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IDTF Annual Meeting, June 15, 2002

Council of Europe

The Council of Europe needed to be reassigned this year to a new liaison. As no one volunteered at midwinter, I decided to be the liaison. I contacted Tom Johnson of the Manhattan Publishing Co., who provided me with the following report:

Background of the Council of Europe: founded 194944 European countries are membersprincipal organs are Committee of (Foreign) Ministers, Parliamentary Assembly, Congress of Local and Regional Authoritiesplus (its offspring) the European Court of Human Rights.

Website: The home page for the Council of Europe
www.coe.int is comprehensive and offers direct links (left column) to sites for each of the above, which in turn offer many choices for obtaining documentation. Lower left menu on home page offers direct documentary links: i.e.

Human Rights case-law (HUDOC)

European Treaties

Library and Archives

Library catalogue (WebCat).

The website for Council of Europe publications
(after you click open the icon to reach the menu page) provides opportunities to choose the publications catalogue, list of new books, search topics, and also gives LINKS opening to a list of Document sites for the above mentioned organs and the Court of Human Rights (HUDOC), plus the 187 European Treaties and Conventions, along with a list of their "Signatures and Ratifications" (which no longer appears in print.)also provides a list of links to other Council sub-divisions.

Publications: over 300 works are published each year. The annual published catalogue is cumulativemonthly list of new publications is sent out by email. Of primary interest: texts of "European Conventions and Agreement"Resolutions of the Committee of Ministers,

Parliamentary Assembly's 4 official publication series, the Adopted Texts and Debates of the Congress; [the Reports of Judgments and Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights is not listed in the Catalogue and not published directly by the Council but by Heymanns,Germany, and is distributed by Manhattan Publishing Co., the Council of Europe's distributor for USA.]

A very comprehensive list with detailed description of the activities/ productions of various sections of the Council of Europe may be found in its annual publication quot;Activities of the Council of Europe: 2000 Report" [A4 format275 pages.).

Respectfully submitted by Marian Shaaban, liaison
International Labour Organization

Karen Lee from the Washington office of ILO has little news to report. The new 2002-2003 ILO Catalogue of Publications should arrive soon. The
Record of Proceedings, 89th Session is available on CD-ROMprice is $135.00.

The 90
^th International Labour Conference is taking place June 3-20, 2002. Reports and daily bulletins are posted on the web site at
.

The World Day Against Child Labour was observed June 12, 2002. See the web site at
for more information.

Several ILO publications and web sites were annotated for the Notable Documents column of
Journal of Government Information (publication pending in late 2002). The first title was also selected for
Library Journal’s Notable Documents column (May 2002):

Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling: Women in Management

Care Work: The Quest for Security

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour: IPEC

Towards the Goal of Full Employment: Trends, Obstacles and Policies

World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization

Respectfully submitted by Catherine Shreve, liaison
International Monetary Fund

The Library Network Web site
provides access to electronic and print collections. This year new Web sub-sites were introduced to consolidate the journal, newspaper and research paper collections and their subsets of full-text electronic collections:

E-research papers is a comprehensive list of 288 research, discussion, and working paper series, some of which are available full-text on the web.
They can also be viewed by country, region, or sector

E-newspapers
provides access to electronic versions of top newspapers from various countries.

E-journals,
containing links to all full-text electronic journals in the collection, included 2,047 titles by the end of 2001.

More than 100 Web sites were identified for a new e-statistics Web site to be launched this year.

The ‘Internet Resources’ Web site
pulls together basic reference sources, both free and commercial, that have been evaluated by research librarians for quality and relevance.

Vida Margaitis 5/31/02

Addenda:

I spoke with Barbara Perry/Librarian at IMF 6/7/02 (her phone 202-623-7021) and learned that she recently attended a Publishing Management Committee meeting. She can report that IMF clearly understands the desire for more electronic free information, but at the same time it has the awareness of the many countries in the world with either no internet or slow internet access. Therefore, it expects to continue publishing in paper for some time to come.

The Publication Section has established a depository system for developing countries only. Thus far it seems that it may be as few as two per country. The former Soviet Union and East Europe have already been granted depository status, as has Sri Lanka . Others will follow, though slowly, due to recent budget constraints in the IMF.

The Library intends to add about 20 pathfinders onto its website to include all developing countries and to provide electronic statistics by late this year.

Barbara Perry plans to retire before the end of the year, but her successor will have the same phone number.

6/7/02

Respectfully submitted by Vida Margaitis, liaison
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

The following OECD update has been provided by Matt Brosius.

FULLFILLMENT OPERATIONS:

As you may remember, we contracted out our fulfillment operation to Turpin one year ago. In the process of data transfer from the old system to the new, some records were lost or otherwise damaged, but we are happy to report that shipments now appear to be running much more smoothly than they have for a long time and that we are working on fixing the remaining problems. If you find you are no longer receiving periodicals you used to receive, or have any other problems, contact me or Suzanne Edam at the email addresses below, and we will try to get them resolved with Turpin.

As far as claims are concerned, we have filled many, many claims, and some periodical issues and books from 2000 and 2001 are now out of print. But if you have any outstanding items, again please contact Suzanne or me, and we will see what we can do. The number of claims we are receiving has recently declined significantly, and we think that is indicative that things are now going much better.

