After some discussion with the ica.org webmaster at the ICA Congress in Kuala Lumpur we have decided to move the ICA-AtoM project discussion list to GoogleGroups as we are not able to get all the functionality we require to facilitate the beta launch and testing in the near term with the current ica.org discussion list.

All subscribers to this list should receive an invite to join the GoogleGroup list in the next couple of days (as soon as Google approves my bulk subscription). Once you have accepted the invite you are able to post messages.

A common problem reported by conservation professionals and researchers is that they don't know that someone, somewhere has already produced the information that they need as part of a student research project. Students' bibliographical references can be extremely useful but are rarely seen outside their courses.

During the first week of May, the ICA-AtoM project held its first Steering Committee meeting at the Dutch Archiefschool in Amsterdam. In attendance were:

• David Leitch, (incoming) ICA Secretary-General
• Perrine Cannavagio, ICA Deputy Secretary-General
• George MacKenzie, Keeper of the Records of Scotland
• Abdullah El Reyes, Director, United Arab Emirates Center for Documentation & Research
• Fareed Hassan Al Marzouqi, Director of Support Services, United Arab Emirates Center for Documentation & Research
• David McGlennon, Director of Strategic Planning, United Arab Emirates Center for Documentation & Research
• Peter Bruce, Chief Technology Officer, Library and Archives of Canada
• Peter Horsman, Director of Research, Dutch Institute of Archival Education & Research (Archiefschool)
• Peter Van Garderen, Software Release Manager, ICA-AtoM Project (Artefactual Sytems)

We reviewed the ICA-AtoM feature roadmap for the 1.0 beta release due in July 2008 and the stable 1.2 release due in June 2009. We discussed the preparations for the ICA-AtoM sessions at the upcoming ICA Congress in Kuala Lumpur, including the preparation of a demo CD to be made available to all attendees. The Steering Committee also discussed copyright, license, trademarks and the project's governance structure. We prepared a draft organizational chart (see attached). This chart, along with the membership of the ICA-AtoM Steering Committee, will be finalized at the Steering Committee's next meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

Published here are the unedited papers, lecture notes and PowerPoint presentations of the majority of contributions to the Seals Conservation Research Congress held at Merton College, Oxford, UK in 2007 courtesy of ICA and the Society of Archivists (UK) and organised by the Bodleian Library Conservation Dept.

A treatment survey template is attached with this posting. It has been drawn up by members of the international group of conservators who work on archival seals, and who collaborate under the aegis of the ICA (last meeting Oxford 2007) and by member Manuela Belli of Rome, who is completing a Masters thesis on seal conservation. The template is a simple table, published here in Microsoft Excel, into which conservators can input information about the methods they have used to conserve seals of all kinds. The table attached has a few worked examples inserted to assist.

Posted here is the text draft of a paper published by the UK Society of Archivists in autumn 2002 under the title Meeting the Montreal Protocol. It is posted for a member who requested such information but may also be of interest to others, perhaps especially archivists or librarians who have yet to meet the protocol's 2003 deadline to replace Halon fire suppression systems with approved alternatives.

Dear Colleagues,

Notes and materials from the symposium, “Human Rights Archives and Documentation: Transforming Ideas Into Practice,” hosted by the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut in March 2008, and co-sponsored by the Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research at Columbia University Libraries and the Center for Research Libraries Global Resources Network, are now available on the Dodd Center’s website. The direct link is below.

http://www.lib.uconn.edu/online/research/speclib/ASC/outreach/human_righ...

I have just posted an article on my blog about a pilot project that will be testing the ICA-AtoM software for use in a provincial union list of archival descriptions here in British Columbia, Canada.

http://archivemati.ca/2008/04/26/ica-atom-goes-provincial/

The article also contains some more current information about the status of the ICA-AtoM software development.

As well, on May 6-7, the first meeting of the ICA-AtoM Steering Committee will take place at the Dutch Archiefschool in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.