriculum with a Strong Component of Preventive Preservation". IFLA PAC translated this curriculum in French and will publish it in IPN 18 (March 99). For more details see annex 3

Preservation workshops

A number of preservation workshops took place or were organised mostly thanks to UNESCO funding:

• Durban (South Africa), March 8-14 with funding from CLIR (4,000 US$).
• Durban (South Africa), April 19-25 with funding from DANIDA (25,000 US$) for English speaking conservators.
• Kairouan (Tunisia), May 18-28 for Arabic speaking conservators (DANIDA 18,000 US$).
• Harare (Zimbabwe) for English speaking conservators. The workshop previously planned to take place in October 26-30 had to be postponed because the money had not arrived in time. It took place in January 25-29,1999. The PAC Centre in Paris provided the National Archives of Zimbabwe with consumables that could not be found locally.
• Praia (Cabo Verde) for Portuguese speaking conservators. This workshop also had to be postponed because the organising National Archives had not received the money in time. CLIR had sent professional documentation in Portuguese from Brazil.

From the reports and assessments of past workshops it appears that success is linked toa good selection of the participants. Even if many of them complain that the workshops are not long enough (they would like them to last twice as long) and that they do not have enough time for practicals it does not seem possible, for the present time, to extend their length for various reasons: besides the fact that more money would be needed, many institutions cannot afford to have their conservator away from work for two weeks or more. A solution could be to plan to focus on practicals instead of theory and to work longer each day.

JICPA, which is an excellent example of cooperation between CIA and IFLA, has taken a good start, thanks to the commitment of colleagues from all over Africa, although there remains serious difficulties of communication between African countries. Funding is another difficulty and banking exchanges delays should always be taken into account when planning a workshop or any project.

3. Blue Shield

IFLA PAC has spend much energy and time on activities linked with the Blue Shield, which can be split into four major fields:

1. The revision of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in case of Armed conflict. A conference took place in Vienna, May 9-14 and IFLA and ICA (respectively represented by Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff and George Mackenzie) attended as observers. Discussions mainly dealt with the notions of "military necessity" and special protection" which were discussed at length. The role of the ONGs in the implementation of the convention was underlined. A diplomatic conference for the adoption of a final protocole is to take place in The Hague (March 1999).
2. The situation of Cultural Heritage in Afghanistan
   UNESCO asked ICBS to convene a meeting on the situation of cultural heritage in Afghanistan. A preparatory meeting was scheduled on May 19 and another meeting took place at UNESCO in September 30. I was asked to chair the meeting. Supplementary details can be found in annex 4.
3. The Radenci Seminar
   A Seminar for Personnel Intervening in the Case of Armed Conflict or Natural Disaster was organised in Radenci, Slovenia. The seminar was organised jointly by ICBS, IIAS (International Institute of Archival Sciences in Maribor, Slovenia) and the Regional Archives of Maribor, with the support of UNESCO. It gathered thirty-one participants from ten countries (Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Hungary, The Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden). Several preparatory meetings (gathering P. Boylan - ICOM, G. Mackenzie - ICA and M-T Varlamoff - IFLA) took place either in London or in Paris. M-T Varlamoff was one of the resource persons of this seminar. At the end of the seminar a declaration was adopted. See annex 5.
4. French National Committee for the Blue Shield
   Contacts were taken and meetings organised between M-T Varlamoff (IFLA) and Ségolène Bergeon (ICOM) to investigate the possiblity of creating a French National Committee of the Blue Shield. Ségolène Bergeon reported on the Belgium experience (Meeting in Brussels on November 23 to create a Belgium Fundation for the Blue Shield) and on the Seminar "La sécurité du patrimoine" organised by ICOMOS in Rennes on December 10-11. Both attended the ICOM France meeting on December 11 and delivered papers on the Blue Shield. For the next meetings it is planned to contact colleagues from ICA, ICOMOS and the Civil Defence. The national organisation of the Red Cross is being studied as a possible model.

4. Standards

Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff has been attending several meetings of the French Association of Standardisation (AFNOR). She is a member of two Expert Groups:

• Exhibitions of graphic material,
• Assessment methods on the condition of archives and library collections.

