Archive Holdings Research Articles

Access to Public Archives in Europe: progress in the implementation of CoE Recommendation R (2000)13 on a European policy on access to archives

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present the results of a Europe-wide survey on the implementation of CoE Recommendation R (2000)13 on a European policy on access to archives conducted in October 2022 on behalf of the Council of Europe (CoE). It shows that overall great progress has been made in improving access to their public Archives. It also shows that there are still deficits in some instances, for example in the availability of finding aids for classified holdings or in the granting of access corrections for otherwise inaccessible archive holdings. We also highlight several challenges to the accessibility of archives, many of which are related to the ongoing process of digitalization. On the one hand, there is the growing expectation of users that collections be digitized and made accessible online, while at the same time the available resources of the Archives remain scarce. Finally, digitalization and the adoption of the GDPR also exacerbate the tension between data protection and freedom of information — often at the detriment of accessibility.

Privacy of documents – documents of privacy. Remarks on personal sources in historical and archival studies

The authors set themselves the goal of indicating the places in the archival holdings where texts of a private nature are present. They used the ego-documentary theory developed in European science since the midtwentieth century. It makes us pay attention to narrative sources (diaries, journals, memoires, correspondence) in the first place. It also allows you to extract privacy from official sources in which a person is forced to tell the story of his life, express his individuality and identity. Court testimony is of particular importance in this context. It is an important component of the archival holdings, and at the same time the source basis for many fundamental scientific works on the history of the mentality of all social groups, including those marginalized. They notice untapped sources such as CVs (biographies) attached to official files or petitions submitted by private individuals to the authorities. They draw attention to the fact that all archival entities, such as fonds, collections or archive holdings, may be self-documentary in nature. This applies to private archives, but to some extent also official ones. It is a difficult problem to capture the private character of archives in the archival description. The authors indicate the usefulness of creating source and archival studies characteristics of classes of archival sources in terms of the possibility of ego-documentary research.

Towards a cloud optimized data lake for archived water column sonar data

Due to their value to the ocean science and fisheries management communities, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), with NOAA Fisheries and University of Colorado Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, established a national archive for water column sonar data. There are currently 210 TB of data freely and publicly available, and that volume is growing rapidly as sonar technology advances. The spatially and temporally diverse archive is accessible through its dedicated data portal and Amazon Web Services. Throughout 2023, we will develop a cloud-optimized data lake of echosounder files representing a ∼100 TB subset of the archive holdings. The echosounder files will be translated from their complex, binary and proprietary file format into zarr files following the Earth Science Information Partners analysis-ready cloud-optimized standards. The resulting data lake will serve as the foundation for building analytical capabilities that can cost-effectively tap into the archive’s sonar holdings, especially when coupled with compute power. The zarr stores will subsequently feed into EchoFish, the archive’s AWS-hosted interactive data visualization platform to facilitate subsetting and prevent the data lake from becoming a data swamp. The progress and potential applications of this NOAA Center for Artificial Intelligence funded project will be presented.

Making women amateur filmmakers visible: reclaiming women’s work through the film archive

ABSTRACT This article considers the place of women’s amateur film within regional and national film archive holdings through a specific case study of the ‘Women Amateur Filmmakers in Britain’ project at the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA). Reflecting on the process of cataloguing and presenting this collection, the article will explore the challenges of making women’s creative filmed work visible, suggesting that women’s amateur films exist at a crucial overlap of archival oversight and cultural stigma. We argue that prevailing associations of archive film with space, place and location could prevent feminist-led projects from gaining traction in the contested world of exhibition where locality often overshadows other thematic or stylistic approaches. We argue that only by reconsidering the types of films that are prioritised for preservation and presentation can women’s films be made fully visible.

Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915–1960 ed. by Martha J. McNamara and Karan Sheldon, and: Main Street Movies: The History of Local Film in the United States by Martin L. Johnson

Reviewed by: Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915–1960 ed. by Martha J. McNamara and Karan Sheldon, and: Main Street Movies: The History of Local Film in the United States by Martin L. Johnson Liz Czach (bio) Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915–1960 edited by Martha J. McNamara and Karan Sheldon. Indiana University Press. 2017. $85.00 hardcover. $35.00 paper; also available in e-book. 290 pages. Main Street Movies: The History of Local Film in the United States by Martin L. Johnson. Indiana University Press. 2018. $90.00 hardcover. $36.00 paper; also available in e-book. 294 pages. On Main Street in Bucksport, Maine, sits the 1916 Alamo Theatre, home of Northeast Historic Film (NHF), an archive founded in 1984 with the aim of preserving New England's moving image heritage. In its over thirty-year history, its success has been an inspiration to other regional archives. NHF collections are featured in two recent publications from Indiana University Press. Martha J. McNamara and Karan Sheldon's edited collection Amateur Movie Making draws exclusively on the archive's holdings, and Martin Johnson's far-reaching study of local film culture Main Street Movies makes use of NHF's "movie queen" films—films that used a template scenario in which a successful Hollywood actress returns to her hometown for a visit. Each volume makes a significant contribution to the exploration and analysis of filmmaking far beyond the reaches of the production centers of Hollywood and New York. At first blush, Amateur Movie Making's subtitle, Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915–1960, might suggest a narrowly defined field [End Page 179] of inquiry with limited appeal to a broader audience. But readers would be remiss to dismiss such a delightful and expansive volume that resonates far beyond the realm of amateur film. One of Amateur Movie Making's greatest strengths is its addition of materials that animate the films in surprising ways. Included, for example, are three "Reflections" in which the films of prominent figures are discussed by someone close to their work. Feature-film director Whit Stillman reminisces about the films of his grandfather, Ernest Stillman, as a site of family filmmaking heritage that anticipates his own work, and Martha White reflects on the home movies of her grandfather, American novelist and essayist E. B. White, which offer a rare glimpse into the personal life of a deeply private man. Perhaps most moving is Jennifer Neptune's account of her conversations with Penobscot tribal elder Charles Norman Shay. His films of life as a Native American man from Indian Island, Maine, offer rare glimpses into Indigenous life that are not from the perspective of a white settler anthropologist. Shay's films feature images of life on the reservation as well as his many travels abroad and around the country as a serviceman. Archivist Dino Everett provides technical notes that accompany each chapter and offer clear and concise descriptions of the film stocks, cameras, and other technology used in the production of the films; they represent another intriguing way the volume illuminates the films it considers. (Everett also contributes a general overview of amateur and home-movie technologies.) Unlike the recent volume Exposing the Film Apparatus: The Film Archive as Research Laboratory, which uses film technology as a starting point for understanding the interplay of technology and visual aesthetics, the technical information here is driven by specific films.1 Seemingly insignificant technical details, such as the popularity of the diagonal cement splice, encouraged because of its presumed superiority in passing through a projector, take on more meaning when we are informed about the labor and meticulousness involved in this form of editing. Readers understand how the affordances and limitations of the equipment affected the individual film's aesthetics. Perhaps it is unsurprising that a book devoted to films held in an archive should be so attentive to the materiality of the works, but this careful consideration of the intricacies of their production adds another layer of understanding to their interpretation and appreciation. Amateur Movie Making is divided into four parts that roughly organize...

Vjerski prijelazi s pravoslavne na rimokatoličku i grkokatoličku vjeroispovijest na području Čazmanskog arhiđakonata između 1941. i 1945.

