Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)

3. Session / Séance. Sharing of Experience and Exchange of Staff / Partage d’Expériences et Echange des Personnes - Huyda, Richard: Coordination Research in Archival Sience and Dissemination of Professional Information / Coordination de la recherche en archivistique et diffusion de l’information professionnelle (english 231 - français 251)

to the simple identification of available information, whereas others can provide updating services, selective diffusion of information, and document delivery;

4. the technologies being used to provide these services vary greatly from one documentation centre to another, and the technological choices are often dictated by the imperatives of the host organization;

5. the problems related to operational costs, to copyright matters, to restricted access to documentation, to the diversity of languages, and to the differing levels of description and indexing adopted by each documentation centre, are additional factors that make the simple transfer of information between systems, a difficult task.

Taking all this into account, it is an illusion, in our opinion, to envisage the international diffusion of professional information by means of some super system to which national systems subordinate their objectives and their resources. These national systems will continue to evolve and develop their services and their products according to the specific objectives of their host national institutions. And the needs that these institutions are ready to consider are limited, as has been expressed for these many years by the archival communities of concerned countries. It is possible to envisage a certain type of collaboration between organizations responsible for gathering and disseminating professional information, but not their subordination to higher entity at the international level. Also one might be optimistic about the chances of survival and development of a network of independent centres exchanging information and documentation. On the other hand, a single central database calling for not only collaboration amongst centres, but also exacting conformity in their methods and procedures seems, to us, to be doomed to failure in the medium to long term.

Aside from this intrinsic disparity of objectives and processes, the imbalance of resources available to these documentation centres imposes severe limits on the forms of collaboration one might contemplate. For example, a common communication format itself demands more resources than is actually used by each of the network members. The adoption of such a format presupposes that the format takes into account that which is acceptable for the network member devoting the least resources to the description and indexing of the documentation in their charge. Such an approach to the lowest common denominator is contrary to the drive and principles of centres within institutions that for many years have devoted much energy and effort in pursuit of high quality service. On the other hand, the aforementioned disparities leave us no choice: if we desire to launch methods and processes for the viable dissemination of professional information at the international level, there must be a major participation and commitment by the centres implicated on various national fronts. This participation can only be assured if each centre contributes actively to the exchange of bibliographic information on archival literature while gaining certain advantage from the effort. This active contribution, on the other hand, requires that the incurred expenses be minimized.

3. Session/Séance: Marcoux - Huyda, Coordinating Research in archivai Science

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