Present: B. Bell, College of Wooster, USA; F. Bourdon, Bibliothéque nationale de France; R. Bourne, British Library, United Kingdom, J. Byrum, Library of Congress, USA; J. Goncalves, Biblioteca nacional de Lisboa, Portugal; M. Hocevar, Narodna in univerzitetna knjiznica v Ljublani, Slovenia; A.M.H. Langballe, Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo, Norway; G. Larsson, Kungl. biblioteket, Sweden; E. Murtornaa, Helsingin yliopiston kirjasto, Finland; W. Stephan, Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Germany; B. Stoklasová, National Library of the Czech Republik; Kirsten Waneck, Dansk BiblioteksCenter, Denmark.

Absent: M. Beaudiquez, Bibliothéque nationale de France, R. Holley, Wayne State University, USA; M. Rajabi, National Library of Iran; V. Vasilieva, Russian State Library. Observer at the meeting: Julianne Beall, Library of Congress,, USA.

1. Welcome

Ross Bourne, Chair of the Standing Committee (SC), welcomed the members. He and R. Holley would be retiring from the Standing Committee after the Copenhagen meeting. Following the resignation of the secretary, Isabelle Boudet, earlier in the year, Ms Langballe had agreed to prepare the minutes for the two meetings.

2. Adoption of the agenda

The agenda was adopted with one addition: Short reports of projects outside IFLA.

3. Minutes of previous meeting and matters arising

The minutes ofthe Beijing meeting were adopted with one correction: At the second meeting (Aug. 30, 1996) M. Hocevar was among the present members, not the observers. The study on bibliographic statistics, mentioned in item 3, would not be not carried out, as it appeared that it would be too extensive.

4. Financial report

The balance of the administrative fund is good - more than 3000 French francs. Money is not received or spent, as the British Library has supported administrative expenses. Projects are not financed by the administrative fund but by special grants.

5. Report from the Co-ordinating Board

The evaluation form of the conference is this year being handed to all participants, not only the Standing Committees. The forms will be evaluated by the Danish Library School. There will be a prize-draw for free registrations for the IFLA 1998 in Amsterdam among those who complete the form.

Other Sections (though not our Section) have had problems getting translations of the conference papers. Different translation software will be evaluated in the hope of obtaining rough translations, which may just need editing. Several SC members had tried translation software and found it unsuccessful in connection with library terminology.

The role of Round Tables and Discussion Groups has been questioned. The Division is recommending to the incoming Professional Board that Round Tables be phased out, being changed either to Sections or Discussion Groups. These should be established for two years with the possibility to continue another two years.

The role of Information Officer was discussed. This role might be taken over by the Chair or the Secretary - but it was decided to make this a function of a third officer. (Kirsten Waneck had agreed in Beijing to undertake this function for the Section.)

6. Copenhagen programmes

Referring to the programme, R. Bourne mentioned the Open Forum where he would present his survey of the relationships between the book trade and national bibliographic agencies. At the Section's programme meeting, there would be papers by B. Bell. H. Snyder and K. Waneck., but R. Holley's survey on the distribution of national bibliographies would be summarized.

There are three workshops of special interest to the SC members: on the future of communication formats, on EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) in libraries, and on authority control. R. Bourne is involved in the EDI workshop and F. Bourdon in authority control.

7. Medium Term Programme

The MTP for 1998-2001 has been circulated several times and commented upon by the members. The Co-ordinating Board has reviewed the programmes of the three Sections and wants to add paragraphs on dissemination of information about the Section and on recruiting new members, especially to get a broader geographic representation. Such paragraphs are included in the programmes of the two other Sections. As these are normal goals for all sections, there was a certain opposition in our SC to include them. R. Bourne will leave the inclusion or exclusion to the Chair of the Division. The MTP must also be translated into other languages.

8. Election of officers for the period 1997/1999

The officers are elected for two years; re-election is possible. Both (chair and secretary) belong to the Co-ordinating Board which has six members, two from each Section, and in addition the Programme Officer for the UBCIM Core Programme. Two committee members offered to function as officers: W. Stephan as Chair and F. Bourdon as Secretary. Both were elected by acclamation. F. Bourdon will be Financial Officer as well. F. Bourdon will propose R. Bourne as an honorary member, but he pointed out that his forthcoming retirement would preclude him from attending future IFLA conferences.

Any other business

G. Larsson informed members about the CoBRA-METRIC project. A database is available on a server of the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt, consisting of data from the national bibliographic databases of Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. On the same server is the documentation of the layout of the files and the loading program to a MS-Access database. The software is available to everybody. More information can be obtained from Claudia Werner or Ute Schwens of the Deutsche Bibliothek.

K. Waneck told that a project on the registration of Internet documents at a national bibliographic level had been carried out by Dansk BiblioteksCenter. A report on the project, called "Indoreg", has been published (1997).

