This paper reports on a questionnaire survey of 16 national libraries designed to clarify how national libraries attempt to justify their web archiving activities. Results indicate they envisage that a) the benefits brought about by their initiatives are greater than the overall costs, b) the costs imposed on libraries are greater than the costs…

This report provides an overview of selected key national and multinational initiatives in digital preservation occurring outside North America. It examines digital preservation initiatives in four countries--Australia, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom--as well as related multinational initiatives. The initiatives were chosen in…

The welfare of mathematics, as a scientific discipline and as a service provider for other sciences and technology, will, in the future, very much depend on how well the profession continues to enrich, to preserve, and to archive the mathematical scholarly literature, its common heritage. It will also depend on the fact that the mathematical…

Papers on interlibrary loan and document delivery presented at the 1986 IFLA general conference include: (1) "Preservation and/or Availability of Older Literature--an Approach to the Problems, Needs, and Solutions" (Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, West Germany); (2) "From Decentralization to Centralization--Document Delivery in France in…

By means of close examination of the records created and accumulated by individual architects and architectural firms in France, this Records and Archives Management Programme (RAMP) study is intended to call attention to the basic documentary values of these architectural records and to provide practical guidance to help ensure their preservation…

Papers on rare and precious books and documents, which were presented at the 1983 International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) conference, include: (1) "Report on the State of Work on the Union Catalogue of Incunabula (GW) and Progress in the International Cataloguing of Incunabula" by Ursula Altmann (East Germany); (2)…

The International Project of the Commission on Preservation and Access was begun in June 1988 to explore the feasibility of creating an international database of preserved materials. Its main goals are to: (1) determine the extent to which preservation records exist in other countries; (2) identify the difficulties in converting records to…

Public bodies hold a range of information and content ranging from demographic, economic and meteorological data to art works, historical documents and books. Given the availability of information and communication technologies (ICTs) public sector information can play an important role in producing innovative value-added services and goods.…

In 2004-2005, The National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) conducted a survey for the IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Bibliographic Standards (ICABS)--an alliance founded jointly by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), the Conference of Directors of National Libraries (CDNL) and the national libraries of…

This annual report describes the activities of the Commission on Preservation and Access, a private, nonprofit organization that works through existing institutions and groups to foster, develop, and support collaboration among libraries and allied organizations in order to ensure the preservation of the published and documentary record in all…

Six papers on information technology, the development of information systems for Third World countries, handling of sound recordings, and library automation were presented at the 1984 IFLA conference. They include: (1) "Handling, Storage and Preservation of Sound Recordings under Tropical and Subtropical Climatic Conditions" (Dietrich…