WTO Digital Library Project Progress Report
(September 8, 2000)
The project focused intensively on two principal collections during the six weeks ending September 8, 2000: the Registry Archives and Bilateral Agreements. We divided project staff into two work shifts running between 8:00 am-10:30 pm Monday through Friday. The technology configuration included three Minolta open-book planetary scanners, three Fujitsu sheet-feed scanners, and two HP flatbed scanners. During this time period 419,105 images were produced corresponding to a total estimated page count of 481,971. The images occupy approximately 151 GB of disk space on three hard drives with backup copies on 251 CD-ROM disks and 13 tapes. Combined with the 165,000 pages scanned during August 1999 the WTO digital library project has now digitized 646,971 pages of text. The status report of the initial project inventory is described in the following table.
|
Initial
Inventory |
Size |
Status |
1999 |
2000 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
981 boxes |
646 remain |
37 |
298 |
|
|
Certified Protocols (Legal Affairs) |
192 vols |
Complete |
192 |
0 |
|
Bilateral Agreements (Market Access) |
150 vols |
Complete |
8 |
142 |
|
Secret Series (Library) |
51 vols |
Complete |
51 |
0 |
|
Country Files (Legal Affairs) |
152 binders |
120 remain |
25 |
7 |
|
Agreement History Files (Legal Affairs) |
168 binders |
67 remain |
61 |
40 |
|
Maggio, Linden, Van Tuinen files (Legal Affairs) |
288 files |
288 remain |
0 |
0 |
In addition to the initial
inventory, a number of collections have been subsequently added (see table “supplementary
inventory”). And project staff members
are working with WTO contacts in the Agriculture, Accessions, Economic
Research, and Statistics Divisions to identify additional material of historic
archival interest for inclusion in the project.
|
Supplementary
Inventory |
Size |
Status |
1999 |
2000 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
UR Looseleaf Schedules (Market Access) |
44 |
complete |
4 |
40 |
|
DG Travel Files (Renato Ruggiero) |
158 binders |
158 remain |
0 |
0 |
|
Chronological Photographs (Bookstore) |
27 files |
27 remain |
0 |
0 |
|
Documentation not on fiche (Library) |
84 vols. |
complete |
84 |
0 |
Based on the current scanning rate, we estimate that it would take 18 weeks to completely scan the remaining material in the initial and supplementary inventory lists. Assuming our continued limitation to six weeks of on-site work per year, this means that the project cannot be completed by December 2000, but will require an extension through December 2003.