ADMINISTRATIVE MEETING OF THE ICA/SAE STEERING COMMITTEE

Present: Theo Thomassen (President), David Gracy (Vice-President), Marie-Francoise Limon (Treasurer), Irena Mamczak-Gadkowska (local arrangements organiser), Torbjörn Kjölstad, Silvia Schenkolowski-Kroll, Feng Huiling, Ann Pederson, Margaret Crockett (Secretary)

Apologies: Masahito Ando, Angelika Menne-Haritz, Paola Carucci

Theo Thomassen began by stating that this was the second meeting of the current Steering Committee, but in some ways it was more the first, because only half of the Committee had been able to be present in Beijing. He said that already in the short time since meeting in Warsaw the previous day it was clear the Committee was a good team and it would accomplish its tasks.

Theo Thomassen expressed the Committee's gratitude to the Polish hosts, particularly to Irena Mamzak-Gadkowska. Poland has a long tradition of archival science and education and it was very important to have someone from the Region on the Steering Committee.

The revised agenda was agreed.

The minutes from the September 1996 meeting in Beijing were approved.

Theo Thomassen said that it had been difficult to get the work of the Committee started and to establish good communication. This was partly due to the fact that the composition had changed so completely, with only David Gracy, Masahito Ando, and Theo Thomassen remaining for another term. It had been hard to establish good communication. Moreover there had been confusion with the ICA Secretariat over the number of full Committee members, and over being a member of two ICA committees simultaneously. He apologised to Silvia Schenkolowski-Kroll for this, explaining that her membership of two ICA committees had yet to be clarified by the Secretariat. Theo Thomassen expressed the Committee's pleasure that she was part of the Committee.

It was noted that at the meeting of the Bureau in Budapest in December 1996 (Theo Thomassen, Marie-Francoise Limon and Margaret Crockett were present) the papers and duties of treasurer and secretary, previously held by one person, were split between Marie-Francoise Limon as treasurer and Margaret Crockett as secretary.

It was agreed that organisational and communication tasks should be linked together and the projects should be more independent and separate.

Margaret Crockett said that she had had difficulty making time to focus on the Directory, as well as her other responsibilities as Secretary and that she felt it was most important that she carry out the administration of the Committee effectively and be a good communication channel.

Marie-Francoise Limon agreed to take on the Directory project in an abbreviated form.

David Gracy said that it was important to distinguish the aim of the Committee to support archival educators from the broader furthering of archival education.

Margaret Crockett reported that the Section's membership stood at 104 - 56 Category C members and 48 Category D members. It was agreed to try to increase membership. This would be facilitated by the improved communications infrastructure and certain of the projects.

Marie-Francoise Limon presented her written report to the meeting. She explained that the Section's funds were low because the subscription quotas for 1996 and 1997 had not been transferred by the ICA Treasurer. She had prepared a letter for Theo Thomassen to sign requesting the transfer of these funds.

It seems that the treasury is only giving money for project-related work upon request. It was agreed that the Steering Committee would prepare a budget to support its request for funding. Marie-Francoise Limon is to draft it and put it to the Committee for comment.

David Gracy reported on the web site, which currently includes the Beijing papers, minutes, the Salamanca details, the Bibliography. He made the following suggestions for additional items on the website:

• questionnaires
• a notice board with questions and answers
• more interactive items
• brief papers on archival education in countries
• quarterly reports on Section's projects and activities
• planned meetings of the Section
• information on activities of schools and changes in curricula
• details of special meetings
• reports on publications that we use

The Committee's discussion included the thought that it was easier to contribute news items to the listserve, but it was agreed that there had to be participation to make the listserve work; there was interest in the number of visitors to the website; it was suggested that the virtual noticeboard should be moderated.

It was agreed that the Section's leaflet and website should be tandem operations. It was suggested that it would be possible to send periodic "snapshots" of the website to the Section's members.

Marie-Francoise Limon proposed advertising the teaching tools on the website. Margaret Crockett agreed to contact the ICA Treasurer to find out about availability of both printed and electronic copies of the Proceedings of the Ljubljana Symposium, with a view to making it available on the website. Theo Thomassen proposed that the Austin Symposium proceedings also be made available on the website.

