Annual Conference

Albrecht Haefner, IASA Secretary-General, writes: "the Muscat conference is approaching - may I encourage all of you to book your participation now, as our Omani hosts are waiting to make the hotel reservations. Those who have not received registration forms or have encountered difficulties with the registration date of 1st July, please contact me (e-mail: haefner@swf.de, fax: +49 7221 92 2094). Perhaps your superiors are presupposing that you intend to take a week's holiday week in a 1001 nights country: Oman is certainly oriental but our programme is as comprehensive as ever and - what is most important - the costs are very moderate!

There is a change to the provisional programme: the session of the Technical Committee on Sunday 5 October, 16:15-17:45, will, for the sake of better programme balance, be replaced by a session dealing with archiving and preservation of AV culture all around the world. There will be contributions from three continents - three ways, one goal.

Europe: The MEMORIAV Initiative - co-operation between producers and archiving institutions in Switzerland. Speaker: Kurt Deggeller, Fonoteca Nazionale Svizzera, Lugano.

U.S.A.: The Non-Profit Commission on Preservation and Access and its Task Force on archiving of digital information. Speaker: Hans Ruetimann, CPA, New York.

Australia: The national way - different media under roof at the National Film and Sound Archives in Canberra. Speaker: Ray Edmondson, NFSA, Canberra.

If you have any doubts about the proposed way to obtain your visa you are, of course, free to make your own arrangements at the appropriate embassy, but at your own expense. However, if you are choosing the arrangement offered, then you will not be charged for your visa. Our IASA member Issam El-Mallah who is the head of the Organising Committee will collect the forms, take them to Oman in early September and hand them over personally to the Immigration Department. From there, each applicant will receive a fax copy of his/her visa in time which will be accepted at the point of embarkation. The original visa will be handed over to you at Muscat Airport, where somebody from the Organising Committee will be waiting to meet conference delegates and to assist them through Customs.

Finally, a request to all speakers: please let me have an abstract (in English) of about 10-15 lines of your paper not later than end of August. It will be translated into Arabic and will be published, as is customary at the most international conferences, before the sessions for the audience's benefit.

Make your booking - I will be glad to welcome you in Muscat and am looking forward to meeting you at a most interesting conference".

And if you are still trying to make up your mind, here is some additional encouragement from Dietrich Sch¨¹ller who knows the area well and has been involved in the organisation of the social programme for the conference: "Oriental hospitality is obviously one of the features of this conference. The conference fee includes a variety of attractive social gatherings, including a trip to Sohar, the city of Sinbad the Sailor. Furthermore, the farewell dinner, which will be hosted by the Minister of Information, takes place in the Al-Bustan Hotel, one of the most remarkable places on the Arabian peninsula. An attractive post-conference tour has been arranged which gives participants the unique possibility to visit a part of the Orient which is not yet spoiled by tourism, which has preserved much of its traditional cultural attractions and offers, likewise, the rare possibility to travel comfortably through most attractive natural surroundings including the desert as well as lovely garden cultures which are unique to this part of the world".

Stockhausen joins IASA...

IASA is proud to welcome the composer and musical theorist Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Stockhausen as a full individual member of the Association. There is no point in attempting to summarise his importance and achievements here: these can be read about in music reference books or you can visit the official Stockhausen home page at http://www.jimstonebraker.com/stockhausen.html or any of the hundreds of other sites associated with his music.

The purpose of Prof. Dr. Stockhausen's involvement with IASA is to collect and archive all of his works in audiovisual form. The address is Kettenberg 15, D - 51515 K¨¹rten, Germany.

... and membership rolls on

Enrolment in IASA has continued to rise during the last quarter. In addition to Stockhausen, we welcome as full institutional members:

- Centro de Pesquisa e Documenta??o de Historia Contemporanea do Brasil, Funda??o Getulio Vargas

Praia de Botafogo, 190, 22257.-900 Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Director: Lucia Lippi Oliveira

The collection is concerned with research and documentation of contemporary Brazilian history.