The number of converts from Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism during WWII has been discussed for years. The earliest cumulative quantification of Orthodox-to-Catholic conversions in the NDH (Independent State of Croatia) may be found in a report by Pope Pius XII of 1943, which was written by Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac. Although there are still speculations about the total number of Orthodox converts to Roman Catholic faith in the period of WWII, most controversies today are mainly concerned with the nature and ethics of the doctrinal consistency and political opportunity of the conversion itself. During the period in between the wars, the Cazma Archdeaconry consisted of several districts: Cazma, Kutina, Ivanic Grad, Grubisno Polje and Garesnica. According to the census of 1931, less than 14% of the population were Orthodox Christians. The author of the paper researches the conversions form Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism in the mentioned area during the period between 1941 and 1945. The research is based on the records from archive holdings such as the Archbishop’s Clerical Board of the Archbishop’s Archive in Zagreb, the Ministry of Justice and the NDH Ministry of Justice and Worship at the Croatian State Archive. Based on the list of names of converted persons, i.e. those who filed an application to convert in the area of 23 parishes in the territory of the Cazma Archdeaconry, the author concludes that no fewer than 3,271 Orthodox Christians filed an application to convert to Roman Catholicism, mainly from April 1941 to April 1942. According to the preserved documents from the Archbishop’s Archive in Zagreb and from the Croatian State Archive, the actual number of conversions was even larger; however, no list of names of those who filed an application to convert or of those who underwent conversion is preserved. Such a problem arose in the parish of Mikleuska where people converted collectively, in large numbers. In this paper, the author discusses the types of individual conversions. The largest number of religious conversions were made in the area of Miklueska, where 751 individuals converted. Vicar Đuric from the parish of Kaniska Iva asked the Archbishop’s Clerical Board for missionaries to help him teach and convert the Orthodox. He demanded at least six more missionaries, two for the villages of Veliko Vukovje, Malo Vukovje, Gojilo and Rogoža, two for Stupovaca, Brinjani, Caire and Kutinica, and two for Velika Brsljanica, a part of Rogoža and Mala Brsljanica. The missionaries arrived in the winter of 1941/1942. Vicar Đuric compiled a list of converts, 1,372 of them being from the area of the former Orthodox parish of Veliko Vukovje. Due to a large number of converts, there was a plan to set up a new Roman Catholic parish in Narta, in the vicinity of Cazma. As a special aspect of this research, the author observes the conversions to Greek Catholicism (in the Veliki Zdenci and Cazma area) and the reasons why the state authorities did not want the Orthodox to convert to Greek Catholicism. According to a circular issued by the Ministry of Justice and Worship, the Main Ustasa Headquarters and the State Directorate for Economic Regeneration, dated 30 July 1941, it is apparent that the “wish of the Croatian government” was that “the Orthodox do not switch the Greek Catholic religion…” The Greek Catholic priests considered that they had the right of ownership over all Orthodox churches in the district of Garesnica because of the existence of their parish in Disnik. Bishop Janko Simrak requested that certain churches in Moslavina, among others, the church in Lipovcani, chapels in Marca, and churches in Narta and Veliko Vukovje become part of the Greek Catholic Church. However, most of these churches were provided for by the Roman Catholic Church. The author finally concludes, on the basis of reports from some parishioners, that in most cases, conversion to Roman Catholicism was not honest, that the Serbs were mostly forced to convert to Roman Catholic faith for the sake of preserving their existence and their lives. Following the foundation of the Croatian Orthodox Church in the first half of 1942, the Orthodox generally ceased to attend Roman Catholic masses. Kljucne rijeci: religious conversions; Serbs; Second World War; Moslavina; Archdeaconry of Cazma

Visualization of Multi-mission Astronomical Data with ESASky

ESASky is a science-driven discovery portal to explore the multi-wavelength sky and visualize and access multiple astronomical archive holdings. The tool is a web application that requires no prior knowledge of any of the missions involved and gives users world-wide simplified access to the highest-level science data products from multiple astronomical space-based astronomy missions plus a number of ESA source catalogs. The first public release of ESASky features interfaces for the visualization of the sky in multiple wavelengths, the visualization of query results summaries, and the visualization of observations and catalog sources for single and multiple targets. This paper describes these features within ESASky, developed to address use cases from the scientific community. The decisions regarding the visualization of large amounts of data and the technologies used were made to maximize the responsiveness of the application and to keep the tool as useful and intuitive as possible.

