Minutes of the meeting held on 23 April 2004

Present: G. Veneziano (Chairman) (GV); A. Hollier (Secretary) (AH); C. Onions (CO);

R. Bray (RB); M. Desnyder-Ivesdal (MD-I); J-M. Laurent (J-ML); R. Rattazzi (RR); H. Schönbacher (HS); F. Thizy (FT); F. Rabier (FR); D. Schinzel (DS)

Apologies:

F. Costa (FC); J. Karlson-Forestier (JK-F); G. Lindecker (GL); C. Pettenati (CP)

Agenda (as approved at the meeting)

1. Minutes of last meeting (ARCH-COM-2003-04)

2. Chairman’s report (G. Veneziano)

3. Progress report October 2003 - March 2004 (A. Hollier)

4. Photo captions project (D. Schinzel)

5. Meeting with R. Aymar and J. Engelen (G. Veneziano)

6. AOB

7. Future of the Archive Committee and Next meeting

1. Minutes of last meeting (ARCH-COM 2003-04)

The minutes were approved.

2. Chairman’s report (G. Veneziano)

The Chairman welcomed members to what he expected to be quite a short meeting. The main issues would be covered under points 4 and 5 of the agenda. He reported that there had been no real progress on the question concerning the Microcosm historic objects collection, which had been discussed at the last meeting. It had been felt that a necessary first step was to assess the collection to decide which items should be preserved, but GV had not yet succeeded in arranging for a competent person to carry out this task. The Chairman also welcomed back the archivist who had been absent for several months for medical reasons.

3. Progress report October 2003 – March 2004 (A. Hollier)

Concerning the Archive team, AH reported that the post of Archive Assistant had been advertised as a local staff post; the selection board had taken place on 22 April, and it was hoped that the present incumbent, Sandrine Reyes, would be offered the post. AH explained that she was currently working part-time, following an illness, and apologised to DROs who had had any difficulty in contacting her.

There have been nearly 900 new entries to the Archive catalogue over the last six months, compared to 625 for the previous 6 months, and 1,000 in the six months before that. The collections treated have been mainly small ones concerning various CERN experiments and detectors. A few new collections were received, including some files of the Director of Research, and of former D-G, Chris Llewellyn Smith.

Just over 150 enquiries were answered over the last 6 months, compared with around 60 for the previous six-month period. Almost all were requests for specific documents, and this total includes assistance to the library in a project to make CERN committee documents available electronically. No visiting researchers used the Archive over this period.

A safety inspection of the Archive storage area was carried out by C. Griggs (SC/GS); no problems were reported.

4. Photo captions project (D. Schinzel)

D. Schinzel recapped that members of this project had been selected from among retired staff members continuing their research activity at CERN. Sixteen had accepted, but many of these people had also been drafted in to help with preparations for the 50^th Anniversary, and no longer had time for the photo captions project. Only about four were still working regularly on the photo captions.

Partly for the reason above, progress is much slower than DS had hoped. So far all the photos (b&w and colour) for one year, 1974, have been viewed and 100 photos have been selected to go on the database. As there is no longer a service available at CERN to scan these photos, two secretaries in PH department (D. Akina and S. Ferrand-Cousins) have volunteered to carry out the work. The only scanner available to them is very old, and extremely laborious to use, unlike more modern models; it is also currently broken. Generally no more than two photos are processed in an afternoon.

A better scanner would increase the rate of progress, but would be quite expensive. A new machine would cost around 19,000 chf. Three quotes have also been obtained for leasing equipment; this costs around 630 chf per month (the contract would be for three years). DS has already spoken to CP and GV on this subject, and it is now to be decided whether it is appropriate to buy or lease a scanner, or to pass the work to a firm in Geneva, and where funding can be obtained for any of these solutions. AH wondered if it would be possible to co-operate with other potential users of a scanner (leased or purchased), otherwise out-sourcing might be a better option.

DS also mentioned the possible conflict of interests if photos wanted for this project were also wanted for the 50^th anniversary preparations, but said that measures had been taken to minimise any inconvenience.

Update from DS, 11 May: half of the selected photos have now been scanned.

Action: Decide on appropriate action concerning the scanner (GV and DS)

5. Meeting with R. Aymar and J. Engelen (G. Veneziano / B. Pollermann)

GV recapped 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), had 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. At the last Archive Committee meeting GV had stated his opinion that further attempts should be delayed until the new Management structure was in place. Accordingly, he and BP met with R. Aymar and J. Engelen on 21 April 2004. The meeting lasted about an hour, and had been a fruitful discussion with many questions asked. GV’s impression was of genuine concern about this issue from CERN’s new top management, and a willingness to implement a solution.

GV recapped the main points in the report of the Working Group on Long-Term Electronic Archiving:

The need for a document handling policy to control where and in what format CERN documents were to be kept (the two recommended CERN systems being EDMS and CDS)
The need to consider options for e-mail archiving
The need to consider options for Web archiving

The D-G was particularly interested in the first point and requested a clear proposal on how documents might be split between EDMS and CDS. AH suggested that it would be important to base this on an investigation of how people currently preferred to manage their documents. In answer to a question from HS as to why two systems were recommended instead of just one, GV replied that there had been considerable discussion on this in the Working Group, and it was felt that trying to impose a single option at CERN would be too restrictive (though possibly this might one day become the preferred option). AH added that some Group Members had said that they placed the same document in both CDS and EDMS because these systems served slightly different purposes (CDS being often preferred for sharing documents with a wide public).

The D-G was more cautious about the second point, not, for example, favouring a solution where e-mail of any persons was archived by default.

On the third point, archiving of Web pages, there was considerable discussion but no way forward yet agreed.

Action: Prepare a memo summarising the 21.04.04 meeting (BP & GV)

Action: Submit preliminary proposals for a document handling policy to the DG (BP & GV)

Action: Look into the technical feasibility of an archiving system for e-mail (BP & GV)

6. AOB

There was no other business.

7. Future of the Archive Committee and Next meeting

Following the new D-G’s wish to reduce the number of Committees, three boards - the Scientific Information Policy Board (library), the CERN Reports Editorial Board (yellow reports), and the Archive Committee are to be merged. The implementation details have not yet been decided, but GV suggested that a small core of the existing Archive Committee, maybe four or five members might join the New Committee. He felt that the priority was to maintain momentum on the current major projects, so membership should reflect this; possible members, for example, being himself, A. Hollier, B. Pollermann and D. Schinzel. AH mentioned a slightly different approach which had been outlined to her by CP, whereby a reduced version of the current Archive Committee might continue as a Working Group of the SIPB. GV emphasised that nothing was yet decided. He added that the current network of DROs would have to be reallocated following the reorganisation of CERN, but the wish was to maintain continuity where possible.

Action: Reallocate DRO posts, in agreement with the Heads of Departments (GV & AH)

Action: Finalise the future form of the Archive Committee and inform members (GV & AH)

Action: Fix date of next meeting in agreement with members (GV & AH)