This year's meeting was not a conventional problem statement, nor an outline of recommendations. It was not a report on institutional initiatives, nor an exhortation to action. But neither was it irrelevant. It was a window on the real work of client-practitioners. It was also an affirmation that stuff really is important.
Scholars use it to separate fact from fiction and to interpret the human record.
This year's meeting was a benchmark in the evolution of RLG's efforts to improve access to nonbook materials. We have built a service that enables users to search the entire existing corpus of encoded finding aids. This fall, with support from the Ford Foundation, RLG is launching a new initiative to address the remaining unsolved problems in digital capture and standardized description of artifacts, as well as to provide an integrated mechanism for distributing digital surrogates of cultural heritage materials to the educational community. Designed to be economically self-sustaining, this initiative will be conceived from the outset on an international basis. The 1999 annual meeting marked the continuation of a long-standing vocation and a prelude to some exciting work ahead.