Information Bulletin no. 47, October 2003

IASA Conference, City of Tshwane (Pretoria)

21 - 25 September 2003

The main business of those who attend IASA conferences is the preservation of cultural heritage in the form of sound recordings (and video, though it was barely evident in this year's programme, as is often the case). This professional engagement with culture partly explains the pervasive pull of our annual gathering: people representing many different nationalities and interests converge on a single location, which itself may be laden with all manner of cultural baggage, exotic or familiar. This combination of cultures in a location apart creates a new set of exchanges and expectations, and sends people away refreshed and challenged in equal measure. This year's IASA conference was no exception.

Whereas the last two conferences (Aarhus and London) were held in locations with a long and uninterrupted history, the cultural history of the southern cape of Africa, the region of this year's venue, straddles temporal extremes that may disquiet or disorient northerners. While it is widely believed that the first creatures that could be described as human beings first stood up and yelled "What the ****?" (or phrases to that effect) in this part of world, in our own times the more stable and reconciliatory political unit known as South Africa is barely ten years old and monuments in and around Pretoria, where the conference was held, commemorate people and events that are still less than a century and a half old. As one of the native speakers pointed out, an IASA conference held twenty or thirty years ago in South Africa would have been unthinkable, impeded by all manner of censorship and control: delegates would have been segregated, their papers scrutinised for political incorrectness under the prevailing conditions of apartheid.

In 2003 we could all speak freely in Pretoria, though some were reminded that their terminology (such as use of the term "bushmen" for earlier inhabitants of the region) needed updating.

The theme of this conference was Archives and Society. South Africa could be expected, like other mixed nations that have undergone layers of colonial occupation and indigenous assimilation, to exhibit new cultural forms, as one finds for instance in Brazil, the West Indies or the United States. Instead we found, as far as the cultural programme permitted, a meeting of cultures but not yet a blend. Performances of dazzling virtuosity by music students at the University of Pretoria demonstrated that European, or European- influenced, classical music is still a cultural benchmark that exists alongside vocal and percussion techniques that Mozart and Liszt would never have heard and possibly never have imagined.

We were accommodated in the wealthy eastern part of Pretoria, the well-kept neighbourhoods protected by armed response alarm systems. Here you sense there is time to consider high-minded notions such as cultural heritage and how best to describe and preserve it. To the west of the city, things looked different. On the third day of the conference I took a break with my daughter to visit the Pilanesberg National Park. This meant getting up very early and driving through shanty towns and villages just as people were getting up to walk or be driven to work in occupations that are mostly manual, or based on the land. Mining is still very big business in this area. The journey back some ten hours later saw the same people returning. They looked exhausted and I was not convinced that these people knew or cared much about the heritage the IASA delegates were talking about so earnestly over on the university campus. On the other hand, some of the more adventurous and fortunate among the delegates had the time of their lives visiting a shebeen after dark and sampling some living, and most hospitable heritage. (Shebeens are bars: their status under apartheid was illegal and unlicensed. Nowadays, like former speakeasies in the United States, they are legal and in some cases have become tourist attractions).

There were just over a hundred and fifty delegates at the conference this year, about 40% from overseas and just under half from South Africa itself. A generous allocation of IASA travel grants was supplemented by a grant from South Africa's Department of Arts and Culture and this ensured good attendance by delegates from other African countries. It was therefore also an honour for IASA to have its proceedings opened by the Minister of that Department, Dr Ben Ngubane. As a result of his Department's generosity, one of the success stories of this year's conference was the establishment of an agreed collaboration, associated with IASA, between various African countries. This initiative began as an idea in IASA a little more than three years ago.

The buildings used for the conference belonged to the Music Department at the University of Pretoria and included the University's impressive auditorium, where all the open sessions were presented. But regardless of how imposing the location and its structures, organisers of IASA conferences still need to pay more attention to how the staging of sessions will look on the day. Last year's staging in Denmark was not altogether satisfactory; this year's was messy again, with trailing wires, skew projection, and cramped seating arrangements for speakers. It was also very dark.

Nevertheless, the standard of papers was, without exception, high. Sessions were well attended and question time animated, always a sign that the programme has been well conceived and delivered. There were twenty-three papers, some technical tutorials, and the usual round of closed committee and section meetings. For the sake of brevity, then, I must be very selective in describing some of the highlights.

