Audiovisual and Multimedia Section

Meetings in Boston, 2001

As usual, the Standing Committee met twice during the IFLA Conference:
Saturday, 18 August 11h30 - 14h20 and Friday, 24 August 8h00-10h15 .

Joelle Garcia (chair), Monika Cremer (secretary and information coordinator), Pierre-Yves Duchemin, Jonny Edvardsen, Nieves Iglesias, Bruce Royan, May Yu, Samira Sambaino (Uruguay), Shamin Renwick (West Indies), Ornella Foglieni (Italy), Moh Sharif B. Mohd-Saad

1. Welcome

The chair Joelle Garcia welcomes the present members.

2. Approval of the minutes of Bangkok meetings

The minutes of the Jerusalem meetings have been approved.

3. Financial report

The section had only small expenses during the last year.

4. Officers elections

Joelle Garcia (chair) and Monika Cremer (secretary and information coordinator) offer to continue within their functions for the next period and the participants elect them. Unfortunately there were not enough members of the Standing Committee present in this meeting, so that the quorum was not reached. Now a postal ballot will be necessary to know if there are other candidats and further to do the election by postal ballott.

5. Reports from the PB and Division Meetings

IFLA is in process of improving the annual conference and asks for feedback from the Divisions/Sections about the proposals (draft has Joelle), e.g. shorter conferences (4 days), only one business meeting, more interactive workshops, more satellite meetings etc.

For the next conference in Glasgow there will be 6 satellite meetings, which can be more subject focussed than the conference program.

It is planned for future conferences to have Internet connection in all rooms. The structure of the conference will also change. The program and organization will be done by IFLA Headquarters and Congrex, the rest will be within the responsibility of national associations. About these new rules of procedure the Professional Board will decide on Aug. 25^th.

In the future the Round Tables will become either a section or a discussion group.

Conference speakers from outside IFLA do not pay conference fee when they are accompanied from IFLA members by coming in and going out directly after their speech, Otherwise a daily registration must be made and has to be paid by the Section.

The Saturday program offered by local organizers should be free of charge in the future.

The National Library of Canada will not continue to host IFLANet after Dec. 2001. A European host will be chosen.

Instead of the Medium Term Programme a Strategic Plan based on a 2-year-cycle will be established from now on, divided into Missions, Priorities and an action plan going from 2002-2003, mentioning specific actions to be accomplished.

Mission: a succint statement of the scope and purpose of the activity.

Priorities: a list of strategic goals for the target period. Each priority should be linked to the Professional Priorities of IFLA.

Action Plan: a list of the specific actions which will take place during the target period. The action plan will be reviewed each year.

6. Boston conference 2001

All speakers should check their presentation before, they should introduce themselves. During the sessions mobile phones have to be switched off. All questions and remarks by the audience should be done via microphone. There is a possibility to print papers in a special room.

The open session of the section was attended by more than 200 people.

7. Glasgow conference 2002

The theme of the conference is "Building in the past – investing in the future". The proposal for an open session is "Digitization of audiovisual and multimedia materials for lifelong learning". Bruce Royan will organize the session.

Potential speakers are:
Shamus Ross (NINCH): Guidelines for the digitization of national heritage
Chris Batt (London): "The people’s network" project (craeting digital content for the public)
Jonny Edvardsen (Nat. Library of Norway): Mass digitization of AV materials.
Daddy Kendall (Australia): Picture Australia: seamless access to digital resources.

There will also be a workshop with discussion about the latest draft of the "Guidelines for audiovisual and multimedia materials in libraries".

There is need to clarify the definition of mutlimedia. A list of definitions concerning mutlimedia will be established for the workshop.

8. Berlin conference 2003 – plans

A possible subject could be how AVM are implemented in the curricula of library schools and in continuing education.

Monika Cremer will send a questionnaire to German library schools and institutions and in Scandinavian countries, Joelle Garcia will investigate this in France. It is hoped to get also informations from other European countries and perhaps America.

The questionnaire could be published on the RTAVM-List and on other lists to get a large feed back.

During the conference a visit of the library of the Filmmuseum – Deutsche Kinemathek could be organized.

9. Projects

The actual project of the Section is to establish a further draft of the Guidelines including the comments and additions coming in from the audience of the Open Session and from the respective other Sections concerned by these materials.

The revised draft will also be published on the listserv of the Section for comment.

10. Medium Term Programm

The MTP will now become the Strategic Plan for the section (see attachment).

11. Other business

In order to make the listserv more lively the chair and secretary plan to inform about projects going on and to ask the list members more directly about special items, projects, problems etc.

Generally all participants of the meeting found Boston a good conference, although it was often difficult to make choices.