Archives, Memory and Knowledge - 15th International Congress on Archives, Vienna, 23-27 August 2004

Citation

McLeod, J. (2005), "Archives, Memory and Knowledge - 15th International Congress on Archives, Vienna, 23-27 August 2004", Records Management Journal, Vol. 15 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/rmj.2005.28115aac.001

Archives, Memory and Knowledge - 15th International Congress on Archives, Vienna, 23-27 August 2004

Archives, Memory and Knowledge – 15th International Congress on Archives, Vienna, 23-27 August 2004

Keywords: Archives management, ConferencesReview DOI: 10.1108/095656905010585448

Taking place every four years the International Congress on Archives is a huge event and as a first-time delegate and speaker it is its scale that makes the first impression. With more than 200 papers, 2000 delegates from many countries across the world, an exhibitors hall, a informal archives salon and a varied social programme the Austrian State Archives organising committee, the International Council on Archives’ (ICA) and all others involved in its organisation should be congratulated. And with so many papers it is impossible to review the conference content in any depth or breadth. Instead what follows is an overview of the nature of the conference, papers attended and links to the detail aimed particularly at those who have never attended it.

The conference revolved around three key themes: archives and memory, archives and knowledge, and archives and society. The highlight of the opening session was a paper by Hans Tuppy, an internationally renowned biochemist, exploring the scientific phenomenon of memory. Departing from its more usual structure of large plenary sessions, the programme comprised a daily keynote speaker followed by multiple parallel sessions revolving around the three themes. Inevitably this meant difficult decisions had to be made when more than one interesting paper was being presented concurrently in different sessions.

Attendance at the different sessions was mixed, some being held in very large rooms with small audiences and others being scheduled in relatively small rooms meaning attendees found themselves standing or even sitting on the floor to hear the speakers. This was particularly true of the session chaired by Sue McKemmish on a number of related research projects on metadata. Given the significance of this work and the number of presenters it needed to two sessions to fully share and discuss the latest news from the Monash clever recordkeeping metadata project, one of the Interpares 2 projects, the San Diego Supercomputing Center’s persistent archives technology projects and the ISO metadata work. Some of the keynote papers attracted disappointingly small crowds, sessions about national/international developments in education for records management and archives attracted more than the educators and sessions on managing electronic records and on standards were very well attended. Andrew McDonald and Ivar Fonnes shared details of the philosophy and broad content on the new ICA workbook on e-records management in a most interesting way rather than a section-by-section account. The questions that followed were testing and demonstrated the challenges already being tackled by some organisations and the desire for more detailed guidance on the complexities of electronic records management. The final version of the workbook is due to be published at the end of 2004.

There were many networking opportunities and many people willing to share their knowledge, discuss issues and concerns and make introductions. It was good to meet old and new faces alike.

The ICA is hosting a comprehensive website for the conference. Prior to attending it was quite difficult to get a good feel for the daily programme, the layout being very detailed but not presented in a particularly user-friendly browsable manner. However, the final programme available immediately before the conference proved to be an invaluable route through the many sessions. Full details of the speakers and presentations, including photographs, can be found at www.wien.ica.org The best papers of those submitted for consideration will be published in the ICA journal Comma.

The 16th International Congress on Archives will be held in Kuala Lumpur in 2008 – definitely a date for the diary.

Julie McLeodPrincipal Lecturer, School of Informatics, Northumbria University, UK