Many of the issues associated with the theme of the conference were well articulated in the impressive keynote speech by Dr Sean Field, an oral historian from the University of Cape Town. His main theme was the relationship between power and knowledge, particularly the way this relationship shapes archival stories. He invited us to consider where the power is concentrated in the relationship: in the case of oral history, is it with the informant, or with the researcher? Do archives own people's stories, and in what sense can they sustain those stories and keep them alive? To what extent can people re-enact their experiences in a space that, like the Western Cape Archives, was once a notorious prison?

This notion of the archive as a place of re-enactment, a performance space even, has recently come to prominence in IASA largely as a result of those involved in the Research Archives Section that was launched only last year. Archives can sometimes appear irrelevant in the context of some of the more horrendous nightmares inflicted on African people in recent years. However, time after time at this conference we were reminded of how valuable such institutions can be, and of some of the dangers that would follow if they were absent: collective amnesia, bad manners, loss of cultural icons purloined by other cultures, and mystification by complexities where none exist.

In order to accomplish this task of safeguarding society's stories, our community of professionals has chosen to embrace digital technology. The arguments in favour of this won the day many years ago, but it is always valuable to hear the cardinal points of such a committed policy reiterated, especially by Dietrich Schüller. Best practice applied to data security and signal retrieval in the digital domain necessitates substantial, ongoing intellectual and financial investment. Digital is expensive and demanding. Society has to understand this, or we will all be the losers.

Such generic concerns were mixed with specific stories. Few stories can be more moving than those that are the subject of the Australian project called Bringing them Home, as described by Kevin Bradley. This project set out to record testimonies from all the parties involved in the attempt during the 1930s by Australian authorities to eradicate an emerging culture, born of white fathers and aboriginal mothers, by forcibly removing the children and attempting to bring them up as white citizens, as if their parentage were irrelevant. We also heard about the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in its bid to use audio evidence as part of the process of reconciliation and reconstruction in that country, a process that has also been so important to the international rehabilitation and internal stability of South Africa itself.

The reviewer missed the professional visits, but it is understood that both were successful. One group visited the SABC sound, television programme and television news archives in Johannesburg; another the National Film, Video and Sound Archives in Pretoria Those who remained in Pretoria would have avoided experiencing the traffic problems that afflict the Johannesburg area. Such congestion came as a surprise, given the vast open spaces one encounters everywhere else in the country.

There were the usual social fixtures, receptions, buffets and feasts, though the opening reception at the Sheraton Hotel, complete with sedate jazz band and delicious local cuisine (drawing partly on some of the wildlife I was about to see in the game reserves) scored a lot higher than the farewell dinner at the Pretoria Zoo, in this reviewer's opinion.

Some of the delegates stayed on three or four days longer to take advantage of the opportunity to see in the wild so many of the animals that had hitherto existed as images on walls, in books and on television screens, or as bored, neurotic exhibits in zoos. After spending the week talking about the fragility of objects mostly less than a hundred years old, it was salutary to believe one was witnessing living scenarios that have been re-enacted day after day for millions of years without the intervention of any archivist. But it's a sad reflection on our times that even here the guiding hand of the human species has had to intervene, however minimally. My abiding image of South Africa is a fence. The vast open spaces of the Highveld must have been even more astonishing to earlier visitors, teeming with wild animals that are now confined, for their own protection, as well as ours, at the margins of this large and fascinating country.

Chris Clark, British Library Sound Archives

AASAVA on the Way Towards an African IASA Branch

During the recent annual conference in Pretoria, the African delegates agreed unanimously to form the African Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (AASAVA) as the precursor of an African IASA branch.

About 57 delegates attended the inaugural meeting. The delegates adopted the draft Constitution of AASAVA as a working document and asked its Interim Co-ordinating Committee to continue holding office, finalize the draft Constitution as soon as possible, prepare proper board elections, and put in an application for recognition as the African IASA branch.

The Interim Co-Ordinating Committee is made up of:

Chairman: Timothy Tapfumaneyi (Zimbabwe)

Secretary: Brenda Kotze (South Africa)

Treasurer: Wayne Williams (South Africa)

Editor: Cyril Ngoasheng (South Africa)

Additional co-opted committee members are Joel Thaulo (Malawi), Dennis Maake (South Africa) and Moises Chongo (Mozambique).

At the first meeting after its instatement, the Interim Co-ordinating Committee agreed to ask the IASA Executive Board
- to give both financial and moral support to enable it to carry out its plans effectively;
- to assign an executive member as liaison officer to work in close consultation with the Board.