The children’s collections at the University of Reading

The University of Reading’s archive and rare book holdings relating to children’s books offer a unique insight into all aspects of book production for the young in modern Britain and beyond. It is one of several important archive collections in this area in the UK. The largest is held at the Victoria and Albert museum library; the National Library of Scotland traces the history of Scottish children’s books; modern and contemporary author’s papers since the 1930s are collected by the Seven Sto...

The Greatest Shakespeare Film Never Made: Textualities, Authorship, and Archives

This article attends to the ongoing exploration of archives—spurred in part by the digital revolution—that have recently given way to a plethora of rediscoveries pertaining to the work of filmmakers who have adapted Shakespeare’s texts. Through an engagement with the intense theoretical controversy brought to bear on the idea of the archive itself, the article uncovers the role of archival holdings—fragmentary and skeleton-like as they are—in revealing the illusory nature of many claims to auterist fidelity to Shakespeare’s authorial intent. Offering an examination of discoveries made concerning the works of auteurs such as Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, and Akira Kurosawa, the article posits the archived screenplay in particular, resistant as it is to categorisation as epitext or peritext and more fittingly described as metatext, as offering a particularly rich insight into the creative processes of those who adapt Shakespeare into film. In attending to such illuminating archival mainstays, central to archive holdings relating to such postwar Shakespearean auteurs as Olivier, Welles, and Kurosawa, the article demonstrates how these artistes liberated Shakespeare’s texts from the scraps they had become (by way of print) precisely through the infusion of their personal styles into screen realizations of the plays. Part of the project of the article, therefore, consists also of the recognition and elaboration of the paradox whereby a wide assortment of bones and scraps, now housed in archives, contributes to our understanding of this liberation.

The global Landsat archive: Status, consolidation, and direction

ABSTRACT New and previously unimaginable Landsat applications have been fostered by a policy change in 2008 that made analysis-ready Landsat data free and open access. Since 1972, Landsat has been collecting images of the Earth, with the early years of the program constrained by onboard satellite and ground systems, as well as limitations across the range of required computing, networking, and storage capabilities. Rather than robust on-satellite storage for transmission via high bandwidth downlink to a centralized storage and distribution facility as with Landsat-8, a network of receiving stations, one operated by the U.S. government, the other operated by a community of International Cooperators (ICs), were utilized. ICs paid a fee for the right to receive and distribute Landsat data and over time, more Landsat data was held outside the archive of the United State Geological Survey (USGS) than was held inside, much of it unique. Recognizing the critical value of these data, the USGS began a Landsat Global Archive Consolidation (LGAC) initiative in 2010 to bring these data into a single, universally accessible, centralized global archive, housed at the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The primary LGAC goals are to inventory the data held by ICs, acquire the data, and ingest and apply standard ground station processing to generate an L1T analysis-ready product. As of January 1, 2015 there were 5,532,454 images in the USGS archive. LGAC has contributed approximately 3.2 million of those images, more than doubling the original USGS archive holdings. Moreover, an additional 2.3 million images have been identified to date through the LGAC initiative and are in the process of being added to the archive. The impact of LGAC is significant and, in terms of images in the collection, analogous to that of having had two additional Landsat-5 missions. As a result of LGAC, there are regions of the globe that now have markedly improved Landsat data coverage, resulting in an enhanced capacity for mapping, monitoring change, and capturing historic conditions. Although future missions can be planned and implemented, the past cannot be revisited, underscoring the value and enhanced significance of historical Landsat data and the LGAC initiative. The aim of this paper is to report the current status of the global USGS Landsat archive, document the existing and anticipated contributions of LGAC to the archive, and characterize the current acquisitions of Landsat-7 and Landsat-8. Landsat-8 is adding data to the archive at an unprecedented rate as nearly all terrestrial images are now collected. We also offer key lessons learned so far from the LGAC initiative, plus insights regarding other critical elements of the Landsat program looking forward, such as acquisition, continuity, temporal revisit, and the importance of continuing to operationalize the Landsat program.

The role of structural bioinformatics resources in the era of integrative structural biology.

