Conference participants divided into workshops based on regional groupings: Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, a single participant from Egypt, and Asia and the Pacific. The workshops discussed a set of topics, including the problems facing custodians of documentary heritage and dangers to that heritage; the need to establish Memory of the World committees at the national and regional levels; priorities in safeguarding regional documentary heritage; enhancing access; raising awareness of documentary heritage in populations; stimulating awareness and expanding bilateral and multilateral relationships at government level; developing regional plans; and outlining funding and marketing strategies to generate resources to finance the programme. The chair of each group brought proposals and suggestions to the plenary session, with ten-minute reports including proposals for action. The plenary session concluded with a series of appeals for action from a number of countries and regions, principally those which had suffered, or were still suffering the effects of armed conflict.

The chairman of the European regional workshop, Jonas Palm, and Peter Anderson from the National Archives of Scotland, put forward a number of proposals based on the discussions held in the workshop, as follows:

• In view of the vulnerability of the documentary heritage, both through fragility and adverse environmental conditions, we should: 1. Increase understanding of deterioration processes endangering the documentary heritage by the support of specialised research programmes and foster the development of appropriate conservation and preservation processes; and 2. strengthen endeavours to disseminate knowledge of handling, storage, preservation and restoration through publications, training programmes, seminars and summer schools. We Europeans perhaps feel that the tropical countries have more conservation problems but we should not be complacent about the climatic conditions in our own countries, which also face problems with at-risk materials such as audio-visual records (wax cylinders, and acetate tapes and films); and wood pulp paper.

• As there are at the moment very few European national committees at the moment, national committees should be formed. As the national committees are not yet functioning, setting up of regional committees would be premature. For the same reason, selection criteria cannot yet be evaluated until after they have been used by national committees.

• We should seek all means of attracting extra budgetary funding by 1. direct appeal to public and private sources; 2. stimulating as much public interest as possible in the programme; and 3. use the programme itself to raise the profile of the documentary heritage at government level. Membership of the programme itself gives ammunition to individual groups and committees to go back to their governments and say, 'Look what we're doing, look at the support we've got from UNESCO, what support can you provide for us?'.

Peter Anderson also spoke on the issue of enhancing access. He noted the plans for a Scottish Archival Network, intended to link together all institutions holding archival records of Scottish relevance both within and outside Scotland, and suggested that this might be an appropriate aim on a European or worldwide basis.

Virginia Betancourt reported for Latin America and the Caribbean, as follows:

• We encourage institutions to focus on collections at greatest risk, with the most appropriate preservation practices and technologies available, emphasising basic preventative measures, space, climate and environments, care and handling and cleanliness.

• We also recommend to encourage institutions and international associations to give priority support to interdisciplinary and inter-institutional projects with comments to training and translation of documents.

• We propose that national committees be comprised of institutions that contain significant collections, including both private and public institutions; and later establish sub-regional committees to focus on issues unique to specific areas, and have a federation of national regional committees on a progressive basis.

• We also recommend to maximise available human resources in regional areas to provide subject expertise in preservation and access techniques.

• We also discussed the matter of public and governmental awareness, especially in Third World countries. That is very important, through cooperative exhibits, printing, providing editors with rare material to be included in their publications that we hold in our collections, and also by promoting hands-on experience in preservation through workshops.

The chairman for Africa, Musila Musembi, reported for his workshop, indicating first of all that preservation in Africa is very varied, ranging from Third World level to developed institutions, making it a pressing need to save the African component of the Memory of the World programme. A special appeal for Rwanda highlighted the problems of some African countries. The African workshop suggested that there is a need to form national commissions to stimulate awareness of the need to preserve documentary heritage, as awareness will enable librarians and archivists to be more prepared to commit funds and resources to preservation and access, and to approach damage with more courage. There is need for national commissions to identify priorities in preservation and access, and to stimulate regional activities, including training. IFLA and ICEA have formed a committee called GIPA in Africa whose mission is to promote and coordinate programmes and activities directed towards the preservation and conservation of documentary materials.

Fathi Saleh of Egypt gave an individual set of proposals in the absence of a workshop for the Arab States. His proposals included:

• In addition to national and regional committees, a focus person should be appointed to coordinate regional activities with the help of UNESCO and the Memory of the World programme. Once regional and national committees are operating, regional and national registers should be used to develop priorities.

• Fundraising efforts should be based on identified priorities - if we ask for money we should ask for a specific thing to be done within a specific time frame. A campaign to raise awareness of the programme should also be a priority of national committees.

The Asia and Pacific region's report was given by Ray Edmondson, who made the point that Asia and the Pacific are in fact several regions: South-East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, China, North Asia, and the Pacific.