The IASA Executive Board welcomes this development and hopes that the new association will quickly become a Branch of IASA. Albrecht Haefner has been assigned to act as liaison officer and to report to the Executive Board about any progress in AASAVA's development.

According to Cyril Ngoasheng, new editor of AASAVA, the African Branch has to ensure that the African Sound and Audio-visual Archives are preserved for posterity, and will have to put strategies in place to achieve this objective.

Albrecht Haefner, SWR &
Cyril Ngoasheng, SABC

Joint IASA/IAML 2004 Conference: Call for Papers

The theme of the joint IAML and IASA Conference in 2004, to be held in Oslo, Norway, is Music and Multimedia. The conference will be held from 8 to 13 August 2004. Papers are invited which will contribute to the theme of the conference.

A preliminary draft list of possible subthemes is:

  • Bibliography

  • Discography

  • Music recognition

  • Digital music files - linking of sheet and recorded music

  • Music on the Internet: How to buy and lend it legally

  • Technical preparedness of music librarians to handle the different formats of digital music

  • Access to digital music

  • What will happen to the "souls" of the archives in the digital domain?

  • Open Archives Initiative (OAI)

  • Legal deposit of music published on the Internet

  • Cataloguing primary and secondary information of music resources

Abstracts should be about 300 words in length, on disc or as an email attachment, listing name, organisation, contact address, telephone and email address, and should include the title of the proposed paper. The closing date for abstracts is 31 December 2003. Please note that presenters need to register for the conference and pay the registration fee. Speakers will be contacted shortly after that deadline and informed of the committee's decision.

Please address all abstracts and enquiries to:
Kurt Deggeller: Kurt.Deggeller@swissinfo.ch
Magdalena Cseve: csevema@uzem.radio.hu

Conference website: http://www.iaml-iasa-2004.musikk.no/

New members

Canisious Mandiopera, 3520 Glen Norah A, Harare, Zimbabwe says: 'I run a music and video production house and a small library. Joining the association will allow me an opportunity to network with audiovisual Archivists around the world and to keep abreast of technological trends in the field of Sound Archival Science.'

Moving Media Ltd, Guinness Enterprise Centre, Taylors Lane, Dublin 8, Ireland
Moving Media is a digitisation service based in Ireland aiming to deliver value to the owners of media archives through the provision of cost effective and technologically advanced services specifically developed for the digitisation of large volumes of analogue media catalogues.

Michel Merten from Musica Numeris, 27 rue du Belvédère, 1050 Brussels, Belgium: 'We are developing service activities in the field of sound archiving, mass digitization and sound restoration, and provide shared digital library services to archive services.'

Richard Garikai, 3520 Glen Norah A, Harare, Zimbabwe is a librarian with a small music and video production company. Joining IASA will give him the necessary exposure to the latest audiovisual management skills.

Matthew Davies, 28 Rivers St, Weston ACT 2611, Australia is a staff member of ScreenSound Australia.

Frances Salmon from the West Indies and Special Collections, Main Library, Mona Campus, Kingston 7, Jamaica, WEST INDIES is responsible for audiovisual collections at the Library and needs professional interaction with others working in the same field.

Suzanne Flandreau, 5000 S. Cornell Apt. 2D, Chicago, IL 60615, USA

Robert Aubry Davis, 1201 Woodside Parkway, Silver Spring, MD 20910-1666, USA

Maarten Eilander from the Theater Instituut Nederland, Postbus 19304, 1000 GH Amsterdam

Kjell Hansson, Head of Talking Book Production from the Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille (TPB), Sandsborgsvägen 52, SE-12288 Enskede, Sweden

Eugene Loubou from the Archives Municipales, B.P. 73, Hotel de Ville, Brazzaville, Rep. du Congo

Survey of Endangered Audiovisual Carriers

In 1995, the IASA Technical Committee carried out a Survey of Endangered Audio Carriers at the request of UNESCO. The results confirmed some fears about the rate of decay of carriers of recorded sound and allayed others. The results were also of great assistance to the Technical Committee in drafting advice for archives and libraries holding collections of recorded sounds.

The information provided by the 1995 Survey has proved so useful that, in 2002, UNESCO asked IASA to repeat the exercise to see how the situation had developed over the intervening years. In addition, UNESCO asked that the range of carriers covered be extended to include some video and photographic media. UNESCO were also interested in information about the spread of digitisation both as a means of improving access to collections and as a preservation tool. A major force driving the spread of digitisation is the increasing obsolescence of many of the machines required to play the historic recordings in collections. Questions about both these topics were added to the basic questionnaire.