Those of you who are already subscribers to SourceOECD or who are GSO Plan holders have probably noticed that you are getting more than one shipment per month, and we are working with Turpin to try to improve the system so you only get one shipment and (for GSO holders) one invoice per month.

SOURCEOECD:

We are pleased to report that every month, the number of SourceOECD sessions and downloads increase. Among the new features we expect to be operational this fall are:

• URL's for individual book titles are scheduled to be available this fall.
• IEA energy statistics will be available on SourceOECD/Statistics this fall. There will be an additional charge for the IEA data.
• OECD Health Data will be made available on SourceOECD/Statistics this summer. Because this data is not in Beyond20/20 format, and many of the data points are calculated on the fly by the OECD Health Data software, we plan to post the entire OECD Health Data software and data on SourceOECD. Users will have to download the software and program and install it locally to access the data. We expect it will be added to the SourceOECD/Statistics package for no additional charge.
• We expect to be able to offer librarians user data by the end of the year.
• Work is currently being done to increase access speed to SourceOECD, including the installation by Ingenta of upgraded software and putting SourceOECD on a new server.

We are also making an effort to have the renewal process work better and have renewal notices that are easier to understand.

As always, if you have any problems or comments, please contact us.

Matt Brosius - OECD Washington Center


Head of Center for Marketing and Administration 2001 L Street NW Suite 650 Washington DC 20036-4922
Matt.brosius@oecd.org

Suzanne Edam - OECD Washington Center Marketing Officer 2001 L Street NW Suite 650 Washington DC 20036-4922
suzanne.edam@oecd.org

Readex

Indexing and retro AccessUN. (est. 7400 documents across 1946-1948) indexing will be extended to early September. We're projecting a September 7th completion date. If we're able to accomplish this faster we will make every attempt to do so.

UNConnections - we continue to monitor the UN Wire, and our incoming UN documents in order to find areas where we can concentrate our full-text.

UNConnections has been well received by small colleges, public libraries, & prep schools.

Readex will sponsor its 20th Annual International Documents Workshop this fall. (Sept 26-29, Chester, Vermont)

Respectfuly submitted by Barb Mann
United Nations

The successful implementation of the new Official Document System (ODS) in early 2002 was one of the organization’s most significant achievements in information dissemination. The Dag Hammarskjöld Library at UN Headquarters continues to improve ODS by rapidly adding pre-1993 documentation.

According to UN Depository Libraries Officer, Kikko Maeyama, the UN Publications Board has approved the creation of a system akin to ODS that will provide PDF copies of sales publications. The system should be operational by the end of 2002. The cost of access is currently unknown, but Ms. Maeyama stresses that she will seek favorable terms for depositories.

A March 2002 report released by the Committee on Information, Reorientation of United Nations Activities in the Field of Public Information and Communications: Report of the Secretary General, evaluates the activities of the Department of Public Information (see A/AC.198/2002/2). With regard to publications, for example, it reveals that some of the organization’s most important titles run large deficits. The cost of producing the UN’s most important reference source, the Yearbook of the United Nations, is $1.5 million annually or $435 per copy. Little of this money is recouped because most copies are distributed freely. The United Nations Chronicle, which is produced at a cost of $1.1 million annually, also runs a large deficit. There are currently only 9,000 subscribers to the English edition and fewer to the other editions. The Department is attempting to increase the influence of this publication by placing its contents as syndicated features in periodicals throughout the world. The report stresses that the views of member states will determine the future of these publications.

The UNSTATS interface has been significantly enhanced. Amy West of the University of Minnesota points out the following improvements:

• Data dead ends are eliminated. When data is unavailable, the country, series, or time period simply does not display.
• Information previously shown on separate screens has been integrated into one.
• In the Advanced Data Selection path, the user’s choices are displayed in the subsequent screen.
• Advanced Data Selection has been integrated into other access paths, so that users can move from Basic to Advanced without reestablishing parameters.

Respectfully submitted by David Griffiths, liaison
World Trade Organization

In early April depository libraries received a letter from Jean-Guy Carrier, WTO Information & Media Relations Division, indicating that effective May 2002, the scale of the WTO depository library program would be significantly reduced. Each member country is now allowed to designate one depository library. The designated depository for the United States is the Gifts & Exchange Division of the Library of Congress. Former depository libraries are eligible for a discount on current WTO imprints.

The WTO website continues to be the single best source for WTO documents and publications. For example, the protocols of accession, as well as related schedules of commitments for both the PRC and Chinese Taipei, are now available for downloading from the WTO website in compressed format at:

Also, NGO documents and position papers addressing WTO activities are being posted. Examples include IFLA’s position paper on the World Trade Organization.

Two recent articles of interest to users of WTO materials are:

• Marci Hoffman.&International economic law and the Internet: content, quality and research methods.
  Journal of International Economic Law,&March 2001&(Vol.&4,&No. 1), pp. 231-244.
• Juan M Mesa.&Legal and documentary research at WTO: the new documents on-line database.
  Journal of International Economic Law,&March 2001&(Vol.&4,&No. 1), pp. 245-259.

Respectfully submitted by Chuck Eckman, liaison