The history and the current state of the PDB and EMDB archives is briefly described, as well as some of the challenges that they face. It seems natural that the role of structural biology archives will change from being a pure repository of historic data into becoming an indispensable resource for the wider biomedical community. As part of this transformation, it will be necessary to validate the biomacromolecular structure data and ensure the highest possible quality for the archive holdings, to combine structural data from different spatial scales into a unified resource and to integrate structural data with functional, genetic and taxonomic data as well as other information available in bioinformatics resources. Some recent developments and plans to address these challenges at PDBe are presented.

Disseminating Music amongst Moroccans in Britain: Exploring the Value of Archival Sound Recordings for a Cultural Heritage Community in the Diaspora

This article presents and analyses the process and outcome of a dissemination project using the collections of an ethnomusicology sound archive amongst a cultural heritage community in the diaspora—in this case, the Moroccan holdings of the British Library's World and Traditional Music Section, and Moroccans living in Britain. Beginning with a personal introduction from within an ethnomusicology sound archive, I first discuss the motivations and questions that led to the creation of a proactive archiving project. From here, I describe how I collaboratively selected sound recordings from an archive's holdings and endeavoured to take them out of the archive and into a community. Issues that emerge and are explored include: cultural representation and ownership; communal identity formation; and musical memory and meaning. I argue how, despite certain obstacles, particularly in relation to copyright and intellectual property rights’ clearance, even the smallest of archival dissemination projects, such as the one discussed here, can reveal the potential value of legacy materials for a community whose cultural heritage is represented on the recordings. In particular, I show how archival sound recordings from the British Library have enabled Moroccans living in Britain to reclaim (when it has been lost in history) and proclaim (to future generations) their cultural heritage, as well as to evoke memories and reinforce a sense of identity. I conclude by arguing that archives and archiving in the twenty-first century might usefully be reconceptualised in various ways. In particular, by focusing on collaborative partnerships that facilitate meaningful access to existing cultural heritage materials, ethnomusicology sound archives might fulfil their archival responsibilities and cultural heritage communities in the diaspora might continue to cultivate sustainable identities using resources that were not previously available to them.

Digital Preservation Strategies: The Cost of Risk of Loss

The mass digitization of analogue archive holdings and the transition to tapeless production for new content mean that audiovisual (AV) archives now face the prospect of file-based archiving solutions using information technology (IT) storage methods. However, many important factors in this process remain unknown. What is the long-term total cost of ownership (TCO) of these systems, which file formats should be used, what storage technologies make sense, what are the risks involved, what is the additional cost of managing these risks, and what new software approaches can be applied? These issues are being explored by major broadcasters, national archives, and technology specialists in the PrestoPrime and AVATAR-m projects.

The Missing Link: Content Indexing, User-Created Metadata, and Improving Scholarly Access to Moving Image Archives