The answers to these two additional questions are very varied. Many replies are effectively asking for advice on specific points and the members of the Technical Committee will be asked to respond to these individually.

The survey is not intended to be an accurate, scientific piece of research. It asks the respondents to use their knowledge of their collections to estimate the quantities of their holdings that fall into each of three, loose categories - In Good Condition, Giving Some Concern and Obviously Decaying. It is hoped, however, that by comparing the results of the 1995 survey with the results of the current survey, a better picture of the rate of decay of the various carriers can be obtained. This, in turn, will enable the IASA Technical Committee to improve its advice to the custodians of recorded sounds and images on the priorities of preservation.

http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=13437&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reloa
d=1073385878&PHPSESSID=019c5625ccdffaf7095faf0aade5c1

Distribution and Response to the Survey

About 2100 questionnaires have been distributed and, because replies are still arriving, the report just published is based on the first 118 replies received. A second edition of the report will be prepared in a few months' time. The current 118 replies gives a response rate of 5.6%, which is lower than the response rate of 16.5 % from the 1995 Survey.

There are many demands on the time of custodians of collections. It is no surprise, therefore, to have a low response rate. However, even allowing for "Questionnaire Fatigue", it is disappointing to have such a low rate of reply compared with the response to the 1995 survey. Because a second edition of the report will be prepared incorporating the replies that have arrived in recent weeks, it is not too late to respond and thus help make the survey more authoritative.

The collections that did respond are to be thanked. In many cases it is clear that much work went into completing the questionnaire.

The address list used was not comprehensive. It consisted of the IASA membership, addresses supplied by the International Council of Archives (ICA) and addresses suggested by members of the Technical Committee and others in IASA. In particular the small, but important, specialist collections in fields such as linguistics and anthropology are under-represented. It is hoped that this group of collections will, with the help of content related NGOs such as IAML, appear in larger numbers in any future survey.

Technical Support and Training

As with the 1995 survey, it is clear from the replies to the supplementary questions that many institutions lack adequate technical support. Some training workshops and courses are run under the auspices of the Memory of the World Programme, but these are insufficient to meet the demand. For many people, the answer has to lie with text guides and videos. The range of subjects covered by these is, at the moment, not wide enough to meet all the needs. They can also be difficult to find. Placing material on the Internet is a solution for many, but not for everyone. The spread of computers and reliable telecommunications is not yet as wide as people in developed countries often imagine.

In many cases the level of technical knowledge required is not high, but the difficulties of tracing information can be daunting for someone who is overwhelmed by the day-to-day tasks of administering a collection. The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, and in particular its Sub-Committee on Technology (SCoT), is working to provide a series of guides to various technical aspects of collection management, but with the technical jargon omitted as far as possible. The intention is to make the texts available on the UNESCO web site and as UNESCO printed books.

The subjects covered will include a guide to the methodology of digitisation of various audiovisual carriers, and advice on dealing with obsolescence of equipment. For smaller collections the most effective and economic method would probably be to pay a better equipped institution or commercial company to undertake the work of transferring sounds and images to new carriers, instead of setting up a transfer laboratory of their own.

The IASA Technical Committee is also active. In September 2001, the TC published the second edition of The Safeguarding of the Audio Heritage:Ethics, Principles and Preservation Strategy and is currently writing a guide to the practical problems of digitisation for many audiovisual carriers.

Conclusions

In 1995, it was stated in the Summary that: "It is clear that the most endangered carriers are not necessarily the oldest." This survey reinforces that view. From the survey results and from practical experience, the instantaneous, direct cut discs are the recordings most at risk. As with some other formats, this risk is compounded by the fact that the vast majority of acetates are unique recordings.

Other formats at risk that were not used for commercial distribution of sounds and images include acetate tapes, two-inch videotape, and wire recordings. The risk can be from decay of the carrier, as in the case of acetate tape, or obsolescence of the players, as with two-inch videotape and wire recordings. It is a sad fact that a carrier in good condition is still useless if a player cannot be found in working order.