David Gracy felt that it might be more effective use of the Section's limited resources to make the Directory, whatever its future configuration, available through the website in some way so that there was no need for a formal publication.

Luis Hernández Olivera was not present at the meeting and had not responded to any communication from the Committee members since before the Beijing meeting, therefore no report on the progress of arrangements for the Salamanca Symposium was presented. It was agreed that Marie-Francoise Limon, as a French speaker, should phone him and see if the city of Salamanca was still willing to host the ICA/SAE symposium. Marie-Francoise Limon would report back to Theo Thomassen and Margaret Crockett in the first instance. A decision would be taken at the end of September.

Torbjörn Kjölstad said in the event that Salamanca did not work out, he might be able to offer an alternative venue. 1998 would be the 10th anniversary of the Mid-Sweden University. A meeting could be combined with some seminar on research and education which might attract other archival educators in Europe and beyond.

The proposed dates for Salamanca are 28-31 October 1998 and Theo Thomassen asked Torbjörn Kjölstad to look into this possibility.

Luis Hernández Olivera did not report to the Committee.

Marie-Francoise Limon said she would begin by compiling a mailing list which would include institutions teaching archival science, members of the Section, the existing list of those researching archival science, national archives that offer in-house training and professional associations. She said that she could discharge Margaret Crockett of the information gathering process, but that obviously the Secretary has a major role with regard to mailing lists.

Once the basic mailing list had been compiled, reasons to and methods for developing a more detailed database could be explored by the Committee.

It was agreed that the mailing list would first be available via the website. It could be decided later if a hard copy publication was necessary. There would be less information than previously.

Marie-Francoise Limon expects to gather the basic information very quickly and that it will provide a very important tool. She proposed to have completed the first step - the address list - by January.

It was agreed that the Section's leaflet should be up-dated. David Gracy proposed that the changing details in the leaflet, such as Committee members, addresses etc, should be included in a separate insert.

Irena Mamczak-Gadkowska gave some details of the meeting of Polish archivists. There were 500 archivists in all, including heads and teachers of archival education programs. There were also a few foreign guests, from Lithuania, Belorus, Slovakia, Austria.

Theo Thomassen said he believed the Polish archivists might play a strong role in re-establishing the network of archival educators in the Region.

Irena Mamczak-Gadkowska reported that she had sent a letter to schools in the region and received a disappointing response with only the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia and Lithuania replying. She also reported that all Polish universities are now on the internet and have email and that would improve communications.

It was decided that Irena Mamczak-Gadkowska and Margaret Crockett would work together on the questionnaire intended as a tool to support a network of archival educators in each country.

Ann Pederson reported on her project building up a database of current trends in research in the field of archives. She will report in 2000 at the meeting in Sevilla identifying both trends and gaps in research trends. There was some discussion as to what was the appropriate - and manageable - remit of this project. Theo Thomassen argued that the scope of the project should be limited to teachers who know about connections between education and research. Ann Pederson explained that she was interested in research relating to the teaching of the discipline of recordkeeping, not research on archives and interpreting collections. The purpose was to understand and support research on recordkeeping. She argued that if archivists and archival educators want to be taken seriously they need to document their own discipline and to examine what is recognised as research in archives because the literature at present is based too little on research. It was important to encourage a thoughtful research program.

Concern was expressed about the anglophone bias in current thinking within the discipline and Ann Pederson welcomed contributions from non-anglophone traditions.

Ann Pederson responded to concern about the impression the phrase "research agenda for the world" gives. She explained it arose form the Australian archives research agenda which had been a successful strategy for attracting funding in the field. She suggested that it was a wish list, not a policy to be imposed on the international community.

Torbjörn Kjölstad proposed that the Committee endorse the idea of more research in educating records managers and archivists, and in recordkeeping. The agenda should be for individual areas, not the whole world. Reports of previous research should be encouraged.