- Audiofile Inc.,

Klaus Heinz, Bayerische Srasse 8, D - 10707 Berlin, Germany

Company involved with the digitization of sound documents

and as full individual members

- Carsten Schmidt

Schaetzlerstrasse 32, D - 86152 Augsburg, Germany

private collector

- Norbert Nitsche

Mayerweckstrasse 2, A - 1210 Vienna, Austria

- Kevin Irelan

SYDA Foundation, South Fallsburg, New York, USA

and as associate indivual member

- Alexander Sieghardt

Sponnergassse 1, A - 3500 Krems, Austria

UNESCO reports

Kurt Deggeller (Fonoteca Nazionale Svizzera) reports on the 11th session of the UNESCO Inter-Governmental Council for the General Information Programme (PGI) held in Paris 2nd-3rd December, 1996 and the First International Congress on Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects of Digital Information, INFO-Ethics, in Monaco 10th-12th March 1997.

PGI, Paris

The main topics of this meeting were the election of a new Council and a renewed mandate for the PGI which produced a lengthy discussion.

Prof Mohsen Tawfik was unanimously elected Chairperson of the Council. Mr Phenny Birungi (Uganda), Ms Nathalie Dusoulier (France), Ms Tamiko Matsumura (Japan) were elected Vice-Chairpersons, Mr Dietrich Sch¨¹ller (Austria) rapporteur and as members: Mr H¨¦lio Kuramoto

(Brazil), Mr Christoph Graf (Switzerland) and Mr Adam Wysocki (Poland).

Three speakers were invited to prepare papers on important items in relationship to the work of PGI: Riccardo Petrella: The global societal impact of the new information and communication technologies; Joachim Tankoano: Internet: a tool for development and Pamela Samuelson: Information privacy and intellectual property in the information society.

For the debate on a renewed mandate of the PGI, Philippe Qu¨¦au, the appointed Director of the newly created Division of Information and Informatics, presented an information paper concerning the following activities: Memory of the World, Public Domain On-line, Virtual Laboratories, Virtual Learning Communities, Governance in the Information Age, Training of Information Specialists, Libraries and Archives as Gateways to the Information Highways.

In the discussion the main emphasis was put on a more realistic and adequate balance between traditional and new fields of information. Modern information techniques are invaluable tools for access to and dissemination of information; they are, however, not an end in themselves. It was stressed that cyberspace, despite its enormous potential and revolutionary access and search possibilities, will never replace the world of conventional documents.

In particular, the debate brought out the fact that libraries and archives continue to be the pillars of PGI. This needs to be emphasized in the new programme. It was observed that the role of libraries and archives in bridging traditional and new information technologies cannot be overestimated.

Dietrich Sch¨¹ller as an Austrian delegate presented the IASA-resolution on Magnetic tape [see IASA Information Bulletin no.19]. The initiative received the support of the Council.

Finally the Inter-Governmental Council adopted a series of recommendations which mentions under point 4d that the co-operation with inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations (e.g. IASA) should be intensified in the development and execution of the expanded mandate.

INFO-Ethics, Monaco

Nearly 300 participants attended this Congress organised by UNESCO with the Principaut¨¦ de Monaco. The programme contained three main topics: accessing digital information; preserving digital information and records; preparing our societies for the multimedia environment.

With this Congress UNESCO aimed to create a forum to reaffirm the importance of universal access to information in the "Global Information Infrastructure" and to define ways in which it may be achieved and maintained in the coming Information Society. In particular it should identify the major ethical issues (concerning production, access, dissemination, preservation and use of digitized multimedia information on the global information highways), identify the essential principles to be considered by countries when formulating their policies on these issues and make proposals for a strategy for international co-operation.

It became clear that the main concerns are not the same for the northern and the southern hemispheres of the globe. Northern experts expressed their concerns about security, identification, confidentiality, etc., of information, whilst the southern countries need first and foremost very heavy investment to access the information at all. According to statistics of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) the density of telephones per 100 inhabitants is 0.5 for African countries south of the Sahara and 4.2 in the north-African area. In western Europe there are 44.1 telephones per 100 inhabitants.

