Archives, Libraries and Museums Convergence: The 24th Library Systems Seminar, Paris 12‐14 April 2000=Archives, bibliothèques et musées

Citation

Limb, P. (2003), "Archives, Libraries and Museums Convergence: The 24th Library Systems Seminar, Paris 12‐14 April 2000=Archives, bibliothèques et musées", Online Information Review, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 368-368. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520310503585

As the digital content of libraries grows, so also does that of archives and museums. There has been some cooperation between these different kinds of repositories, such as that sponsored by US IMLS grants, but generally practitioners in the respective camps remain isolated. Given the development of Web‐based catalogues, virtual exhibitions and full‐text collections in all three repositories, their “convergence” is today more realisable. This publication presenting state‐of‐the‐art reports on the Archives‐Libraries‐Museum (ALM) “sector” is therefore timely.

This European Library Automation Group (ELAG) 2000 conference report provides an overview of automation trends in ALM and a detailed description of members' projects. The book is arranged into sections on papers, workshops, and progress reports, many (but not all) of which have both English and French versions. The papers include “Walking over the ALM” by Jan van der Starre, a user's perspective on digital cultural heritage and related matters, and an outline by Elisabeth Freyre of two important European e‐publication projects, BIBLINK (linking publishers and national bibliographic agencies; coordinated by the British Library) and NEDLIB (for long term preservation of e‐publications). Poul Jorgensen (Danish Bibliographic Centre) sketches the VisualCat Cataloguing Client, as well as the ONE‐2 Project (whose partners include national libraries and museums). Claudia Parmeggiani discusses the Italian Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale virtual catalogue, based on Z39.50 and involving 1125 libraries. Anne‐Laure Ranoux very briefly reports on Louvre web sites, whilst Philippe Avenier details access to museum information via networks and resources such as Museofile (museofile.culture.fr). There is a wider international dimension to the book: Vinod Chachra (VTLS) relates the Unicode standard to globalisation, and Hunt briefly describes OCLC's CORC project. Most interesting to this reviewer was Liv Holm's paper profiling ALM applications. As Holm states, it may be irrelevant to users exactly where information resides – they just want access! Imagine you are a historian and can seamlessly access library, archive and museum full‐text material related to your topic.

Workshops reports cover: digital libraries; a common conceptual model for ALM; the ICOM/CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model; metadata; library consortia: system management; cultural heritage; archiving e‐documents; identification of e‐resources; intelligent agents; and lessons learned from web searching experience in design of an intelligent library system. National progress reports are given for Albania, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and the Ukraine.

In addition, there is a brief description of ELAG, statements by sponsors, and a select, annotated bibliography by Maria Witt on ALM convergence. There are numerous clear diagrams and screen displays (some simply PowerPoint slides), and as a bonus, facsimiles of rare books and colour reproductions of paintings with a bibliophile theme. Like most conference packets, there is a dispersal of theme and no index. Most of the papers are frustratingly too brief. There are some unwieldy appendices and mis‐translations in the texts: some originals/translations have different content; others are not translated. And there are few papers from Germany or Britain.

This volume is a useful snapshot of state‐of‐the‐art ALM projects in Europe (up to 2000), notably in library automation, digital libraries, and media convergence. More importantly, it stimulates serious discussion of how different kinds of information repositories can – and in the digital age, must inevitably – relate to each other.