Geneva 2013

Geneva 2013

Conference Participants

Project Progressions and Editorial ­Practices 2011–2013

Conference Proceedings

Program

Tuesday, October 1

19.00

Welcome Reception
(Restaurant Vieux-Bois)
Sacha Zala
(Director, Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland
Hans Ulrich Jost
(President, Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland
Wednesday, October 2

 8.30

Registration (Pregny Gate)

Welcome Coffee and opportunity to visit the League of Nations Archive and Museum

 9.30

Conference Opening (Salle XII)
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev
(Director-General, United Nations Office at Geneva)

10.00

Status Reports I

10.45

Coffee Break

11.15

Status Reports II

12.30

Lunch

14.00

Picture

14.30

Status Reports III

15.30

Coffee Break

16.00

Diplomacy & Global Governance – The ICRC Experience
Dr. Peter Maurer (President, International Committee of the Red Cross)

16.30

Plenary Meeting

18.00

Visit of the Musée des Suisses dans le Monde and Official Conference Dinner offered by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs
Ambassador Alexandre Fasel (Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations Office in Geneva)
Thursday, October 3

9.15

Plenary Meeting (Salle XII)

9.30

Parallel Workhops

Diplomatic documents and social media
Chair: Michael Kennedy (Documents on Irish Foreign Policy)
Salle A.662

The many languages of diplomatic documents
Chair: Marc Dierikx (Dutch Foreign Relations Editing Projects)
Salle XV

Going online and connecting diplomatic documents – possibilities of digital collaborations
Chair: Joseph Wicentowski (Foreign Relations of the United States)
Salle S4

10.30

Coffee Break

11.00

Plenary Meeting

12.45

Lunch (Restaurant des Délégués)

14.15

Transfer to Prangins

15.00

Visit of the Château de Prangins (Swiss National Museum)

Boat Cruise Nyon – Geneva

18.15

Dinner
Friday, October 4

 9.00

Registration (Pregny Gate)

Welcome Coffee

10.00

Symposium Opening (Salle XII)
Sacha Zala (Director, Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland)
Benedikt Hauser (Head Education Strategy and Cooperation, State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation)

10.30

Panel 1
Matthias Schulz (University of Geneva): Of Concerts, Transnational Movements, and International Bureaus: Origins and Trajectories of International Governance in the 19th Century
Madeleine Herren (University of Basle): The League of Nations or how to hide the effects of global governance
Sacha Zala (Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland): Switzerland Facing Global Governance

12.30

Pause and opportunity to visit the League of Nations Archive and Museum

14.00

Panel 2

Sandrine Kott (University of Geneva):
Adam Howard (Foreign Relations of the United States): Diplomacy and Discord: The United States, the United Nations, and the Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1947-1976
Maurice Vaïsse (Documents Diplomatiques Français): La France à l’ONU en 1971

16.30

End of the Conference and opportunity to visit the League of Nations Archive and Museum
Saturday, October 5
Morning Cultural Programme

Project Progressions and Editorial ­Practices 2011–2013

As of October 1st 2013, we received 23 replies to the questionnaire from Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Russian Federation, Spain, Slovenia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
The complete report can be downloaded here.

General Trends
The trends which began to show at the last conferences also continued during the last two years. The average production is still about two or three volumes per two-year period (with a print run of 250–1500) with no remarkable changes regarding the selection and presentation of documents. However, compared with the last two conferences there are fewer differences in the number of published volumes. Only the published FRUS volumes noticeably exceed the average production. In some cases budgetary constraints have slowed down the production process.

Digital Turn
The question of digital forms of publishing remains important. While the overall number of projects using possibilities offered by the web has only slightly grown (2011: 13, 2013: 14), the portfolio has been diversified.
Aside from the presentation of documents on the web, the production of e-books is becoming increasingly important. Since the last conference, seven projects (France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Romania, Switzerland, USA) expanded their activities in this field, and two projects introduced print on demand (Netherlands, Switzerland). Some projects (Ireland, Switzerland, USA) increased their social media activities on Twitter and Facebook, and two projects (Mexico and the Netherlands) presented some of their activities by posting videos on Youtube. Eight projects plan to expand their online activities in the nearer future. New digital solutions were introduced even in the production of new volumes. The Irish and US projects use specific project management software (MS Project or Basecamp), the Swiss project relies on its own database Dodis and the Japanese project shares its bibliography via a shared software.

Problems and Improvements
When we asked the projects about problems encountered in the process of web publishing, various issues were mentioned. These problems can be divided into two categories. While the first category deals with actual difficulties, such as the lack of web space, copyright issues or search functionalities, the second category shows typical early adopter problems including out-dated software or intricate issues linked to software migration.
In light of the problems with which the projects were being faced, the need for improvement was repeatedly expressed.  As they now not only publish traditional volumes, but also maintain and develop online projects as well as monitor their newest developments, the projects have seen their workloads increase considerably. Additionally, there is a general need to improve the budgetary and staff situation.

Declassification and Freedom of Information
The management of declassification requests seems to occupy an increasing number of projects. In Israel,  more declassification staff is needed due to shortened declassification processes and the FRUS are working on a declassification database to enhance the management of the complex and multi-tiered interagency declassification process, which threatens to induce a considerable amount of delay, as this process is beyond their control.
In Switzerland, the law requires that the Government publish a list of files to which an extended retention rule applies. This ensures that researchers have access to complete archival catalogues. In reference to the Federal Act on Archiving, the research centre of the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland has decided to publish in the appendix of each volume a list of the files to which access requests were declined by the responsible authority: see dodis.ch/dds/ArchA.

