THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE - SEPTEMBER 1995

The hotel where we will be staying, and where the Conference is to take place, must be booked separately and you must send or fax your reservation directly to the hotel. Payment will be by credit card. The booking form will contain several choices of room, but all will be at our special rate of US$115.00 per night. You must thus simply choose the sort of room you want based on the sort of bed you want ("King" or "Double"). "Accessible" means designed for the disabled. Remember also that in the USA you pay for the room, rather than the number of people using it, so, if you will be accompanied by a spouse or partner, you will still pay $115.00.

The registration form will include a number of options of which you should be aware. The basic registration fee will be comparatively low, because the other organisations with whom we are meeting, IASA and ARSC, are not used to high fees. It will cover the conference administration, the opening reception and an evening excursion to the National Archives on the Monday night, including catering. You will need to opt for breakfasts, lunches and the closing dinner, all of which will be at specially negotiated rates.

Our programme has been designed on the assumption that all our members will have lunch together in the hotel for speed and convenience, so please take the lunch option, because the area around the hotel is not provided with many places where lunch can be had quickly.

This year we will be holding our closing dinner on our own. It will be at the Sequoia Restaurant on the Georgetown side of the Potomak River and we will have our Award ceremony there too. The dinner also needs to be selected as an option on the registration form, as does the excursion on the closing day, Thursday 21st. Registration fees and options must all be paid in advance.

Most of the programme is now in place. Members are advised to arrive on Saturday 16th September. Registration will be open and those coming from afar will have the chance to get over their jet lag. Sunday the 17th September will see screenings of the Award shortlisted programmes all day and we hope members will take advantage of this opportunity to see the programmes and vote on them, as this is the only day they will be shown. There will also be open Commission meetings in the afternoon and a joint reception with IASA and ARSC in the hotel in the evening.

Monday 18th September will be an all-day joint meeting with the other two organisations on the subject of rights. Sessions will be on "US Copyright Law and the Rest of the World", "Rights, Documentation and Technology" and "Performers' and Users' Rights". In the evening there will be an excursion to the US National Archives and a tour, with food and drink provided.

On Tuesday l9th and Wednesday 20th, FIAT will hold its own sessions in the hotel. On Tuesday we will be addressing the increasingly linked subjects of new technology and documentation. The Documentation Commission will present the latest developments in indexing and there will be two sessions which will look to the digital future of information and distribution systems with the help of leading companies in the field. We will also be asking the question "Does Digital Compression Endanger Archival Picture Quality?".

On Wednesday morning we will look at the work of foreign correspondents and their archival needs with the help of several reporters based in Washington. There will also be a session involving all the major US News Archives, including CNN. In the afternoon a compendium of fascinating topics will be followed by a session on the current and future work of our own Commissions. The conference will officially end in the evening with our closing dinner, but there will be an optional excursion on Thursday morning .

Fuller details will be included with your registration documents and there will be a complete list of speakers in the next Newsletter, to be published before the Conference.

I look forward to seeing you all in Washington.

Steve Bryant
General Secretary