The Missing Link:Content Indexing, User-Created Metadata, and Improving Scholarly Access to Moving Image Archives Kevin Andreano (bio) Introduction Throughout history, scholarly interest in moving image archives has rarely extended beyond academics involved in film studies, leaving a wealth of human experience captured on film and video hidden from the more general scholarly community. Taking as its premise the idea that accessible catalogs with comprehensive content descriptions are the key to establishing a link between scholars and moving image archives, this article attempts to illustrate the importance of content description before exploring how content is currently described and how to best capture it in the future. By looking at the limitations of current cataloging practices and speculating on the usefulness of new technology and emerging cataloging methods, such as user-created metadata, this article is intended to foster a better understanding of the need to provide access to audiovisual content, so that it may be seriously considered if moving image archives are to throw open their doors to the scholarly community as they enter the digital age. From the Archives, Much is to Be Offered In her 1994 study of film archives, Keepers of the Frame, Penelope Houston includes one chapter solely devoted to the lack of academic interest in moving image archives.1 The chapter is titled "Of the Scholars, Nothing Is to be Expected," and it provides a brief history of scholarly indifference to film archives, from British documentary filmmaker Sir Arthur Elton's assessment in 1955 that "most British universities have neglected the use of film. . .almost to the point of perversity," to Houston's own evaluation in 1994 that "a historian preparing the biography of some twentieth-century figure" would "certainly not" think to contact a film archive "to see what his subject looked and sounded like."2 Now, more than ten years after Houston's book, it appears that this academic apathy continues to exist. Moving Image Collections (MIC), for example, a Web site being developed to serve both as a directory of moving image archives and as a union catalog of various archive's holdings, states that one of its primary goals is to "integrate moving images into the information mainstream." This is an important task, the MIC mission statement claims, because "moving images have remained isolated from the mainstream as an information resource, rarely cited in research papers. . .or consulted as primary reference sources."3 Archivists have long been frustrated by the low scholarly expectations they are forced to harbor, because they are all too familiar with the rich cultural and historical resources that are sitting idly on archive shelves. As Martin A. Jackson, coeditor of Film and History, wrote in 1973, "the vast holdings of the world's film archives offer to the historian a priceless source material for the study of modern civilization, yet this material has barely been touched by researchers."4 For archivists, the realization that moving images are culturally and historically significant resources is nothing new. 'In 1898, a Polish camera operator named Boleslaw Matuszewski proposed the creation of the first film archive,' reasoning that film can provide a unique form of historical evidence. "The camera [End Page 82] will not perhaps give us the complete history," he wrote, "but at least what it gives us will be incontestable and absolutely true."5 Despite the rise of fiction films, prepackaged documentaries, and edited newsreels that could distort the "incontestability" of the footage, future commentators would continue to point to the value of certain types of films that provided firsthand historical documentation in unique ways. Sir Arthur Elton in 1955, for example, was particularly interested in the straight history offered by newsreel outtake footage, urging film archives to preserve as much of this material as possible.6 Many archives have done exactly that, and authors such as Robert Edwin Herzstein—writing in 1988 that "newsreels and outtakes. . .are of tremendous value and have yet to be exploited by historians"—have attempted to draw attention to the historical value of these collections.7 Meanwhile, in 1973, Martin Jackson saw "the chance of liberating and using. . .countless reels of home movies and private films" as "one of the most intriguing...

All Astir

All Astir

Qing County Archives in Sichuan: An Update from the Field

Historians of Late Imperial China have long recognized that the Ba County archives held by the Sichuan Bureau of Archives in Chengdu constitute the largest and most complete local level archive known to exist. First introduced to Western scholars by Philip Huang (1982) and Madeleine Zelin (1986), the archive has served as a major source for a number of recent monographic studies. 1 Yet for those familiar with the depth and quality of its holdings, it remains a curious fact that this vast resource has not as yet received the sort of attention from European and American scholars that one might expect. At least in part, this may be due to the remoteness of Chengdu, particularly when compared to the relative convenience of using archives held in Beijing, Shang- hai, Nanjing, and Taibei. Another, perhaps more limiting factor, has been the reported administrative difficulties in gaining access to some of the archive's holdings as well as in reproducing that material. The three of us had an opportunity to return to the Sichuan Archives in August of 2004 after an absence of four years. Although each of us had sepa- rate research agendas, we were all working primarily within the Ba County archive's collection of legal case records. Given the trouble that we had previ- ously experienced in using this material, we were all favorably surprised by the degree to which this section of the archive has been made more open to foreign researchers. This new openness is in part the result of the ongoing work being carried out by the archive's staff, much of which must be attrib- uted to the efforts of Mr. Ma Xiaobin, the Vice-director of the Sichuan Bureau of Archives. While we were in Chengdu, Vice-director Ma also introduced the three of us to yet another Qing county archive that has now been opened to foreign scholars, the Nanbu County Archive held by the Nanchong Municipal

REPATRIATION OF THE BAKHMETEFF ARCHIVE: RUSSIAN DREAMS AND AMERICAN REALITY

Since the early 1990s, the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture at Columbia University, like many other Russian émigré archives all over the world, has become a critical resource in the process of rewriting twentieth-century Russian history. Now and then, references to the Bakhmeteff's holdings have appeared in Russian archival publications. Regrettably, some of these publications contain alarming instances of Russian demands for the “repatriation” of the Bakhmeteff Archive's holdings. A major factor behind this trend is an official government program to retrieve archival Rossica at any price; but it also is due in part to . . .

