Personal Impressions from the Santiago Conference 1999

U nder this heading we will try to give delegates the opportunity to give a few reflexions on this conference, as a complementary summing up to the one made in the end of the event. We invite all delegates to take part. For a start we asked Alain Goossens of RTBF, Belgium. He has been a delegate at most of the conferences during the last years and has also been giving lectures and presentations himself. This year you can read about his project on transferring a card catalogue into an on-line database in a very inventive and low-cost way. You find it on our website.

1. What is your general impression from the Conference?

My general impression was really positive. I had very interesting talks with colleagues, and I do believe that a FIAT Conference is the best place to exchange a lot of professional information in a short period of time.

I do regret one thing : we were in South America, and I expected more contacts with Southern countries, that I never met before. Most people came from Europe, and the USA.

2. The most important for you to bring home to your archive, what was that?

When I went back to Brussels, I told to my staff that our daily work would change very fast in the years to come.

Now, in my archive department, about 80% of the working time of the archivists is analysis, and 20 % is documentary research. Progressively, we will be more and more helped in this work, through 'intelligent' software, availability of metadata, etc.

On the other hand, we will have more and more 'difficult' researches (the 'easy ones' will be done by the user him or herself). I believe that within the next five years, the proportion will become 20% analysis and 80 % research.

Alain Goossens, RTBF, Belgium

3. What do you expect from the next World Conference?

From my point of view, we have now two different worlds of archives : the rich one and the poor one.

In the rich world of archives (European countries, USA, Japan, etc.) the main problem is : how to make more and more money with TV archives, through on-line or near-line applications, international right clearance, decrease of indexation costs with use of automated software, etc.

In the poor world of archives (mainly -but not only- Africa), the main problem is : how to keep the archive alive in the next years, due to machine obsolescence, tape or film degradation, and lack of funding.

I really expect from the board of FIAT to improve the partnership between those two worlds. It is not only a question of patrimony, but also a commercial and economical deal. I know that our President and our General Secretary are totally aware of this situation, and really want to improve the representation of Southern countries in the FIAT.

So, for me, The Vienna World Conference will be a success if it is truly A WORLD Conference, and not only a Technological show from richest broadcasters and manufacturers.

In other words, I think that we, as archive managers, should never forget that our main task is to ensure the long term preservation of archive material. FIAT was created to help archives in this task. Let's go (back) to the roots of FIAT, and try to reach this goal worldwide.