Target Audience and Promotion
Most of the projects produce their volumes for scholarly readers and students and in some cases for journalists and diplomats, too. Experiences with open accessß online publications have shown that the general public uses the opportunity to access free accessible information to learn more about the diplomatic history of their country. Most of the volumes are available via bookstores or the publishing houses, but also through the projects or archives themselves. Marketing is not only done by the publishing houses, it is now increasingly undertaken by the projects themselves on their websites and via mailing lists, as, for example, H-Diplo. Other projects, among them Ireland, Latvia, Montenegro or Switzerland, issue press releases and try to attract the interest of journalists and the general audience by selecting major topics or interesting documents.

New Website
As part of the preparations for the 12th International Conference of Editors of Diplomatic Documents, the team of the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland launched the website www.diplomatic-documents.org to foster the visibility of the participating projects. The website collects information on previous conferences and delegates as well as information on scholarly editions and contact persons. The most important aspect is the «News» section, where information about the release of new volumes of editions of diplomatic documents can be posted. Since it officially went online, 18 new volumes were announced on this website, which amounts to more than one new volume per month. Continuing on this path, the website will become an important information resource for scholars of diplomatic history and foreign relations throughout the World.

Participants 2013

Participants 2013

Australia Dr. Matthew Jordan (A/g Director, Historical Publications and Information, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade)
Austria Doz. Dr. Wolfgang Müller (Deputy Director, Institute for Modern and Contemporary Historical Research)
Belgium Prof. Dr. Jean-Luc de Paepe (Secrétaire de la Commission Royale d’Histoire)
Canada Dr. Greg Donaghy (Head, Historical Section of Foreign Affairs and International Trade)
People‘s Republic of China Guicheng Lu (Director General, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Li Wang (Division Director, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Mitao Wang (Deputy Division Director, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
France Isabelle Richefort (Adjointe au directeur des Archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères français), Prof. Dr. Maurice Vaïsse (Commission de Publication des Documents Diplomatiques Français)
Germany Dr. Ilse Dorothee Pautsch (Senior Editor, Institut für Zeitgeschichte)
Greece Dr. Georgios Polydorakis (Expert Counsellor, Service of Diplomatic and Historical Archives Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Indonesia Dr. Franziskus Widiyarso (Second Secretary, Indonesian Foreign Ministry)
Ireland Dr. Michael Kennedy (Executive Editor, Documents on Irish Foreign Policy), Dr. Conor Mulvagh (Assistant Editor, Documents on Irish Foreign Policy)
Israel Louise Fischer (Senior Editor, Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel)
Italy Prof. Dr. Francesco Lefebvre D‘Ovidio (Documenti Diplomatici Italiani)
Japan Kazuhiko Tomizuka (Editor in Chief, Editorial Division for the Document on Japanese Foreign Policy)
Latvia Iveta Skinke (Head of Political Archives, Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Dr. Valdis Rusins (Senior Editor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Lithuania Polinaras Čižauskas (Deputy Director of the Administrative Department), Ambassador Rimantas Morkvenas (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania)
Luxembourg Dr. Susana Muñoz (Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe)
Mexico Dr. Mercedes de Vega (Director General, Acervo Histórico Diplomático)
Montenegro Prof. Dr. Radoslav Raspopovic (Director of the Historical Institute of Montenegro)
Netherlands Dr. Marc Dierikx (Project Manager, Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands)
Poland Małgorzata Mroczkowska (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Piotr Długołęcki (Managing Editor and secretary of the Editorial Committee)
Portugal Dr. Margarida Lages (Head of Archives and Library Divison)
Romania Dr. Laurenţiu Constantiniu (Editor, Romanian Diplomatic Institute), Dr. Rudolf M. Dinu (Editor, Romanian Diplomatic Institute)
Russian Federation Ambassador Alexander Kuznetsov (Director, History and Records Department)
Slovenia Dr. Vladimira Rančov (Head of Diplomatic Archives)
Spain Begoña Ibáñez Ortega (Head, Área de Documentación y Publicaciones, Ministry of Foreign Affaires)
Switzerland Dr. Sacha Zala (Director, Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland), Prof. Dr. Hans Ulrich Jost (President of the Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland), Dr. François Wisard (Head of History Unit of the FDFA and Member of the DDS Commission), Dr. Marc Perrenoud (History Unit of the FDFA and Senior Editor), Ursina Bentele (Historian, DDS), Thomas Bürgisser (Historian, DDS), Vincent Juillerat (Historian, DDS), Franziska Ruchti (Historian, DDS), Maurizio Rossi (Historian, DDS), Christiane Sibille (Historian, DDS), Yves Steiner (Historian, DDS)
United Kingdom Prof. Dr. Patrick Salmon (Chief Historian, Documents on British Policy Overseas), Dr. Richard Smith (Senior Historian, Documents on British Policy Overseas)
United Nations Office at Geneva Blandine Blukacz-Louisfert (Chief, Institutional Memory Section)
Uruguay Alvaro Corbacho Casas (Chief, Diplomatic Historical Archive)
USA Dr. Stephen P. Randolph (Director of the Office of the Historian at the Department of State), Dr. David H. Herschler (Deputy Historian), Dr. Adam Howard (General Editor, FRUS), Dr. Joseph C. Wicentowski (Historian, FRUS)