He identified the major problems facing the programme in his region as follows:

• In tropical countries the climate is a major problem; many countries in the region are tropical. There are the basic financial issues, the lack of information, lack of skills and therefore the need for training. There is also the diversity of language and culture, within individual countries and within regions. The colonial backgrounds of many countries also pose problems, particularly in repatriating material sent to the colonising countries, or in receiving copies or original material. Many countries have a lack of basic infrastructure and harmonised legislation to support preservation of and access to cultural material. Short and long term plans are necessary to develop a Memory of the World awareness.

• The Asia and Pacific workshop envisaged no problems in establishing Memory of the World national committees, in some cases using existing structures. The membership and construction of such committees is important - the right interests should be represented from relevant institutions, or even people from the private sector who could support projects. Financial support from UNESCO for some of the committees would be vital because of lack of infrastructure.

• Priorities must be defined by each country, which should discuss them with logical smaller groupings within the regions. There is a need for policy standards and perspectives appropriate to the country concerned.

• Seminars at national levels to include relevant organisations would be an important way of communicating the message. Promotional work by exhibitions and outreach could include the Internet. Politicians must be sensitised to the problems; and users educated to access collections. Publication of collections could also meet the outreach goal.

• The degree to which Memory of the World is likely to release funds from both governments and sponsorship sources around the world will depend on its credibility. Its credibility will in turn depend very heavily on the kind of central coordination that can be delivered by UNESCO headquarters.

After discussion of the points raised by the workshop reports, appeals from several countries whose documentary heritage is under threat from armed conflict were heard, as follows:

Afghanistan : The European delegation should take some responsibility for preservation of materials from Asian countries also, because when the material or documents in Asian countries is digitised, the first countries to use the materials from Asian countries will be the European countries, because they are already established and use the materials first. The Asian delegation had rightly included priority for endangered collections, 'because right now in Afghanistan, our collections are in danger, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe some other day will be out of use, maybe they'll be burnt already. UNESCO should do something to preserve them right now, not later, not yesterday, not the day after.'

Jan Lyall (Australia) responded to the delegate from Afghanistan: 'I'd just like to mention one possible strategy for assisting in the development of regional programs, and that is in the IFLA survey that has already been, I guess you could say through its first phase, we were asking questions about the collections held by libraries primarily, that they had that were of significance to other countries. Now that information is going to be published and it will also be provided electronically through UNESCO. I think the identification of these collections will stimulate the development of regional groups so people can actually see what collections are held elsewhere in the world that are of significance to them, and that may well lead to new regional groupings, not ones that are apparent according to geographical distribution, but it may be that just two libraries on opposite sides of the world identify that they have collections in common, and I think that will provide a new opportunity for developing additional regional projects.'

Bosnia-Herzegovina: 'What can actually be done in the situation in which the documentary heritage of a particular country is in danger I don't really know, because we have several conventions which deal with the protection of cultural heritage in case of war conflict. I don't know if it is possible to state somewhere that this meeting - first meeting of International Conference on Memory of the World - urges European and other libraries to provide any possible assistance to the National Library of Bosnia-Herzegovina for the recovery of the documentary heritage of Bosnia-Herzegovina by using their own collections. It will help us to reconstitute the collections of the National Library of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The main answer to these two concerns and these appeals is solidarity. And solidarity has to be organised and solidarity has to be streamlined so that it leads to some efficient results.'

Cyprus: An appeal for copies of missing ecclesiastical records. 'If they could help us find out what happened to them or if we could have them back because the Republic of Cyprus has no access or control to that area.'

Rwanda: 'We have consequences of war, genocide and political killings, but we have also a recovery plan. Briefly, in my country, agents working in the national archives are now dead or exiled, there is just one agent still at work, you have a paper, I think it has been distributed, if you read it, it is terrible, so I launch an appeal to help Rwanda for restoring what can be restored and for fundraising to build up our memory which is lost.'

A general appeal by Rodrick Mabomba, National Library Service, Malawi, for developing countries:

'I don't know whether members present here are thoroughly aware of the problems that are being faced by librarians, archivists and museum curators in the Third World. I suppose we believe, should believe that the Memory of the World is made of its parts and if we cannot have all the parts preserved we will have very serious gaps, very serious dents in the memory of the world. So UNESCO, I suppose, will have to take care, supporting those areas where there is conflict in making sure that they recover or preserve whatever they have, but at the same time making sure that those countries which cannot manage on their own to preserve or conserve their memories, to be assisted so that they have the ability to preserve. When it comes to the problem of conservation or preservation, we find ourselves very low among the expenditure priorities, and I think this is an area where, as much as we may try to market, to sensitise the administrators in our part of the world, it will in the end require significant assistance from the north to enable us to contribute to the preservation of our memory.'