5. Ongoing projects

UNESCO contracts

Two contracts were signed with UNESCO:

1. A worldwide survey on digitised collections in major cultural institutions, in order to establish a "virtual library" of digitised collections. IFLA PAC and IFLA UAP are working together on this project which is linked to the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme and which will attempt to identify collections which are of world significance and therefore suitable for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register. Several meetings were organised between PAC and UAP (Boston Spa, Amsterdam, Paris and Luxemburg) to settle the agenda and cooperative issues.

   A freely accessible database on the UNESCO website will consist of a searchable listing of all the collections, together with clickable links to take the user directly to the website of the digitised collection. Individual items within a collection will not be listed, but it is assumed that detailed information about the contents of each collection will be available from the collection website.

   The project began in 1998 with the distribution of questionnaires to national libraries to gather information on their digitisation programmes. It was then extended to some national archives and university or research libraries.

   Information is also being collected from the Internet (An intern from the Toulouse Political Sciences School worked on the subject at IFLA PAC from June 15 to July 15 ).

   Finally the project will aim to offer some information on how the issue of preservation is being handled by each of the institutions listed.

2. A CD ROM on the preventive preservation of documentary heritage in order to serve initial or permanent training purposes. This CD ROM, based on the brochure "Preservation and conservation Standards for Documents" by the Memory of the World Sub-Committee on Technology, will illustrate the causes of degradation of library and archive collections and the measures to be taken to prevent them. The Mission on Research and Technology of the French Ministry of Culture is associated to the project, Astrid Brandt, the Assistant Director leading the project with the cooperation of IFLA PAC.

   PAC has contacted colleagues from the world over to send photographs illustrating the text of the brochure rewritten by Astrid Brandt. Contacts were taken with CD producers and a first draft of the CD ROM was sent to UNESCO.

Conferences planning

• Preservation Management : Between Policy and Practice. The Hague, Royal Library, 19-21 April 1999, a European Conference organised by ECPA (European Commission on Preservation and Access), IFLA PAC and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. The conference will focus on organizational, financial and managerial aspects of preservation. Case studies will be presented that are illustrative of efforts in various European countries and should shed light on such questions as how one plans and costs a large preservation project, and how a preservation programme can be realized step by step. Several organising meetings took place (The Hague, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm).
• Satellite Meeting of the General IFLA Conference : an International Conference on "Collecting and Safeguarding Oral Traditions", Khon Kaen, Northeastern Thailand, 16-19 August 1999. Within the context of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, the conference will deal with various aspects of collecting and safeguading oral heritage, including the socio-cultural context, collection methodologies and selection criteria, care, handling, storage and preservation issues as well as technical matters. Case studies from various countries of the Region at large will be presented.

  This conference has been particularly difficult to organise. First intended as a pre-seminar to the IFLA Conference it was finally planned as a Satellite Meeting with a much broader audience. Various planning meetings (The Hague, Amsterdam) took place and due to financial difficulties in fund raising it took about a whole year to decide where to hold the conference. Finally the Mahasarakham University was chosen as the local organiser and decided on the Sofitel in Khon Kaen (Northeastern Thailand).

• Symposium 2000, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 21-24 August 2000 on the Preservation Management of Serials. Preparatory meetings were organised in Amsterdam and Paris. An organising committee was set up gathering IFLA PAC, IFLA Section on Preservation and Conservation, IFLA Section on Serial Publications, IFLA Round Table on Newspapers and Bibliothèque nationale de France. M-T Varlamoff was asked to Chair the Committee with Marie-Lise Tsagouria as Vice-Chair. Ralph Manning Chair of Division VI met with Daniel Renoult and Alix Chevallier from the BnF in December 1999 and an oral agreement as to the participation of the BnF was given. This symposium is the second on the subject. A first symposium had already been organised in 1989 at the Library of Congress in Washington, gathering mostly colleagues from the USA and Canada. This time, in Paris, we expect to reach a broader audience especially since the Symposium will follow the IFLA Conference in Jerusalem which will allow participants to stop in Paris on their way back home.

