Clearing House Workshop : Lisa Krolak's Report

Paris Clearing House Workshop
UNESCO, 14-16 November 2001

1. Background

The first Paris Clearinghouse Workshop took place in 1997 as an attempt to strengthen co-operation and networking in the area of UNESCO's information management, archives and libraries. The second Paris Clearinghouse Workshop for UNESCO Librarians took place at UNESCO Headquarters from November 14-16, 2001. 27 UNESCO Librarians from all over the world attended the workshop including my colleagues from UNEVOC Bonn, IBE Geneva, IIEP Paris and IITE Moscow.

2. Objectives and overall impression

The workshop gave an overview of existing information services at UNESCO Headquarters and gave all present UNESCO field offices an opportunity to present themselves and their information services. Therefore the objective was to make us aware of the work that others are doing, to give us ideas for our own work and to help us networking in the future. It was an extremely rich and interesting programme. At several points it has been stated how much our profession has changed during the last years and how many things have happened since the last meeting in 1997. This year's workshop was clearly dominated by the developments and the use of Information and Communication Technologies.
I am highly appreciative for having had the opportunity to attend this excellent workshop as it opened my eyes to all the work that is done at Headquarters and in the field in the area of information management. My special thanks goes to Denise Pélissier (Chief / Information, Library and Archives Section) for the hard work in organizing this important workshop and inviting us.

3. Major Presentations

On the first day we became an overview of UNESCO information services, the main library, archives, the UNESCO Knowledge Portal Project, the Information for All Programme and developments regarding Winisis.

The second day started with presentations of three main sectoral documentation centers at Headquarters and in Paris and the rest of the day all participants introduced their field units documentation centers.

On the third day we have discussed Internet issues, UNESDOC (the full text database of UNESCO documents), UNESBIB (the bibliographic database of UNESCO documents), interagency activities, publishing and we were introduced to further documentation centres.

4. Interesting Points

I came back from this conference with a wealth of information that will be extremely useful for our work in the Documentation Centre. There are issues that are particularly important to Imke, Alfred or the Publication Centre, but for the purpose of this mission report I will just share those points that I consider to be important or interesting for everybody. I welcome anybody to have a further look at the documentation and presentations that I took with me.

Patrick Huby has introduced GenIsis, a new tool that enables an ISIS database to appear on the web. It can be downloaded for free from ftp://ftp.unesco.org/pub/winisis/genisis. Successful examples are the Human Rights Institutes Database and the Peace Institutes Database.

ProQuest: We have access to this biggest full-text periodical database with 3000 journals via the UNESCO Intranet. The contact person at HQ is Liane Barsony.

Headquarters plans an Information For All project in 2002-2007. Further information can be found under http://www.unesco.org/webworld/ifap

UNESBIB gives the bibliographic reference to UNESCO Documents and publications (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ulis/unesbib.html). It has been recommended to introduce a field in UNESBIB to show which information centre has which book.

UNESDOC is the full text database of UNESCO documents (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ulis).

UNESCO Publishing made a survey that showed that putting a publication full-text online increases the sale of the printed version by 35%. Reasons might be that people do not want to wait all the time that it can take to download a book and want to save the price for the ink that you need to print it out. Their policy is that the first three months you can consult a new book full text online and print it out. After three months you can print out a new book for half the price of the printed version.

At the UNESCO Publishing site you can also access a videobank and a photobank.

The IBE Thesaurus has been updated with the help of our Documentation Centre in 2000. The last printed version is from 1990. IBE hopes to put the new version on the web as soon as possible. The last printed version of the UNESCO Thesaurus is from 1995, but the updated version is on CD-ROM and on-line.

Liane Barsony introduced the UN Consortium. 55 Libraries participate in the sharing of acquisitions of electronic resources.

5. Follow-up activities

The Clearinghouse hopes to held the next Paris Clearinghouse Workshop in 2003. In the meantime they will set-up a Listserv of all UNESCO Librarians to enable us to share comments, questions and ideas on a regular basis.

6. Implications for the work of UIE and the Documentation Centre

• The fast developments of information technologies and the different capabilities of implementing them can be observed when comparing the services of different information centres. The issue of the workshop was not anymore 'if you have a website', it was 'how interactive is your website'; it was not 'if you have your catalogue online', it is 'how many publications you provide full-text online'. UNESCO Bangkok has made a very impressive demonstration of their online presence which I invite everybody to check at: http://www.unescobkk.org/ips/index.htm
  (When comparing their services with our services, please keep in mind that their information centre has a staff of 3 professional librarians and 7 assistants). It is obvious that we need to concentrate more on constantly updating our website to make it attractive and relevant.
  
  
• As the areas of documenation and publication are complementing each other, I will look for an even closer co-operation between our two departments in the future. People often approach me with questions relating to publications as for many people libraries and publications are similar subjects.
  
  
• We were urged to make sure that all our documents are sent to the HQ Archives and the HQ Library in electronic (PDF file from the first to the last word) and printed form. The 2128 Circular gives guidelines.
  
  
• To make our list of online publications more attractive on our website, we should consider the digitalization of front covers for the publications list on our website.
  
  
• UNESCO Bangkok introduced a Training Package on Library Automation for
  Developing Countries. For the 6 weeks full-time course for trained librarians, 3 professionals and 11 consultants worked 1,5 years on developing it. The amount of work needed to prepare such a training gave me a more realistic view on what is needed to introduce a training course for ALADIN members.
  
  
• I have been surprised to hear about an UNESCO Intranet, but have learned by now from Alfred that everybody can access it at UIE under http://intranet.unesco.org. Imke and I will search all those extra resources in the future and make sure that all colleagues learn about useful links for their work such as ProQuest, online journals, translator systems, dictionaries.

Lisa Krolak
28. November 2001