UNESCO Director General, Federico Mayor, proposed the foundation of a world commission on info-ethics similar to the world commission on bio-ethics.

Two men went to MoW

Dietrich Sch¨¹ller (Phonogrammarchiv, Vienna) reports: "The Sub-Committee on Technology for the Memory of the World Programme (MoW) of UNESCO met in London, May 15 to 17. This Committee (Chairman: Dietrich Sch¨¹ller, Rapporteur: George Boston) was set up in 1994 to advise the Secretariat of UNESCO on technical issues related to the Memory of the World Programme. This programme has been established as a tool to raise the awareness of governments, polititians, custodians, and the public at large, to the vulnerability of documents of all kinds which constitute the collective "Memory of the World". As well as the need to improve preservation, emphasis is laid on access to documents, especially in view of the opportunities of the information age.

The Sub-Committee on Technology, which reports to the International Advisory Committee of the MoW Programme, started its work by issuing recommendations on the digitisation of documents of all kinds including, of course, audiovisual data carriers.

The purpose of the recent meeting in London was to finalise a paper on the preservation of original documents. The paper specifies the main risks of damage and deterioration for the various groups of carriers and summarizes measures for their proper handling, storage and preservation. It embraces documents of all kinds, from palm leaves to electronic documents and includes a guide to available standards and literature.

The agenda of the meeting also included a revision of the formerly issued recommendations on digitisation as well as the discussion of a draft proposal for the harmonisation of access to electronic documents within the Memory of the World Programme.

The results of this meeting will be presented to the International Advisory Committee at its forthcoming Meeting in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), September 29 to October 1.

Betamax repair man

It is regularly pointed out in the technical strata of IASA that one of the gravest problems facing us in the future is the obsolescence of playback equipment. The more sophisticated the equipment becomes, the harder it is to maintain, especially when companies withdraw products from the market after a relatively short time, as happened with Sony and Betamax. Since many sound archives will have taken note of the original claims for the superior quality of the Betamax format, it is likely that a number of you are facing problems similar to the National Sound Archive in the U.K. which, having adopted Betamax widely during the 1980s now finds it difficult to locate spares and the means to service and repair equipment. We were therefore relieved to find that one video company in London is now able to offer us the required back-up, which includes repairs to Sony digital processors. The address is: LRC Video Ltd., 3/5 Whitfield Street, London W1P 5RA, Tel. + 44 171 323 2107 (spares/accounts) + 44 171 323 2102 (service/sales) Fax : + 44 171 323 2191

Sites and sounds

Many of you have been kind enough to send in your latest sound-related discoveries on the Internet. At some stage I imagine that someone (not me, I suspect) will suggest a publication to include all web sites of interest to IASA. Meanwhile the Information Bulletin can usefully act as an expanding pool of such sites.

Numerous sites have emerged which deal with the early years of sound recording. In Information Bulletin 21 I included the url of the Edison National Historic Site http://www.nps.gov/edis/ed500000.htm which contains a wealth of photographic images of early phonography and Edisonia. This is now complemented by Edison papers online at http://www.edison.rutgers.edu. Described as "work in progress" it contains editorial material from the microfilm and book editions, including some images and maps, a chronology of Edison's life, lists of Edison's patents, and an annotated list of the companies he founded or with which he was associated. It also contains a searchable version of the Rutgers database of 80,000 documents and 14,000 names covering Edison's life up to 1898 (with a scattering of later documents).

An index to issues of Antique Phonograph News from 1992 is available at http://www.rose.com/~caps/apnindex.htm. The focus is on the featured articles, commentaries, reports, etc, and related letters to the Editor. There are also links within the site to feature cover articles which give brief summaries of the content and an illustration.

Moving on just a few years, the Wolverine Antique Music Society, mostly tuned in a deliberately confrontational manner to early jazz of the white Chicago variety, at http://192.108.254.18/~rfrederi/index.shtml contains a number of useful lists and pointers though these may be more relevant to record collectors than to sound archivists.