C. Cooperation

Most of PAC activities are led in cooperation with other institutions, associations or organisations among which :

• ICA (International Council on Archives) : JICPA (Joint IFLA/ICA Committee for Preservation in Africa)
• ICOM (International Council on Museums), ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites): ICBS (International Council of the Blue Shield)
• CLIR (Council on Library and Information Resources): publication of the "IFLA Principles on the Care and Handling of Library Material"
• UNESCO:
  • preservation workshops in Africa
  • survey of digitised collections
  • CD ROM on photographs from Latin America
  • CD ROM on preventive preservation
  • meetings for the revision of the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Case of Armed Conflict
  • Radenci Seminar for Personnel Intervening in the Event of Armed Conflict
  • meeting on the situation of cultural heritage in Afghanistan
• Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Mission de la Recherche et de la Technologie: CD ROM on preventive preservation
• ECPA (European Commission on Preservation and Access): European Conference on Preservation Management
• Koninklijke Bibliotheek: European Conference on Preservation Management
• University of Colima (Mexico): CD ROM on Latin American photographs

Needless to add that PAC cooperates with other IFLA Core programmes (UAP as above mentioned, ALP and UDT) and sections.

D. Visits and participation to conferences and meetings

E. Financial statement and fund raising

IFLA and the Bibliothèque nationale de France jointly contribute to the budgeting of PAC's staff, clerical, travel and printing expenses according to a yearly financial annex to the IFLA/BnF contract (see annex 6). However specific projects have to be funded with outside subsidies and a large part of the PAC Director's time is spent in fund raising. In 1998 the sums thus raised amounted to 156,000 US$ from UNESCO (contract of 46,000 US$ for the CD ROM on Latin American photographs, contract of 40,000 US$ for the survey on digitised collections, contract of 50,000 US$ for the CD ROM on preventive preservation, contract 20,000 US$ for the Harare workshop). CLIR contracted IFLA PAC for the publication of the IFLA Principles and granted 10,000 US$. CLIR also supported with 4,000 US$ a preservation workshop in Durban (South Africa).

Major contributions were also received from DANIDA via ALP for projects in Africa in the framework of JICPA.

F. Activities of the regional centres

1- Training and raising awareness

The past year has been a busy period of activities for all of the Regional Centres. There were a number of achievements performed and initiatives taken.

Regarding raising awareness the following activities are worth to be mentioned:

All the Centres have been actively distributing the publications of the IFLA-PAC core programme. Some of them made a particular effort.

The Washington Centre updated and enlarged its IPN mailing list (which now includes over 400 libraries in USA and Canada). A preservation awareness poster " Framework for the Preservation of Collections " developed in collaboration with the Canadian Conservation Institute was translated into Spanish and should be mailed to over 3 000 individuals and institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The mailing shall include 3 articles on deterioration agents.

The Regional Centre in Moscow disseminated 2 issues of IPN to 220 addresses, the issues were supplied with a flier in Russian, containing the resumes of the main articles as well as annotated list of articles from CLIR Newsletter.

Most of the Centres acknowledged a strong interest for the Principles for the Care and Handling of Library Material. The Centre in Tokyo is now willing to translate the Principles.

The Australian Regional Centre distributed copies of Preparing for Preservation Environment: Against Severe Climate and Various Disasters, proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Preservation (Asia and Oceania Region, Tokyo, November 18th, 1996).

Over the past year, the work of the Caracas Centre was mainly focused on the project of safeguarding the XIX century photographic collection, which resulted in the production of a CD ROM: Photographs of Latin America and the Caribbean in the XIX Century and the beginning of the XX Century. The CD ROM was widely distributed among the major cultural institutions of Latin America.

All Regional Centres carried out training programmes, were addressed both for foreign colleagues and for the specialists at home.

This year, the National Diet Library in Tokyo held its 8th Preservation Symposium Paper! For Future Generations, where the problems of permanent paper were thoroughly discussed and a Forum entitled How to Put out a Fire? - Fire Extinguishing Facilities in Libraries and Archives. The 9th Annual Symposium on Preservation took place in November, during which an important keynote address entitled Preservation of Electronic Information: what should we be thinking about now was given by Mr. Collin Webb, Manager of Information Preservation, National Library of Australia.

A UK conservator, Ms Tracy Cloutier visited the National Diet Library and taught a course in restoration techniques of leather bookbinding. Ms. Cloutier and the library staff exchanged information on the Oriental and Occidental bookbinding methods.

Among many workshops provided by the Moscow Regional Centre, the training of 3 conservators from Mongolia, the training of the Head of preservation of Udmurtia, as well as preservation lectures for 10 Mongolian librarians can be noted.