Feng Huiling presented her report on the Asian section of the Bibliography. It was agreed that:

• the geographical range should be expanded to include Asia and Masahito Ando and Feng Huiling had already begun work
• there should be a separate sub-committee for bibliography from Asia, but not a separate volume, and it would be decided later how it should be formatted
• the 1996 guiding principle for collecting entries would be used: titles of books and articles actually in use in archival education would be included
• the classification scheme used in 1996 would continue to be used
• the people collecting were to classify entries themselves
• Masahito Ando and Feng Huiling will write the detailed note describing the classification scheme
• the audience for the Bibliography is teachers and selection criteria will not be broadened
• the bibliography would be published electronically and on paper, the Committee bureau would take care of the logistics
• the range of languages used in the Bibliography depended upon the language of the titles included - except the Asian languages which would be translated into English
• the Committee members (Drs Thomassen, Mamczak-Gadkowska, Schenkolowski-Kroll, Feng and Ando) would discuss further details

Marie-Francoise Limon reported on the remaining stocks of teaching aids and presented a budget to publish a new edition of the buildings kit. She also proposed a project to develop a third theme. It was agreed that she would consult with Paola Carucci.

Theo Thomassen asked the Committee to consider the invitaion of Silvia Schenkolowski-Kroll to meet in Jerusalem in 1999.

MEETING OF THE BUREAU OF THE ICA/SAE STEERING COMMITTEE

Present: Theo Thomassen (President), David Gracy (Vice-President), Marie-Francoise Limon (Treasurer), Margaret Crockett (Secretary).

IRMT: UNOPS PROJECT AND CASE STUDIES PROJECT

Theo Thomassen and Margaret Crockett discussed her recent trip to London to attend a meeting organised by the International Records Management Trust regarding the March 1997 UNOPS agreement with the ICA Secretariat. The agreement contracted the IRMT to provide training modules, procedure manuals, case studies etc to "enhance the capacity of staff of universities and other training institutions and national archival organisations, which have statutory responsibility for the management of public records thereby empowering same staff to teach and support records staff ......". Margaret Crockett had subsequently corresponded with the IRMT exploring ways in which the ICA/SAE might collaborate on the project. It was agreed that Margaret Crockett should draft a letter to the IRMT inviting the IRMT to suggest concrete ways in which the Committee might contribute to this established project.

Margaret Crockett reported that the International Records Management Trust had agreed to allow the Section, under certain conditions, to use the draft manual on preparing case studies. It was decided that, since the Committee already had plenty of projects, the project to build up a bank of case studies should be postponed. The draft manual should be endorsed in principle by the Committee and the project should be supported as valid and necessary (especially as it had aroused great interest at the recent meeting with Polish archival education colleagues). The Committee should encourage completion of publication of the manual and invite the IRMT to use medium of the ICA/SAE website for making it available. If the IRMT should be mounting it on its own website, the Committee would like to know in order to notify the Section. The Committee also welcomed news of the development of new case studies, also with a view to advertising them to the Section. Margaret Crockett was to draft a letter to the IRMT to convey these sentiments.

Based on consultation with the rest of the Steering Committee, it was decided that the invitaion from the Israeli member, Silvia Schenkolowski-Kroll, to host the 1999 meeting should be accepted on condition that the usual ICA rules regarding provision of accommodation should apply. There will be a formal exchange of letters to confirm this, Margaret Crockett would contact Silvia Schenkolowski-Kroll to request a formal letter to Theo Thomassen.

Project number 2 has been concentrated on curricula development and curricula evaluation. Torbjörn Kjölstad will be concentrating on archival education and the European Community - a project that is focussed on curricula evaluation within the European Union and fostering cooperation with schools regarding evaluation from the perspective of its usefulness to countries in the Community. David Gracy will be responsible for curricula0 development with a view to identifying common concepts in curricula of schools around the world (so that concepts can be tailored to national and individual needs). Torbjörn Kjölstad will report to organisations requesting evaluation: David Gracy is to report to the Sevilla meeting.

It was noted that the bureau (consisting of the President Theo Thomassen, the Vice-President David Gracy, the Treasurer Marie-Francoise Limon and the Secretary Margaret Crockett) have begun to work closely together to ensure that the administration of the Section's Medium Term Plan is achieved swiftly and effectively.