The older recording formats - cylinders and 78 rpm discs - were, in the main, used for commercial releases so there is a much greater chance of duplicate copies existing. Although some 78s and cylinders are listed as obviously decaying, the copying priority must, in most cases, be given to the acetate materials. In the case of the acetate discs, substantial numbers are being lost irretrievably every year, because the final stage of the decay is unpredictable and catastrophic. Tape decay is a more progressive problem and the tapes can often be restored sufficiently to permit copying.

George Boston, TC

IASA Travel and Research Grants

Members are invited to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the IASA Conference in Oslo, Norway, from 8 to 13 August 2004.

The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation in the IASA annual conferences by those who have no alternative funding and to encourage continued participation in the work of IASA.

Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.

IASA Committees and Sections may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences.

The IASA Board has recently agreed on new guidelines for awarding travel grants. You are asked to consider these carefully before making your application:

  1. While the aim of IASA shall be to encourage members to attend the annual conference by supporting their travel costs, such support must take account of the current financial health of the Association. Normally, 50% of travel costs (cheapest air or train fare between the applicant's home and the conference venue) will be met.

  2. IASA will, in addition, approach the local conference organisers and request that the grantee's registration fee be waived. The decision in each case will be up to the conference organiser.

  3. Accommodation and subsistence costs will not be supported.

  4. Applications must be sent in writing (by letter, fax or e-mail) to the Secretary-General in response to the announcement of travel and research grants which are published in the IASA Information Bulletin. Applications must contain the 100% amount of the travel costs in US$, confirmed e.g. by an official travel agency.

  5. Applications by representatives of institutional members must be countersigned by the director or a senior officer of their organisation as evidence that their attendance has been authorised.

  6. The Secretary-General will check all applications received by the appointed deadline and will submit them to the Executive Board for discussion and approval.

  7. Applicants will be informed as soon as possible of the result after the Board's decision has been reached.

  8. IASA will not pay grants in advance of travel.

  9. Costs will be reimbursed on presentation of copies of the travel documents by the grantee to the IASA Treasurer during the conference. Otherwise, payment will be effected after the conference, and the method of payment shall be specified in the application including to whom monies shall be paid and how they will be made.

  10. IASA travel grants are determined for members only; accompanying persons have to pay for themselves.

Applications for travel grants to attend the Oslo conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of January 2004.

Please send your application to: Eva Fønss-Jørgensen, State and University Library, Universitetsparken, DK - 8000 Aarhus C, Phone +45 8946 2051, Fax +45 8946 2220, email: efj@statsbiblioteket.dk

Days and Nights of Sunshine:

Nordic Branch meets in Mo I Rana

The IASA Nordic Branch met in Mo i Rana, Northern Norway, on 12 and 13 June at the National Library.

About 40 delegates from five countries experienced not only a conference, but interesting excursions to the mountain vaults and other parts of the National Library and, lingering in everybody's memory: days and nights of bright Nordic sunshine.

The programme commenced with a welcoming address by Nordic Branch Coordinator and Head of Broadcasting Archives in The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), Bjarne Grevsgard. He also chaired the conference, which included the following presentations:

  • Acoustic recordings in Scandinavia. Preserving, cataloguing and publishing.
    Speaker: Vidar Vanberg, discographer.

  • Copyrights, implementation of the EU directive, and the impact on archives and digitising programmes.
    Speaker: Bjørn Audun Agersborg, lawyer (NRK).

  • Tirén's Box. A dramatized journey through Sweden and Norway with wax cylinders.
    Presenter: Trond Teigen, National Library

  • Access to historical radio programmes: Digital RadioArchive (DRA) gives birth to 'Radioarkiv Nordland' and the web service 'Stemmer fra Arkivet' - and more to come.
    Speaker: Bjarne Grevsgard, NRK

  • Phonofile, a commercial digitising programme for professionals and consumers. The combination of preservation and access.
    Speaker: Knut Bøhn, Phonofile.

  • 252 ways of saying 'I love You', a discographical study of Grieg's opus 5, no.3
    Speaker: Per Dahl, University of Stavanger.

Reports, plans and ideas from the member institutions were presented, and the exchange of information and experience proved the Nordic Branch to be a valuable network.

Per Dahl was elected new Coordinator of IASA Nordic Branch. Country contacts:

Finland: Tarja Lehtinen (Helsinki University Library)

Denmark: Per Holst (Danmarks Radio)

Sweden: Gunnel Jönsson (Sveriges Radio Förvaltningen, Radioarkivet)

Norway: Per Dahl (Norsk Lydinstitutt, Stavanger)

The next Nordic Branch will be in Stockholm, Sveriges Radio, in 2006

Trond Valberg
Per Dahl

BBC Archives in the Spotlight

Edinburgh Television Festival: Archives highlighted

Two speeches made at the 2003 Edinburgh Television Festival saw the BBC's programme archives highlighted - and not only television.