In 1998 six conservators from various parts of the world (USA, Germany, Italy and South Africa) received full training in conservation and preservation at the Library of Congress in Washington.

The Centre of Canberra organized a course on Preservation Management via Internet <http://www.silas.unsw.edu.au/>.

Three different courses on preservation as well as the training related to storage conditions took place at the Centre in Venezuela.

2- Publications, translations and dissemination

In Moscow a number of important documents were translated into Russian this year:

• video films on conservation
• articles
• Guidelines for Newspaper Preservation Microfilming
• Disaster Planning, Preparedness and Recovery for Libraries and Archives
• Guidelines on Best Practices in Basic Collection Management for Non-professionals
• Resolution on Permanent Paper
• A directory: Who is Who in Russian Preservation? was created and mounted on the Internet.

The Regional Centre in Canberra was also active in the area of publications:

• a paper by Lydia Preiss Learning from disasters
• a paper by Margaret Phillips on digital library and Preservation of Internet Publications
• Maggie Jones' and Colin Webb's Electronic Publications and the Survival of Information
• a paper National Preservation Programmes: Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on by Jan Lyall as well as other articles on electronic information and its preservation were published.

The National Library of Australia issued a statement of principles for the preservation of and the long-term access to Australian digital objects.

During the past year the Centre of Caracas was actively involved in various translation and publication projects:

• a manual Preservation of Library and Archival Materials
• Paper Conservation Catalogue
• From Microfilm to Digital Imagery and others.

As always the Centre contributed to IPN by translating articles into Spanish.

3- Coordination and cooperation

One aspect of the cooperation between the Regional Centres is the exchange between colleagues. Thus the Centre in Tokyo encouraged such exchange of experiences by organizing numerous visits to its Centre.

Thanks to the Washington Centre, Library conservator Alan Haley examined and evaluated 11 000 rare books of the University of El Salvador Library. As a result of his visit, he provided technical advice and prepared a phased preservation plan for stabilizing the collection.

The Centre in Canberra has been participating in the Digitisation Project (known as " Ferguson Project ") consisting of the digitization of texts and images of 70 rare and fragile publications dating from 1840 to 1845.

In Russia, the Centre undertook the negotiations with the Federal Archives, the Russian Library of the Academy of Science, the Research Institute on Paper and the Institute of Open Society on the possibility of producing acid-free boxes. The implementation of a cooperative preservation microfilming project with the Library of Congress and Russian libraries is underway.

4- Research

The National Library of Venezuela has been working on the standards for the production of the permanent paper. The ISO standard for permanent paper was translated and proposed as a national one.

At the Moscow Centre the EROMM database has been seriously studied with a view to create a Russian database of microfilm masters. In May a National Preservation programme was adopted.

Besides its involvement in " Standards Australia Committees on Permanent Paper and Preservation Microfilming ", the Centre in Canberra elaborated the PANDORA (Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia) project. It consists in building up a digital archive dedicated to the preservation of and the long-term access to on-line publications. Another achievement of the Australian Centre is the creation of the CDNLAO Website, which comprises the information on member libraries, the internal structure and important meetings; it also enables the user to have a single access point for information retrieval about Asia-Pacific National Libraries.

We should not overlook the research work that has been done in the Tokyo Centre. The 13th pH testing of current Japanese official publications was conducted in September. 647 samples of the works published in 1997 were picked up randomly. Acid-free paper was found to be used in 59.6% of the monographs and 57.1% of the periodicals, which is higher than the previous year.

5- Fund raising

The lack of finances remains a major worry. That is why fund raising is a crucial point for all the centers.

This year, the National Library of Australia, in cooperation with Commonwealth, offered Community Heritage Grants on a yearly basis to assist the institutions to preserve documentary heritage collections. Out of 200 Australian organizations which submitted funding applications, 21 were awarded grants. The Moscow Center contributed to writing 6 grant proposals on preservation and received a grant from CLIR to translate, publish and disseminate the IFLA Principles.

15 March, 1999

List of annexes

1. Meeting of PAC Directors, Amsterdam, August 16
2. JICPA Meeting, Tunis, May 25-27
3. Expert Meeting of Educators, Nairobi, March 23-25
4. Meeting on the Situation of Cultural Heritage in Afghanistan, Paris, September 30
5. Radenci Seminar for Personnel Intervening in the Event of Armed Conflict
6. 1998 PAC Financial Annex