Helmut Weber's Gramophone Hobby Page covers similar ground but is more thorough and general in its outlook: http://wap03.informatik.fh-wiesbaden.de/weber1/grammo/links.htm. A very useful component of this site is the information for dating 78 rpm records:

http://wap03.informatik.fh-wiesbaden.de/weber1/grammo/numbers.htm.

For recording on tape, the Analog tape recorders site may be useful in technical training. It includes brief explanations, some illustrated, of the basics of analogue recording, generic tape and cassette decks, cleaning heads, tips on recording, mastering and editing. Find this information at http://arts.ucsc.edu/ems/music/equipment/analog_recorders/Analog_Recorders.html.

If you have time to spare, The Most Beautiful 78 Ever Made, (according to Tim Gracyk this is The story of Little Red Riding Hood on Emerson Picture Records A109) can be viewed at http://www.garlic.com/~tgracyk/beautiful.htm.

Please note: internet addresses are always tested by the Editor before appearing in the Bulletin but such is the nature of the Internet that often, like sound recordings, they get deleted or the numbers change without warning. You can help keep IASA information up-to-date by letting me know of any address changes you encounter when following up references included in this Bulletin.

UNESCO AV Reader

Joie Springer of UNESCO has written to say that Audiovisual Archives: A Practical Reader is now on-line at: http://www.unesco.org/webworld/audiovis/av_reader_web.htm#1.8.

The AV Reader was compiled and edited by Helen Harrison "with a view to meeting an acknowledged need for practical information to enable audiovisual archivists in all countries and in developing countries in particular, to function efficiently. The aim was to collate information already published to provide a handy reference tool for personnel working in an audiovisual archive".

The on-line edition has been selected to give an overview of the Reader and the list of papers. It features some of the articles containing basic information on archival practices, from selection through cataloguing to storage and preservation, management, legal and ethical issues, etc. Hard copies of the full document should be available shortly and will be obtainable from the Division of Information and Informatics (CII/INF) at UNESCO.

It is hoped to make electronic versions available in due course of some of UNESCO's other publications in the field of audiovisual archiving.

IASA and IFPI open Dialogue on Copyright and New Technology

The paper by IFPI's Director of Legal Affairs, Lewis Flacks, which was read at last year's annual conference in Perugia and which subsequently appeared in IASA Journal 8, ended with an invitation to IASA to form a joint working group to examine implications of new technology for the relationship between the recording industry and sound archives with regard to copyright.

An exploratory meeting was held in May and the main recommendation to emerge was that IASA consider representation at IFLA's International Conference On Rights And Exceptions to be held in Budapest, 30th-31st October this year. This option would enable the discussions to take place in the broader context of libraries and publishing and is now referred to the IASA Board.

There are, not surprisingly, a number of much higher-level initiatives in progress. In the United States, NINCH announced in April a document Basic principles for managing intellectual property in the digital environment. http://www-inch.cni.org/ISSUES/COPYRIGHT/PRINCIPLES/NHA_Complete.html

"In an effort to build consensus within the educational community on the uses of copyrighted works in the digital environment, the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) has prepared a document of basic principles it believes can be used as an effective guide for the community for at least the immediate future. The document was created by the NHA's Committee on Libraries and Intellectual Property".

In Europe an International Electronic Copyright Management Systems Conference ECMS: the way forward has been announced and will take place at the City Conference Centre, London, 13th-14th November 1997. The Conference is being organised by the COPEARMS (Coordinating Project for Electronic Authors' Rights Management Systems) Consortium and will examine different issues surrounding the adoption of ECMS Systems. These include notions of trust and privacy, user requirements, different methods of protection and ECMS adoption patterns. The concept of interoperability will be a theme throughout the conference. Discussions will examine why interoperability is desirable and try to determine the required level of interoperability and how this can be achieved without compromising security.

