Prague proved to be even more attractive than anticipated and the meeting had to be moved from the seat of the National Library, the historical Klementinum, to another historical building, the Wallenstein palace. Altogether there were 97 participants, of it 76 from 44 libraries in 13 countries on three continents and 21 participants from seven Aleph distributors.
Of the 63 current ICAU members 39 libraries were represented at the Board of Members meeting, hence the quorum was present.
This year several novelties were introduced to pursue one of ICAU aims "to compile and disseminate information on experiences, requirements, developments and problems relating to the use of ALEPH in the member institutions":
The ICAU Secretary Ms. Roza Frank opened the Meeting by welcoming address followed by short speeches by hosts: Dr. Jaroslav Cisar, Director of Department of Literature and Libraries of the Ministry of Culture of Czech Republic, and Dr. Vojtech Balik, Director of the National Library of Czech Republic. After organizational instructions the representatives of newcoming members briefly introduced themselves.
The rest of the first and the whole of the second session were
devoted to the presentation of Ex Libris. It was opened
by Mr. Azriel Morag who also announced the merger
of Aleph Yissum, the system developer and Israeli distributor,
with the worldwide distributor - Ex Libris; the merger should
occur early in 1996.
The future development of Aleph follows
two lines: a way of upgrading to 3.2.5 version, et cetera; and
developing a completely new product, Aleph'96. A host of longed
for features: enhanced MARC formats support, enhanced linkage
between records, UNICODE support, optional DBMS alternative to
current file system, client/server architecture with Z39.50 and
http protocols, graphical user interfaces for more modules,
extended CD-ROM, multimedia and fulltext support, extended e-mail
support, self service loans support and others were presented by
Ms. Barbara Rad-El and technicalities by Mr.
Oren Beit-Arie. This massive innovation will, however,
require an additional payment of about 25% of the original
license cost, although an individual negotiation is possible.
The afternoon sessions three and four were devoted to the presentation of papers. Session three started with Ms. Ann Christel Pedersen's (DTV - Denmark) paper about the Client and Request databases. The paper induced a debate about a not very transparent way of voting. Instead of concentrating on answering Ms. Pedersen's questions concerning the financing of database operation and a better cooperation with Ex Libris, the discussion slipped to the relations between ICAU and Ex Libris and their regional distributors thus leaving the development of a more workable model to the new Steering Committee. This session was closed by a paper by Ms. Iva Pribramska (National Library - Czech Republic) about the Implementation of UNIMARC in Aleph.
The session four was occupied by two contributions by Ms. Katarzyna Nowosad (Sejm Library - Poland) about EUROVOC thesaurus implementation in Aleph and about their system of running and registering maintenance procedures. The first day's professional programme was closed by a paper by Ms. Else Marie Poulsen (Aalborg University Library - Denmark) about their experience with the Interlibrary Loan Service done by Aleph.
The day was closed by an informal reception in Klementinum halls and corrridors.
The second day of the conference was started by a Round table discussion about the state and plans of individual libraries. Although it was possible to learn a lot about other libraries from their Update Reports, the time scheduled was not sufficient to handle all questions adequately. For the next Meeting conclusions have to be made: first - the Reports have to be studied (by participants) well in advance and more thoroughly, and secondly - more time has to be allocated to the Round table.
For the second session the participants split into four workshops: Graphic User Interfaces (moderated by Corrado Pettenati, CERN - Switzerland): 27 participants, Inter Library Loan (Else Marie Poulsen, Aalborg University Library - Denmark): 15 participants, VMS to Unix migration (Mick Draper, CERN and Oren Beit-Arie, Ex Libris volunteered): 8 participants, and UNIMARC (Iva Pribramska, National Library - Czech Republic): 16 participants. The workshops formulated requirements and recommendations particular to the subject that were passed to Ex Libris. You may find them here.
In the last session of professional programme the conclusions of the workshops were presented to the full assembly and were commented on by representatives of Ex Libris. Again a lesson has to be learnt: it is obvious that the workshops proved useful allowing a thorough discussion on important topics, however, more time is needed between the workshops and the presentation of their outcomes so that the moderators could better prepare the presentation and Ex Libris representatives could better prepare their response.
The last session was the Board of Members Meeting. Ms. Roza Frank opened it with the Report on ICAU activities and finances during the last two years when she held the post of ICAU Secretary. The Report was passed. The resolution as to the requirements on Ex Libris (with the conclusions of the Workshops attached) was passed as well. The new ICAU Steering Committee was elected. The new Secretary is Mr. Martin Svoboda (National Library - Czech Republic) and the members of the new Steering Committee are: Mr. Elhanan Adler -Israeli user group (UG), Ms. Alesandra Bezzi - Italian UG, Ms. Marta Egyhazy - Hungarian UG, Ms. Maja Gracco - Swiss UG, Ms. Agnes Ponsati - Spanish UG, Ms. Iva Pribramska - Czech and Slovak UG, Ms. Naomi Steinberger - US UG and Ms. Bente Thernoe - Danish UG. After a discussion the voting on the next Annual Meeting location took place. Israel (without an exact location and organiser) was elected. The National Library of Czech Republic was asked to keep running the WWW server.
In spite of a crowded programme, many participants grasped the opportunity and attended presentations of two projects of the National Library in Klementinum: the retrospective conversion and the preservation of rare manuscripts through digitisation. Some of them even managed to visit the historical rooms of Klementinum.
That was the Sixth Annual ICAU Meeting.
Prague, September 1995
Martin Svoboda
