fjl^sist NEWSLETTER vol. 1, no. 3 CHAIRPERSON'S REPORT The second North American meeting was held in Toronto, Canada, May 11 -12th, 1977. Sharon Henry, the Canadian Secretariat was able to secure funds from Canada Council to support the travel of participants delivering formal presen- tations at the opening session. Sixty-five individuals attended the conference. Abstracts of the presentations were submitted prior to the conference and trans- lated to French. The English and French versions of the Abstracts, along with the complete English text of the presentations were available at registration. Participants of the conference will automatically receive a copy of the Proceed- ings and members of lASSIST will be able to purchase copies at a reduced rate. The registration fee for the conference will be used to defray reproduction costs of the Proceedings . Any additional monies from fees will be forwarded to the treasurer, Ed Hanis. The remainder of the meeting was devoted to the Action Group workshops. Abstracts of the presentations and the progress reports result- ing from the Action Group workshops are published in the body of this Newsletter . Per Nielsen, the West European Secretariat, has organized a European lASSIST Action Group workshop to be held at the Danish Data Archives in Copenhagen, June 26-29, 1977. The European AGs will build on the products of the US and Canadian efforts as well as previous work carried out by European archives, particularly in the area of classification and documentation. Proceedings of this meeting will be published. [See Newsletter section on the Danish Data Archives sponsored lASSIST West European meeting.] The February 1978 lASSIST meeting has been scheduled for the 8th-12th, at Nordic Hills, Itasca, Illinois. The program is detailed in the Newsletter sec- tion describing upcoming meetings. The Chicago area was selected as the site of the meetings to permit maximum participation, given its central location in North America. Topics for presentation at the symposia are invited. Please submit the topics to Tony Falsetto, Public Readable Archives, Public Archives of Canada, 2850 Cedarwood Dr., Apt. 909, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with a copy to Carolyn Geda. The lASSIST program for the meetings to be held in conjunction with the In- ternational Sociological Association in August 1978, has been approved. The schedule of activities is presented in the Newsletter section describing upcoming meetings. Initial monitoring of lASSIST receipts and expenditures verifies that there are adequate funds to cover the cost of production of the Newsletter , mailing costs, and subscriptions to S S Data . Registration fees for the conferences are sufficient to support the costs of the meeting and publication of the Proceedings . A full treasurer's report will be included in the next issue of the Newsletter . As has been noted in previous Newsletters , the working manual for cataloguing MRDF, compiled by Sue Dodd, University of North Carolina, will be the first lASSIST- related publication. In recognition of this work and forthcoming pieces, the Steering Committee has proposed a set of publishing policies and has appointed an Editorial Board to work with authors and publishing houses in whatever capacity is facilitative. The Editorial Board is composed of Elina Almasy, Carolyn Geda, Edward Hanis, Cees Middendorp, and David Nasitir.