The provisional programme comprises: Keynote Speaker - Dominique Gonthier, DG XIII COPEARMS Project; Dominique Spaey, Bureau Van Dijk; ECMS Interoperability, the Political Approach - Chris Barlas, ALCS; ECMS Interoperability Requirements- Richard Carr; Level-7 Trust and the Trusted Third Party in ECMS -Charles Oppenheim, De Montfort University; ECMS Initiatives outside Europe - Daniel Gervaise, Prof. Kitagawa (Japan), Michael J. Perkins (Australia); ECMS Security - Gerard Eizenberg, CERT; Deploying CITED Technology - Jean-Francois Boisson; EURITIS Panel Discussion. Workshop topics include: user group requirements; the role of standards in ECMS technology; trusting the content; technical system for IPR management on the Web.

The two days, including lunch and refreshments, costs ?250 sterling for commercial organisations and ?125 sterling for academic institutions. For further details please contact Judy Watkins, IFLA Office, c/o The British Library, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West Yorkshire, LS23 7BQ UK. Fax +44 1937 546478, email judy.watkins@bl.uk

Bronzed CD alert!

Gerry Gibson at Library of Congress has been following up an Internet posting about the bronze discolouration affecting the playability of CD's issued on certain labels. Members of the IASA Technical Committee will no doubt be aware of this phenomenon but the information obtained by Gerry may be news to other members.

Gerry checked out the record company Hyperion's Website:

"Any compact discs on the Hyperion, ASV, Unicorn-Kanchana, or Pearl labels made in UK by Philips Dupont Optical UK (PDO) from 1988 to 1993 may already be unplayable. The symptoms appear as a bronze discolouration toward the outer edge of the label side and a clicking noise like surface noise toward the end of the disk. Disks made by PDO will have an identifying stamp near the center of the disk stating "made in UK" or "made in UK by PDO". PDO will replace these corroded disks. All they need is a list of catalogue numbers, you need not, at the moment, return the disks. For more information, including address and phone numbers for PDO, go to the Hyperion web site

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/, and click on the Hyperion News link, where you will find:

"A note about corroding CDs manufactured by Philips & Du Pont Optical UK Ltd (PDO).

The pressing factory PDO has acknowledged responsibility for producing some CD's between 1988 and 1993 using a lacquer which was not suitable to withstand the corrosive effect of the sulphur content of paper used in the printing of CD booklets and other paper parts. The problem has been extremely disruptive to us and has caused much embarrassment. We can only apologise for any alarm and inconvenience caused and assure you of our commitment to your satisfaction.

The symptoms of the corrosion are obvious. Audibly it manifests first towards the end of the disc (i.e. the outer edge) and sounds not unlike rhythmic LP surface noise. Visibly it manifests as a coppery-bronze discoloration, usually on the edge of the label side of the disc. (n.b. it is NOT the overall yellow tint which is common to all PDO pressings. This is due to the addition of a tiny amount of yellow dye which PDO adds to the polycarbonate for cosmetic purposes).

At the time that PDO were manufacturing the affected CDs for us, they were also pressing for other classical labels and we suggest that you check any discs you have from ASV, Unicorn-Kanchana and Pearl. Given the nature of the problem of corrosion, in that it progresses over time, we recommend that you check any suspect discs on, say, a six-monthly basis. The name of the disc manufacturer is usually (but not always) engraved around the centre hole of the disc in the transparent area. If there is no manufacturer's name shown at all then it would be worth checking with PDO. They have agreed to replace any CDs which are corroding as a result of the defect and have set up a United Kingdom freephone helpline to deal with complaints and enquiries about it. The number is 0800 387063. If you live in the United Kingdom we suggest that you call them directly if you have reason to believe that there are discs in your collection made by PDO which are showing signs of corrosion.

Overseas customers will not be able to use the freephone line. They can, if they wish, communicate directly with PDO at the address below and perhaps ask for a refund of the cost of the telephone call, fax or letter. In any case they should NOT return faulty discs to either dealer or distributor, or to Hyperion. They can, if they wish, return the disc to PDO but it is not necessary. Initially at least, just a letter will do. If they do return any CDs they should send JUST THE DISC, NOT THE JEWEL CASE OR PRINTED MATTER, because PDO will replace only the disc.

