Minutes of the Committee on Archival Legal Matters (CALM)
25-27 April 2001
Basel, Switzerland

Present: Granstrom, Chair; Le Pottier and Peterson, Secretaries; Abu Dayeh, Choy, Depoortere, Domarkas, Kartous, Mihalcea, Orrman, Papakin, Rinaldi Mariani, Schafer, Soufi, Stegni, Stepniak, and Zwicker, Members; and special guests Chu, Lundquist and Spankova.

Granstrom opened the meeting on April 25 at 9 a.m. The proposed agenda was adopted. The members then introduced themselves giving a short biography, describing their organization and outlining recent changes in archival laws.

Granstrom described the new CPM. There were three major changes after the Seville Congress: the committee membership was enlarged, the format for the next Congress was changed, and the CPM was enlarged and its structure changed. The old CPM consisted of five persons. The new CPM has fifteen members (portfolio holders), the Secretary General is chair, and the Treasurer and program officer are also members. The portfolio holders are responsible for the work of the committees (Granstrom is the portfolio holder for CALM). The CPM has three or four meetings per year. The last meeting was held in Tabarka, Tunisia. At that meeting the CPM discussed, among other things, committees, branches, communications, fund raising, finances, office staffing, work plans, and cooperation with other organizations. Marcel Caya also presented a paper entitled, "A Research Agenda for ICA."

The discussion then turned to CITRA. Chu, as a member of the CITRA Bureau, stated that, for the next three years, the CITRA program would focus on the role archives play in society. As a result of this focus, the theme for the CITRA 2001 in Iceland will be "What to preserve and how? Acquisition and appraisal." CITRA 2002 in Marseilles, France, will have the theme "How does society perceive archives?" and CITRA 2003 in Capetown, South Africa, will have as its theme "Archives at the service of society as a whole." Granstrom stressed that for the Iceland CITRA all committees are to work with the Committee on Appraisal in producing a program.

Granstrom stressed that the committee must work with other committees. He suggested that the Committee on Appraisal and the Committee on Electronic Records would be the most productive committees to cooperate with. He also recommended that the committee seek to do seminars for the branches at the annual branch meetings.

Granstrom then reported on a number of developments involving the Council of Europe, European Union Directives, Lund meeting, DLM and UNESCO.

• Council of Europe. The Council of Europe, composed of 44 member states, has approved a recommendation on access to archives. Another group working on access to official information has prepared a paper that was published in January.
• European Union.
  The EU has adopted a new Copyright Directive that requires the member states to harmonize their laws within 18 months, a very short time. Archivists must be involved in the implementation of the Directive.
  An evaluation of the Date Protection Directive, passed in October 1995, is ongoing. Archives should be involved in the process.
  A Green Paper on access to public sector information has been sent out for review. Work is currently going on for amendments, etc. This could eventually result in an Access Directive. It should be mentioned that work is going on during the Swedish Presidency to adopt a regulation on public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents following article 255 in the Amsterdam treaty.
• Lund. The current President of the EU, Sweden, sponsored a conference in Lund, Sweden, that discussed access to official records. In conjunction with this conference, a meeting of all EU national archivists was held. The national archivists agreed to redo the 1993 "Black Book on Archives." Many legal matters will be involved in the updating.
• DLM (Documents Lisibles par Machine). During the Spanish Presidency of the EU, commencing in May 2002, the Spanish will host a conference on machine-readable records. The last DLM meeting was in 1999.
• UNESCO. ICA and UNESCO have entered into a contract to produce a report on the authenticity of electronic records. The CALM and the Committee on Electronic Records have been asked to prepare the report. The report must be completed by November 2001.

Granstrom announced that the Vienna Congress in late September 2004 would have a different format. There will be large sessions, parallel sessions, and many small seminars. All committees will have to prepare and present the seminars. In preparation for the seminars at the Congress, the committees are required to give seminars in 2003. This means all reports must by ready by 2003. The committee recommends that the seminars be held in conjunction with branch meetings. Granstrom will advise the CPM of this recommendation.

Granstrom discussed the topics that the committee should work on in the next four years. The topics proposed were copyright, authenticity, access/data protection, principles for archival legislation, appraisal and archival claims. The committee decided to work with the Committee on Appraisal with a focus on electronic records. Granstrom will send a letter to the committee offering our support. This reduced the topics to five. The committee members expressed interest in the five topics and formed groups to work on them. The groups then adjourned to draft a project work plan. The groups returned and presented the project work plans to the committee. The work plans are attached to the minutes.

Granstrom announced that the copyright paper and the paper on privatization of records would be published by ICA soon. Rinaldi Mariani noted that ICA needs to do a better job of publicizing committee efforts. It was agreed that Granstrom would send a letter to the Secretary General expressing the sense of the Committee that publication should be faster and that all papers need to be put on the ICA website.

Granstrom announced that the Committee has been invited to Brussels, Belgium, for the next meeting. Depoortere suggested that April 23 to 27, 2002, would be the most likely date. The date will be fixed soon and members will be advised. There is also a possibility of a meeting in the fall of 2002 in China. The meeting could be in conjunction with the EASTICA meeting being held in Macao.

Granstrom presented an invitation from the Croatian Archivist's Society to send someone to their October meeting to discuss the legal value of electronic documents. It was decided that Zwicker would attend.

The committee then expressed its deepest gratitude to Basel-Stadt, the Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt, and Josef Zwicker and the archives staff for its warm hospitality and organization of the meeting. The committee also expressed its appreciation to the Swiss Federal Agency for Development and Cooperation for its financial assistance.

Granstrom adjourned the meeting on April 27 at 3 p.m.

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