R. Bourne said that he acted as secretary of CoBRA projects and co-ordinated the different projects, establishing links between them.

Finally, K. Waneck presented a farewell gift to Ross Bourne from the SC members, thanking him for all his efforts for the Section on Bibliography.

Friday, September 5,
10.00-11.20

Present: as on Saturday Aug. 30. Observers at the meeting: Marcelle Beaudiquez. Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Axel Ermert.

9. Review of conference

In general, the committee members found the conference very busy, the exhibition of high quality, but Denmark an expensive country.

The audience of the Bibliography session numbered about 40 persons. There had been many comments that it was very interesting. Snyder's and Holley's papers will be circulated and probably later be found on the Internet.

The workshops were also evaluated as very good.

It is unfortunate that the rooms had to be emptied immediately. That made it difficult to talk with other participants. The SCs of Cataloguing, Classification and Indexing and Bibliography have common problems and we needed to have the chance to meet. The suggestion was made that the stands of the national libraries invite the committees to meet at a certain time at their stand.

It was also unfortunate that related committees had meetings at the same time. A new principle had been introduced in paper handling: if a paper is on Internet, it will not be handled at the conference. It is a problem for IFLA when the deadline for conference papers is not respected, not only for HQ and the local organising committee but also for participants requiring translations. Simultaneous interpretations were not always good. IFLA has tried using professional interpretors, but has returned to volunteers.

10. Projects

10.1 International Conference on National Bibliographic Services

There will be five papers ready before the conference, on such topics as coverage and means of distribution. A plenary session will give conclusions and recommendations. The conference is planned to be hosted by the Danish Royal Library in its new building. If the building is not finished in time, another place in Copenhagen will be found.

It was suggested that the Conference should establish a homepage on Internet with links to the papers prepared in advance.

10.2 Survey of changing trends in national bibliographies

10.3 Future projects

The Section of Cataloguing has asked for co-operation in a project on OPAC displays. F. Bourdon volunteered to participate.

Guidelines for the co-operation between the book trade and national bibliographic agencies are proposed in R. Bourne's study. If this is folowed up, R. Bourne said that he preferrred if somebody else undertook it.

Retrospective conversion of catalogue entries is of great interest to several institutions. This is connected to the authority data work. Information on retrospective conversion projects is included in B. Bell's Guide if the source has volunteered it. A project concerning conversion might be seen together with the analysis mentioned in item 10.2. It might be possible to find a library school student to do such an analysis before the 1998 Conference. F. Bourdon will try to find a student. She and B. Bell will keep in touch on this subject.

11. Amsterdam programme

During the Beijing conference in 1996 three subjects were proposed:

The Dutch model of legal deposit and connections with the Bibliothèque Royale
Regional co-operation in national bibliographies (Denmark and Sweden)
An example of a national bibliographic service in a developing country. Normally, three papers, each of ten pages (totally 30 pages), are accepted.

It was decided to retain no 1, as the Netherlands is the hosting country. No 2 will be a paper on important trends in national bibliographic work at the international level, based on an analysis of B Bell's and R Holley's work by a library school student. F Bourdon will keep in touch with B Bell to organise this project. A new third subject was proposed: statistics and national bibliographies. The CoBRA-METRIC project includes material of interest. W. Stephan and G. Larsson will co-operate on this subject.

A fourth (short) paper was decided, a presentation by Maria Witt of a bibliography of bibliographies on library and information science, 1945- , compiled by herself and her father and due to be published by K G Saur.

As a workshop W. Stephan proposed "Electronic publications in national bibliographies". It is necessary to keep in touch with the Section of National Libraries which plans a workshop on legal deposit of electronic publications. Our SC members and representatives from other national bibliographies might report on the situation in their countries. J. Byrum will investigate which national bibliographies include electronic publications. A. Langballe will do a study on the electronic journals which are included in the Norwegian national bibliography since 1995 and check which of them are still found on Internet.

12. Bangkok programme

Three subjects were proposed:

The national bibliography of the hosting country
The national bibliography of Australia
How to complete universal bibliographic control (according to B. Bell's Guide, 55 countries have no national bibliography).

13. Any other business

As Australia is very active in the field of bibliographic control of electronic publications, it would be profitable to include an Australian member in the SC. The next possibility is 1999.

It was agreed that one of the corresponding members, B. Kellerman. South Africa, should be replaced by Elmare Broodryk from the same institution.

Finally, W. Stephan expressed the Committee members' gratitude for everything Ross Boume had done in the Section and Division.

A.M.H. Langballe

Oslo, Sept. 9th, 1997

Latest Revision: June 22, 1999

Section on Bibliography

Standing Committee meetingsIFLA'97 Copenhagen, August 31 - September 5, 1997

Saturday, August 30, 9.00-11.00