Here is PDO's address:

Philips & Du Pont Optical UK Ltd, Philips Road, Blackburn, Lancashire BB1 5RZ England. Fax: [44] [0]1254 54729 (dial 44 1254 54729 from outside U.K.), Telephone: [44] [0]1254 52448 (dial 44 1254 52448 from outside U.K.) Freephone: 0800 387063 (U.K. only)

Hyperion Records Ltd now uses PDO only for pressing replacement discs for earlier numbers. We are assured that the problem has been solved and see no reason to remove master tapes from them. We did retrieve a number of masters when the problem first came to light, and redirected them to another factory. Therefore, a small number of titles cannot be replaced by PDO and would have to be supplied by ourselves. All new titles are pressed elsewhere.

Although PDO have agreed to replace corroded CDs on our behalf, we are aware of our responsibilities to our customers and wish to reassure them that we are committed to seeing that they are ultimately satisfied with our products. Should you feel that you are not being treated efficiently by PDO, then please do not hesitate to get in touch with us directly: Richard Howard, Production Manager, Hyperion Records Limited, London, info@hyperion-records.co.uk

Peter Copeland (Conservation Manager at the British Library National Sound Archive) adds:

"Barry Fox [renowned British commentator on audiovisual technology] has an alternative explanation which seems rather more likely than Hyperion's. It is that PDO were understandably using silver in preference to aluminium for the reflective layer of CDs, because they thought a precious metal would be more stable. When the discs were packed in sulpheriferous sleeves, silver sulphate formed, and it is this which is "bronze." NSA's experience with Philips confirms the Hyperion information: they have been extremely helpful, offering to re-master any discs (even deleted ones), because where there is one defective disc there are likely to be others.

Note that the problem was first noticed with CD singles (packed in paper sleeves rather than jewel cases), but now regular CDs are becoming affected as well. As a conservation issue, the recording is in the polycarbonate, not the reflective layer; so in principle it would be possible to split the sandwich and re-coat the polycarbonate with aluminium as a last-ditch conservation measure.

Storm report

Gerry Gibson writes: "The Library of Congress has contracted with William Storm to advise it on the development of an unified strategy and a working model for the preservation and access of its audio, video, and related materials. The report is to include a full review of the options and a recommended design to effectively accommodate access needs while assuring continued preservation. The strategy is to take into consideration, but shall not be limited to, such issues as:

1. reformatting and data migration, including media and data preparation, restoration, selection, access and dissemination, quality control, documentation of the reformatting effort, and security;

2. which parts of the strategy can be implemented immediately and which will require further research and development.

Mr. Storm's report will be mounted on the Library's Web Page, http://www.loc.gov as well as being presented to a special panel of experts for review and recommendation on actions".

IASA Nordic Branch meeting in Helsinki

Elsebeth Kirring (Statsbiblioteket, Aarhus) reports: "On June 5th-6th, The Finnish Radio (YLE) hosted the meeting which is held by the IASA Nordic Branch every third year in one of the Nordic countries. Besides members from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, two members from Eesti Raadio participated. The meeting was chaired by Lasse Vihonen, chairman of the Nordic Branch.

The new YLE Headquarters is an impressive building in green glass and Finnish granite. The architect, Professor Ilmo Valjakka, intended to create this building as a landmark for Helsinki and one must say he has succeeded. Besides the administrative offices the new building also houses the local and regional radio studies which have glass walls so that visitors can see for themselves what really goes on inside a radio studio.

In the same way the exterior was worth studying, the interior - the agenda - was worth the travel. In two days we covered many of those topics dealt with today in audiovisual archives: cataloguing, preservation and digitizing.

The Radio Director, Tapio Siikala, welcomed us all and stated that new digital methods are going to change broadcasting. He demonstrated this by showing a video produced by NRK. It was very amusing - made as a pastiche of Star Wars with the main characters Foreman and Backman - and it showed, better than words can express, the advantages of digital techniques.

Digitizing was the overall topic of the conference, as it is generally today. The lecturers were partly producers, partly users. Stig Hedlund from HF Media-Solutions Ab spoke about Digital multi-workstations for sound and document handling and archiving for radio producers and sound archives. His main point was that we have for so long been absorbed in digital possibilities that we have forgotten to think about quality. He stated that you should always use linear systems and as good a quality of sound as possible when you store your material in an archive system.

