Minutes of the meeting held on 25 April 2003

Present: G. Veneziano (Chairman) (GV); X. Daney (XD); A. Hollier (Secretary) (AH); C. Pettenati (CP); J. A. Rubio (JAR);

F. Costa (FC); C. Nuttall (CN); A. Placci (AP); F. Thizy (FT)

Apologies:

A. Ball; H. F. Hoffmann; J. Karlson-Forestier; L. A. Gaume; M. Desnyder-Ivesdal; J-M. Laurent; P. Mage; S. Maio; C. Montuelle; C. Onions; T. Pettersson; B. Pollermann; D. Schinzel

Agenda (as approved at the meeting)

1. Minutes of last meeting (ARCH-COM 2002-04)

2. Chairman’s report (G. Veneziano)

3. Progress report October 2002 - March 2003 (A. Hollier)

4. Photo captions project (A. Placci)

5. AOB

6. Next meeting

1. Minutes of last meeting (ARCH-COM 2002-04)

The minutes were approved.

2. Chairman’s report (G. Veneziano)

The Chairman said that one of the two main subjects on which he wished to report would be covered in point 4. The other concerned the issue of long-term archiving. GV began by recapping the situation to date (see also previous minutes). Bernd Pollermann, the Chairman of the Working Group on Long-Term Electronic Archiving (set up by the Director-General in June 2000), made his report to the Director-General on 11 September 2001. The presentation to the Management Board was delayed until 25 April 2002. On both occasions the report was very well received, but despite encouraging comments, no further action had been forthcoming. GV and BP followed up this matter with Jürgen May, and have had some preliminary discussion with him about it and prepared a memo outlining the main points, but there has been no further action.

GV asked if the Committee had any suggestions for next steps, and, in particular, whether it felt further action should be delayed until the new Management structure was in place. It was decided that it would be better to first make all possible efforts with the existing Management in order to benefit from their existing knowledge of the Working Group’s report. GV will contact L. Maiani again about this. JAR requested copies of some of the documents concerning this project and offered his support.

3. Progress report April – September 2002 (A. Hollier)

Concerning the Archive team, AH reported that Sandrine Reyes had been absent on maternity leave for most of the last six months, and that Maryse Moskofian (50%, progressive retirement) would be absent for most of the next six months. It had not proved possible to replace the previous student, as the selected candidate found a more suitable and better paid post elsewhere. AH will try again this autumn.

There have been nearly 1,000 new entries to the Archive catalogue over the last six months, compared to 2,000 for the previous 6 months, and 7,000 in the six months before that. The main CERN collections treated during this period include Directors of Research, SPSC and EEC.

Just over 70 enquiries were answered over the last 6 months, compared with around 55 for the previous six-month period, and 40 before that. Most were requests for specific documents, often for items that could not be found in the library, but three users have also visited the archive with more extensive requests. One of these was a student from the University of Grenoble researching for a planned thesis on international relations aspects of the history of CERN.

A major project during this period was a reorganisation of the archive storage area in order to gain more space. Part of the collection has been relocated to a new store room which was recently made available to the Archive (thanks to Corrado Pettenati and Jean-Loup Denblyden). The working area (tables, safes, photocopier, etc) has also been removed to this room and mobile racking installed in the area thus freed.

CN asked about fire detection equipment in the area, and suggested a meeting with R. Cambarrat to review safety measures. AH will arrange this, via the Divisional Safety Officer.

4. Photo captions project (A. Placci)

Following the decision at the last meeting, potential members of this project were selected from the list of retired staff members continuing their research activity at CERN. These were invited, in a letter from the Director-General, to join the project, and 16 accepted. AP reported that the resulting team shows a very good balance of the necessary know-how and skills. DS and AP are now looking for a suitable working environment. In order to avoid any obstacles to the work, they propose that photos, in batches of 2 or 3 years, will be borrowed from the Photographic section and kept in this lockable workspace to which the group members will have free access. The room should be furnished with three retro-illuminated viewing plates and magnifying glasses, as well as files for sorting the photos and stickers to identify photos that had already been treated. Possible rooms include 32/1-C02 and 500/S-002 (this is the office of one of the Archive staff, and will be free during her absence from June-October). The group will begin by covering the period 1975 – 1984, and photos will be examined for information in five categories: (a) experiments and detectors, (b) accelerators and R & D, (c) technologies, (d) civil engineering, and (e) VIPs and events. Data about the selected photographs will be filled in on standard caption forms.

JAR expressed his support and assured AP that the Group would receive full cooperation in their work; he suggested Mick Draper as their principal contact person.

CP agreed that money could be made available from the ETT/SI budget to buy the necessary equipment.

CN said that a number of interesting photos (mainly incidents but also other events) were held by the Fire Brigade.

5. AOB

None.

6. Next meeting

The next meeting is scheduled for:

Friday, October 31 at 2.30pm in room 513-1-027