Archives: A statistical overview

This chapter of Cultural Trends examines the increasing use of statistical data to support evidence‐based management in the archival domain. After explaining how archives are managed and used, it reviews the available sources of data and evidence about the work of the domain and its contribution to the cultural agenda. Because there are no official requirements for data collection, much of the work on archival statistics has been voluntary, informal and, until now, uncoordinated. As a result, there are no comprehensive sources of data and no common statistics spanning the whole range of archives services. In their absence, this chapter explores the make‐up of the archival network and uses the available statistical data on core service elements as the basis for postulating averages for use as models for an attempted overview of the domain. While the limitations of this approach necessarily warrant caution over the results ‐ which are described as tentative ‐ it is proposed that with further refinement such a model could form the basis for future headline statistics of key archival inputs and outputs. The remainder of the chapter looks in detail at evidence and trends in archives, with a particular focus on usage (user profiles, motivation for using archives and patterns of use etc); collections management and stewardship (archive holdings and preservation activities); and impact. The section on impact takes an overview of the archival contribution to the public policy agenda with regard to social, economic and learning issues. In conclusion, the chapter reflects that too much of the previous effort has gone into measuring the resource base. It is argued that the future emphasis should be on using the available data to provide evidence of impact ‐ showing how archives can and do ‘make a difference’ in the broader cultural agenda. A final table illustrates the views of users on what archives contribute to society, highlighting the potential for creative partnerships between archives and other cultural service providers.

The Involvement of the IFLA Core Programme for Preservation and Conservation (PAC) in UNESCO's "Memory of the World" Programme

The article provides a brief overview of the important aspects of IFLA's involvement with the Programme: the preparation of general operating guidelines covering procedures and structures for the administration of the programme by UNESCO (legal and technological questions, procedures for submission of projects, selection criteria, and funding of preservation projects); the creation of an international list of destroyed library collections and archive holdings; and a survey of preservation activities currently in progress.

More Clues to a Life: The Alec Wilder Archive at the Eastman School of Music

Alec Wilder (1907-1980) is one of a small number of composers who gained distinguished reputations from their concert music as well as their popular songs. His compositional output spans a continuum that contains popular songs, show tunes, art songs, and chamber music, including a multitude of solo works for winds. His concert music can sound Hindemithian in one measure and jazzy in the next. His popular songs, many of which follow neoclassical forms, contain melodies supported by lush extended harmonies. Wilder steadfastly refused to promote himself or his music, preferring instead to compose his literary and musical works as gifts for friends and musicians that he respected. He was almost entirely self-taught, and although he returned to his home town of Rochester, New York, to study privately at the Eastman School of Music, it is the unschooled, lyrical quality in Wilder's music that often dominates the more learned contrapuntal material. Out of rather eccentric habit, he never kept copies of his music or writings. Although a number of Wilder's chamber works and three collections of his songs are in print, much of his prose, poetry, and music remains unpublished. It is impossible to find his works in any one place, just when musicians and scholars are beginning to sense his importance. With the establishment in 1988 of the Alec Wilder Archive at the Sibley Library of the Eastman School of Music, Wilder's works and ideas have become more accessible. This article will survey and describe the most important of the Archive's holdings; the contents of the Archive are listed in some detail in the appendix. Alec Wilder was profoundly literate; he was extremely well read, always seen with his latest favorite book stuffed in a pocket of his rumpled suit coat. For most of his life, he lived for extended periods in hotels in Rochester and New York City. He was a resident of the Algonquin Hotel on 44th Street in Manhattan for fifty years in the midst of New York's literary higher echelon, though he published a relatively