The composer Otto Donner recommended Sonic Solutions as the best technical solution for sound restoration and he considered it a philosophical question if you should restore the sound completely, let it be as it is, or restore it but leave some "patina". After the lecture we got a demonstration of how YLE is restoring sound with Sonic Solutions - very impressive.

The lifetime of CDR by Caj S?dergaard, The Audiofile Standard of EBU by Lasse Vihonen, YLE's first CAR-System by Sirkka L?hteenm?ki, YLE's Digi-Archive Project by Pekka Gronow and Audio archiving: the IBM solution for YLE's News by Kari Kari Sirelius, were all very interesting lectures and there was much useful information also for smaller audiovisual archives.

The Finnish National Fonoteque Project was a lecture by Raija Majamaa from the University Library of Helsinki. It is a project which among other things is going to result in a copy of all grammophone records from 1950-1965 held in YLE's archive.

And last but not least we heard about cataloguing; here it was the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and the advantages of embedding metadata in the document.

As Juha Hakala, Network Specialist at the National Library of Finland, said: Any metadata is better than none - well almost...

Before we finally visited the beautiful old University Library of Helsinki, the new chairman of the IASA Nordic Branch, Olle Johansson (Sweden) was elected; new contacts for the other Nordic countries are: Raija Majamaa (Finland), Trond Valberg (Norway) and Per Holst (Denmark).

And finally...

The SEAPAVAA listserve is now operational. Subscribe by sending an e-mail message to seapavaa-request@syd.dit.csiro.au with the single word "subscribe" in the mail area (i.e. don't use a signature). The header is ignored. The reply will tell you how to unsubscribe should you want to leave the list.

Back issues of IASA publications are being transferred gradually from Budapest to the Editor's office in London. Because of space limitations only twenty copies of each back issue of the Journal and the Bulletin will be stored. The remainder will be destroyed. Copies of all IASA publications continue to be archived by Ulf Scharlau.

Calendar of events

Date	Event	Location
Jul 23 - 26	Second ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~diglib97/	Philadelphia
Aug 16 - 19	Sound & Imaging Technology '97	Hong Kong
Aug 24 - 29	IFLA/Statsbiblioteket: 5th international conference on interlending & document supply "Resource sharing possiblilities & barriers"	Aarhus, Denmark
Aug 31 - Sep 5	IAML Annual Conference	Geneva
Aug 31 - Sep 5	IFLA Council and General Congress	Copenhagen
Sep 1 - 3	1st European Conference on Research & Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries	Pisa
Sep 6 - 11	FIAT/IFTA Conference	Budapest
Oct 4-9	IASA Annual Conference	Oman, Muscat
Oct	SEAPAVAA Executive Council meeting	Hanoi
Oct 30-31	IFLA International Conference on Rights and Exceptions	Budapest
Nov 17-22	AMIA conference	Washington DC
Nov	UNESCO General Conference	Paris
1998	?	?
1998 March	SEAPAVAA Annual Conference	Hanoi
May	ARSC General Conference	Syracuse, NY
June 14-18	X International Oral History Conference http://www.filo.uba.ar/ravignani/historal/	Rio De Janeiro
Jul 20-24	Conservation conference: Care of photographic, moving image and sound collections	York, UK
Aug - Sept	IASA Annual Conference	Paris
Aug	IFLA Council and General Conference	Amsterdam
1999	?	?
March	SEAPAVAA Annual Conference	Kuala Lumpur
May?	IASA Annual Conference	Vienna
August	IFLA Council and General Conference	Bangkok
2000	?	?
2000	IFLA Council and General Conference	Jersusalem

This Information Bulletin was compiled by:

The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 29 Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AS, UK,
tel. 44 171 412 7411, fax 44 171 412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk,

and
Elsebeth Kirring, Statsbiblioteket, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark,
tel. 45 86 12 20 22, fax 45 86 20 26 36, e-mail ek@statsbib.aau.dk.

Printed in Budapest, Hungary

PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 23 BY 15 SEPTEMBER 1997