8th Annual ICAU Meeting Aalborg University, Denmark 8.-10- September 1997

Chair's Report 1997

Martin Svoboda, ICAU Chair

Dear guests, ladies and gentlemen, dear ICAUers,

The last year, my second in this position, saw some improvements in the functioning of the ICAU: the ICAU News were published four months after the annual meeting (though a bit behind the schedule), the ICAU server was being continually updated with current pertinent information and the ALEPHINT archive was established on it, and the ALEPH development request processing was semi-automated. The cost of request processing declined remarkably while the other expenses were kept reasonably low.

The number of members grew again: from 70 reported at the 7th annual meeting to 80 members who paid their 1997 membership fee so far (plus several others whose fees hopefully will reach the ICAU account). These are the good news. On the other hand we cannot be satisfied with our old pain - the level of influence on the Aleph development and support we reached.

1. Review of income and expenses

This remainder will grow of another $5000 promised by Ex Libris to support the Aleph development request collection and evaluation process. The amount remaining is another good news and we have to discuss how we can use it in the most effective way.

2. The Steering Committee and Secretariate

Let me remind that we have changed the Statutes and elected a new steering committee consisting of four members and the Chair last year. The four members were (in alphabetic order):

Mr Guido Badalamenti, Siena Library System, Italy
Ms Karen Grundvad Kvist, Aalborg University Library, Denmark
Ms Iva Pribramska, National Library, Prague, Czech Republic
Ms Naomi Steinberger, JTSA, USA

While Ms Pribramska and Mr Badalamenti will serve a two-year term, Ms Kvist and Steinberger were chosen by lot to serve just one year. This is why you were asked to propose new (or old-new) candidates for those two vacated posts - and now is almost the last chance to remind that to you.

Most of the work of steering committee was done via e-mail. The meeting planned for early June took place in Prague almost at the end of July because of the delays in the request procedure. That was also the reason why Guido Badalamenti was not able to participate. Since two participants were from Prague, the expenses were quite low.

I myself was elected again as a Chair for a two year term. By that time I had no idea that my engagement with the National Library of the Czech Republic is so close to its end. On September 1st I sat on a chair of the Director of the State Technical Library in Prague, fortunately another ALEPH library. Establishing a new Secretariat should pose no problem, it seems even easier to find suitable people. It is not clear yet whether the ICAU server shall have to be moved, the impact on its runnig costs will be negligible anyway.

3. Activities

Five main goals were given to the chair and the steering committee for 1996/97:

• to increase the membership

The steering committee discussed the planned recruiting campaign. In fact a letter inviting new and old Aleph users to become ICAU members was prepared. At the Prague meeting however, we reached a common opinion that all the Aleph users have the information about the ICAU and they can learn about its aims and activities on the ICAU server. We concluded that there are no obstacles for all those who want to participate in efforts of sharing knowledge and of improving Aleph. And we agreed that instead of a large group of formal members we prefer a smaller company of those who will work together.

• to publish ICAU News by the end of 1996

This goal was not reached in time as the ICAU News was distributed in February as a result of the reduction of my department and consequently the ICAU Secretariate. The cost was kept below $600 for 160 copies of 90 pages each. This year again, by mistake, the Aleph distributors did not receive promotional copies. I am bringing several copies with me to distribute them on the spot. Next year I believe this failure will not repeat. Several copies were sold by the National Library. This income was used to compensate for the phone & fax expenses that are - for administrative reasons - difficult to refund exactly. The National Library of Czech Republic is ready to publish the News again (provided the print master will be produced by conference organiser). For the next year I suggest to announce the publishing of the News on the Alephint so that even non-ICAUers have the possibility of buying it. As you maybe noticed, the ICAU News was registered with the international ISSN agency in Paris.

• to run the Aleph development request procedure according to the approved scheme and in the approved timetable

You all recall that the improvement of the „request procedure" was a main theme of the last ICAU annual meeting. We believed we found a workable model. Unfortunately, the model worked just one half: the request submission engine was ready by mid December, tested by New Year and processed something over one hundred requests by the end of January, on the schedule. Than a negotiation phase between module Editors and Aleph development people should have started. Here we did not succeded, Ex Libris plainly refused what was agreed in Jerusalem. All the requests without any prior discussion had to pass through a bottleneck of two people: Juppi and Dalia. This caused a delay in schedule that was impossible to catch and the voting deadline was five weeks delayed. Nevertheless four members of the steering committee met and heard a report of editorial board. Than we decided to ask Ex Libris for a final opinion of several requests that received a high number of votes in spite of being marked as refused by Ex Libris. We received no reply so far: maybe at the meeting.

The experience of this year „requests" round gave birth to another proposal for improvement of the procedure. The steering committee discussed it and you will have to choose from several options. Here I would like to thank the editorial board who did a tremendous job in a very tight schedule. You will hear their very modest special report later

• to maintain the WWW server

I believe the server proves useful and I hope that access times are bearable: the connection speed is being enhanced permanently.

As to the contents:

• the Alphint archive was established and is being regularly updated once a month
• the request form was developed and all informative texts were published here. For this year round the form will be split into smaller, faster loading sections.
• ICAU statutes and all documents of the 7th annual meeting were published here much earlier than in the printed form (with the exception of a very belated addition of a photoalbum)
• The Secretariat maintains an Excell sheet that contains all the information about each member and the dates of invoicing and of arrival of payment to the ICAU account. The .csv version is exported periodically to the ICAU Web server where a major part of user information is visible.

 

• to prepare well the 1997 annual meeting

We (I mean SC) spent some time on preparing the Agenda for this meeting. But frankly the meeting is firmly in hands of the organising committee and I have no doubts it will be a successfull one. Only on Thursday night you will be able to judge how successfully the SC fulfilled its tasks.

4. Fees payment

I am almost sorry to disturb you again with one of my evergreens. The banking charges cost us less than one percent of the turnover but it could be even less should all members cover their charges (as asked on the invoice - banking charges code OUR). Payment by order to Komercni banka is strongly preferred since it costs much less human effort on the side of ICAU Secretariat. If you cannot avoid sending a check, do take care that it is directed to the hands of ICAU Chair at the address given on the invoice. It costs a lot of effort to trace lost payments... I cannot avoid repeating the last year question:do we want to sanction members that do not pay in a due time? And how? As the ICAU has more and more members from outside Europe, I would suggest to issue the invoice in US dollars, to some accounting dept’s the XEU code was apparently an enigma.

Let me close by thanking in particular the editorial board, the annual meeting organisers, the steering committee and all who worked for the better of ICAU in the last year.

Yours,

Martin Svoboda

Chair

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