Report on the 1993 activities

French branch has still a big problem of membership, which has two structural reasons: first it is difficult to set up a working relationship with Association des Professeurs d'Histoire et de Géographie, which is a large organisation, also active in the field of computing, although with an emphasis on educational use. It is difficult to convince people to pay fees for both organisations. The other reason is the relation between Paris and the provinces. The activities of the association have been somehow confined to Paris. The bulletin Mémoire Vive seems to be the only output that most provincial members are likely to get.

To cope with this problem a national conference has been organised at Rennes on the relation between history and information science and the development of multi-media systems, with lectures of Manfred Thaller and Frank Colson. The proceedings will be published by the university of Rennes. A similar conference is planned for next year in Nice. Mémoire Vive, whose editor is Caroline Bourlet, has published two issues devoted to the workshop on the European curriculum of historical computing, which was held last September in Paris. A large number of copies has been sold to non-members.

The French association has started a new service: provincial universities are invited to suggest problems that need some help. The association will send experts to these universities to organise a local workshop. One hopes that this will be an other instrument to harmonise life within the branch.
Summarised after a letter from
J.Ph. Genet