Abstract
How WOULD YOU LIKE, while sitting in your office or in a research center, to query an international information system to discover the information contained in all archives, libraries, and documentation centers to help you answer a question or research a topic? The example is oversimplified, but analogous to a concrete proposal of UNESCO called the National Information System (NATIS). Is NATIS the impossible dream of a bureaucrat unfamiliar the specialized information worlds of archives, libraries, and documentation centers, or is it an attainable reality defined after a full appreciation of all the difficulties involved? Does the archival world fit into, and should it associate itself with, such a proposal? The concept of a national information system was discussed at the Intergovernmental Conference on the Planning of National Documentation, Library and Archives Infrastructures, in Paris in September 1974. This conference was organized by UNESCO, in cooperation the International Federation for Documentation (FID), the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), and the International Council on Archives (ICA). The conference was convened with a view to generalizing the findings of [previous] regional conferences on planning . . . and to defining general guidelines of planning policy and methodology for application to documentation, library and archives services. The conference's final report goes on to say:
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