As the Executive Council member with special responsibility from ICOM's information services for almost nine years (including the web site and other Internet services since these were established) I think I should add briefly to Cary Carp's response - which I fully support - to some of the "flames" of the past two days about the new web version of the AFRICOM Documentation Standards. The clear policy of the current Executive Council at least, and I feel sure of any future Council, is to ensure that as many ICOM documents as possible are made accessible to the membership and the wider museum profession in as many ways as practicable, and as easily as possible. This accessibility policy covers both aspects of "access". There should must be both physical access, which means ensuring that all key ICOM documentation is posted and offered on the web service without delay. Equally, however, there must be what may be termed "technological access", i.e. ease of communication and access of the documents must ALWAYS take priority over other factors, such as producing impressive graphics, Java extensions or other "leading edge" web options. This means recognising that very many - probably a substantial majority - actual and potential users will not have access to high capacity and high speed networks, to the latest versions of web browsers, nor indeed have computers which could operate such browsers effectively - even if they were offered free. Despite several efforts we have found it impossible to get anything above the 16 bit versions of Internet Explorer 3 or Netscape 3 to run on my Research Assistant's office machine which is only 2 years old. This is a 486-DX66 with 8Mb of RAM. probably a higher specification than the majority of museum and home PCs, while the 20Mb hard disk space plus at least 8Mb operating space demanded would be a further major strain on very many existing, still relatively new, museum computers. In this respect our web policy has always been that simplicity - with small files sizes for t least the initial down-loading, minimal graphics, and so far we have actively sought to avoid animations, more elaborate or high resolution graphics and - above all - "frames" (which in any case present page identity - and hence copyright - problems), (though one or two national or international committees not "hosted" on the ICOM server, but to which we do provide links, are more "demanding" than I would like.) If the web policy means that some documents on the ICOM site seem less "leading edge" or adventurous in, e.g. graphic design terms, I should stress that this is both deliberate and - we strongly believe - a price worth paying in exchange for allowing much wider, and faster, access to ALL ICOM members and other users, not those with access to ultra high capacity communication networks and using the very latest, most powerful (and of course most expensive) computers. I know that faced with a very decorative, heavily framed and animated web site, such as the new ICOM AFRICOM Documentation document, I have found myself struggling even with my Pentium 200 with its 32Mb of RAM and a direct connection to a 4 Gigabit network (i.e. 40 times the speed of the fastest available dial-up modem connected to a digital phone system - or perhaps 200 times that of a more typical set-up even in some "developed" European Union countries, let alone a "developing" country). In terms of what I have termed above physical access, I have been pressing strongly for many months for a wide range of basic policy and information documents to be added to the web service, and some progress has been made. For example, we have over recent months prepared and added a total of over 50 files in the two languages arising out of the work towards the official history of ICOM, and I am sure that more will be added after this is published in October. I had also been asking for key documents from the Programme activities, such as AFRICOM, ICOM Arab etc., particularly the museum status reports on the 30 or so different African and Arab countries already included in various ICOM publications, and the AFRICOM Documentation and "Autonomy for Museums" reports to be added to the web site. During the period that the Treasurer and I were helping the Secretariat staff to "cover" for the Secretary-General vacancy earlier this year I offered to arrange for these "Programme" materials to be converted to web format (as I did for the historical material, such as the ICOM General Conference resolutions). Earlier this year I was told that this could not be done because the published texts had not been archived word-processed format. I am delighted that at least in the case of the African Documentation report this was untrue, and that necessary files have apparently turned up. However, we clearly need to ensure that when it is decided to use a web design consultancy (as was apparently the case with the AFRICOM documentation report) in future ICOM's web policy is included in the brief. I also feel that as policy the initial home page to larger documents must be both small and simple, and that a "no frames/low graphics" alternative should always be included. No doubt the new Executive Council will want to consider these points when it reviews and updates the web policy. Could I use this opportunity to make one further plea? In the same way that the systems of many users cannot cope with complex "frames" and animations, many e-mail systems cannot access Microsoft (and some other) "attachments" to e-mails, either because their firewalls will not pass binary MS-Word files, or because they do not have an advanced Windows mail package that will process such items. Despite being one of the most powerful and largest of its kind in UK academia following a 27 hour plus attack by hackers during one weekend in the last Christmas vacation our University system's toughened firewall won't allow me access to MS, Eudora etc. "attachments" any more, so getting at the contents of these becomes a major undertaking. As an example, twice today I had to forward a message with an unopenable Word "attachment" to an independent Internet service provider outside the University, access this from a different machine on a telephone modem, and then down load it to the second machine before I could open it using the Win95 Internet Mail program - wasting at least 5 minutes each time. In each case there was nothing at all complicated about the "attachment" when I finally got into it, and it could perfectly well have been either written in an e-mail format to begin with, or else the file could have been "read" in ASCII format into the main body of the e-mail by the sender in just a second or two. I think that this is another example of a lack of understanding of the needs and possible difficulties of potential recipients and users - just like the use of over-complicated frames, animations etc. - ultimately a matter of professional courtesy perhaps? Patrick Boylan (Vice-President of ICOM)