The 7th annual ICAU meeting took place in Jerusalem on Monday-Tuesday, Oct. 14-15, 1996 at the Hebrew University's Giv'at Ram campus. It followed the Ex-Libris system seminar in Tel-Aviv which took place on Tuesday-Thursday of the previous week in Tel-Aviv. Most of those who attended the system seminar stayed over for the ICAU meeting. In addition, many Israeli librarians came to the ICAU meeting only (as well as several additional attendees from abroad). Of the current 67 ICAU member institutions 44 were represented at the Assembly meeting, hence the quorum was present. A total of 108 participants from 14 countries took part in the meeting. Twelve of those 108 represented Ex Libris or Aleph distributors, 22 were from non-member institutions.
The main topic of discussion, covering several sessions, was how to improve and make more effective the procedure for collecting development requests from member libraries, organizing them, voting on them, through negotiation with Ex-Libris and ultimate implementation.
The first session opened with greetings from Prof. Israel Shatzman, director of the Jewish National and University Library. He was followed by Martin Svoboda, chair of ICAU, who delivered a report on the state of the organization (which will be found in the conference proceedings). He also presented the revised statutes of ICAU and explained the various changes. The Danish users group also presented some comments on the statutes which were ultimately included in the statutes as approved on the following day. The major operative question was the number of members to comprise the steering committee (5 or 7). A vote was taken and it was decided that the committee would consist of 5 members, including the chair. The four other members were elected at the last session on Tuesday.
The second morning session was devoted to the presentation by Ehud Arad, managing director of Ex-Libris. He presented the development plans for the new ALEPH-500 version and indicated that while Ex-Libris would continue support and some development of the ALEPH-3 version in the years to come, the major development effort would be invested in the new ALEPH-500 product. Decisions on what to develop in ALEPH-3 would be influenced by ICAU-selected requests, as well as by contractual obligations and market demand.
After the lunch break, the participants divided up into several workshop sessions. Originally three sessions had been planned one on migration from VMS to Unix, a second on using EXCEL with ALEPH data, and a third on using the ALEPH WWW server. In view of the large number of people who enrolled for the WWW session it was divided into two separate sessions one for novice users and one for experienced users.
The last session of the day began with the report on the ICAU data base for the previous year, presented by Inger Hoey Nielsen. Discussion dealt with proposals for improving the mechanism for collecting, selecting and processing requests. Written proposals by the Italian users group and the Czech National Library were also discussed and subsequently merged into a joint proposal presented the following day.
After the last session, the participants walked over to the Jewish National and University Library for a guided tour of the library, followed by a cocktail reception sponsored by Ex-Libris.
The first session on the following morning began with voting on the new Statutes to make possible the election of the new steering committee. The Statutes were approved with the Danish amendment applied and with a terminological change of Board of Members to Assembly of Members. (see appended text, which will also be published in the proceedings) Also, the six candidates for the new steering committee presented themselves.
The rest of the session was devoted to summing-up the development request procedure. The proposal prepared on the previous day was discussed and approved with only "cosmetic" changes. (see appended text, which will be published in the proceedings). It calls for an editorial board with one editor for each ALEPH module. The editor will receive development requests, clarify them with the submitter, and write their specifications. The editors will have direct access to the ALEPH development team. After voting by the ICAU members to establish priorities, the steering committee will negotiate implementation with Ex-Libris. Ex-Libris will grade requests on a 1-10 difficulty scale and will implement 100 points of the requests selected by ICAU. The ICAU data base will be moved to Prague and will be reorganized. The submission of requests will be done via a WWW form that will send the requests automatically to the pertinent editor and simultaneously to ALEPHINT. A more user friendly and less time consuming technique will be developed for voting: either the current database with direct access to voting fields or a WWW engine which would allow members to do on-line voting as well.
The members who volunteered to serve as module editors are:
With regard to the 1996 development requests, Ex-Libris promised to grade the first 50 by Nov. 15th and to negotiate implementation with the steering committee.
The second session was a discussion of update reports and gave an opportunity to ask questions of each library - particularly regarding unique local implementations.
The final session after lunch began with brief summations of the previous day's workshops, followed by resolutions (appended, and to be published in the proceedings). Under the new statutes, and with the revised development procedure it is clear that the steering committee will have to meet during the year and it was decided to use ICAU funds to subsidize travel expenses. The steering committee will also consider the proposal to have a graded membership fee to encourage small libraries to become members at a lower rate.
Martin Svoboda was unanimously elected to continue as ICAU chair. Elections to the new steering committee were also held and Guido Badalamenti (Italy), Karen Grundvad Kvist (Denmark), Iva Pribramska (Czech Republic) and Naomi Steinberger (USA) were elected. In accordance with the new statutes, lots were drawn and Karen Kvist and Naomi Steinberger will serve one year terms so that two new members will be chosen next year. Finally, a vote of guidance was taken on the site of next year's meeting and Aalborg, Denmark was selected (the final decision will be made by the steering committee later in the year). Possible sites for ICAU98 are Geneva, Paris or Warsaw.
There was some discussion as to whether having the system seminar and the ICAU meeting back-to-back had been a good idea. While it saved travel expenses, it watered-down the professional part of the meeting since many potential topics had been covered in the previous seminar attended by most (but not all) of the same people.
It was also agreed that the odd years ICAU meetings (or maybe better those not attached to the system seminar) would last three days, starting with 1997 in Aalborg.
Finally, I would like to thank all those who contributed to the organization of ICAU96 the libraries of the Hebrew University and the University of Haifa, the members of the organizing committee, the ICAU chair and steering committee and Ex-Libris.
Jerusalem, 25 November, 1996Elhanan Adler, for the Organizing Committee