In a speech at the Festival on 24 August , BBC Director-General Greg Dyke addressed the question of public access to the archives. Announcing the BBC Creative Archive, The DG said "everyone would in future be able to download BBC radio and TV programmes from the Internet" The service would be free and available to everyone for private, non-commercial purposes. Dyke added "up until now this huge resource has remained locked up, inaccessible to the public because there hasn't been an effective mechanism for distribution". The advent of broadband means that a mechanism now exists.

Technology of course is one enabler, but the rights issues associated with archive access also need to be addressed. These questions will be to the fore as the BBC works towards making wider public access a reality.

Also at the Festival, Tessa Jowell, Secretary in the Department of Culture Media and Sport, in her address mentioned the number of repeats on television and called for more of them. She clarified this however as "Not lazy scheduling, not TV on the cheap. But I do applaud the mining of the archives for golden nuggets from the past." In radio, we are already seeing unprecedented industrial-scale archive use with the new digital-only network, BBC7, which is scheduled almost entirely from the archive of comedy, drama and readings - repeats, in other words. BBC Information & Archives has developed a close working relationship with BBC7 to support this new outlet.

Sources and Further information:
Tessa Jowell's speech at the Edinburgh Television Festival http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/press_notices/archive_2003
BBCi report on Greg Dyke's speech http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3177479.stm

Simon Rooks, BBC Sound Archivist

IASA with Extensive Participation at CAVIC 2003

The first joint FIAT/IASA Caribbean Audio Visual Conference (CAVIC 2003) to be held from 4 to 9 November 2003 in Kingston, Jamaica, which will be hosted kindly by the National Library of Jamaica, is approaching. The overall theme is "Audiovisual Archiving: Our National Heritage & History". IASA has agreed to contribute 7 workshops/tutorials and 3 papers and will be represented by President Kurt Deggeller and two experts, Dietrich Schueller and Albrecht Haefner, both old hands in the field of audiovisual training seminars.

The first two days of the conference are covered with all the aspects of AV archiving management by workshops and tutorials, followed by three days of plenary sessions focusing on issues such as "Why Archives?", "Why Care?" and "The Future". For more details contact:

Elizabeth Watson at watsone@uwichill.edu.bb
or
Maureen Webster-Prince at maurweb_nlj@hotmail.com

Calendar of events

Date Event Location
2003    
March 14 - 15 IASA Mid-year Board meeting Pretoria, South Africa
March 22 - 25 114th AES Convention Amsterdam
April 3 - 5 Joint IASA/FIAT/DELOS meeting on digitisation Helsinki, Finland (YLE)
May 19 - 23 Second National Sound Archive Seminar Mexico City
May 19 - 23 SEAPAVAA 8th Conference and General Assembly Brunei Darussalam
May 28 - 31 37th Annual ARSC Conference Philadelphia, PA
July 6 - 11 IAML Conference Tallinn, Estonia
July 24 - 26 Symposium: Sound Savings: Preserving Audio Collections Austin, Texas
August 1 - 9 69th IFLA Council and General Conference
Access point library
Berlin
September 6 - 9 FIAT/IFTA annual conference Brussels, Belgium
September 21 - 25 IASA ANNUAL CONFERENCE Pretoria, South Africa
November 4 - 9 Caribbean Seminar Jamaica
November 18 - 22 AMIA Conference Vancouver, Canada
2004    
June 24-26 Joint Technical Symposium 2004 Toronto, Canada
August 8 - 13 IAML-IASA joint Annual Conference Oslo, Norway
August 23 - 28 ICA Annual Conference Vienna
November 9 - 13 AMIA Conference Minneapolis, U.S.
2005    
September (2nd half) IASA Annual Conference Barcelona, Spain

This Information Bulletin was compiled by:

The Editor - Ilse Assmann,
SABC, PO Box 931, 2006, Auckland Park, Johannesburg, South Africa,
Tel: 27 (0)11 714 4041, Fax: 27 (0)11 714 4419, Email: assmanni@sabc.co.za.

Language editor: Dorothy van Tonder, SABC
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 48 BY 15 NOVEMBER 2003
Printed and produced in South Africa by Heypenni Gold