First of all I would like to thank CIDOC membership for electing me Chair' for the period 1995-1997. I feel honoured and promise to do all I can to' live up to the confidence you have shown in me and to make this a positive' period in the history of CIDOC.

I am supported by a Board of enthousiastic collegues:
Secretary Pat Young, Canada
Treasurer Alice Grant, United Kingdom
Editor Yolande Morel, Belgium

And elected members:
Kati Geber, Romania
Cary Karp, Sweden
Alenka Simikic, Slovenia
Jane Sledge, United States

As you can see, we are lacking a vice-chair. We hope to elect someone for' that (busy) job during the next conference.

In Stavanger we said goodbye to some longtime board members:
Vice-Chair Dominique Piot Morin, who has been the focus of CIDOC's' involvement with the AFRICOM programme of ICOM. We will see some results of' her efforts at the conference in Kenya.
Secretary Barbara Rottenberg, who very acurately kept CIDOC's growing' administrative business together for many years.
Treasurer Leonard Will, who garded the finances carefully and was' responsible for the hectic administration of travel grants for conference' delegates. Editor Henrik Hansen, who did such excellent work on the first series of' newsletters.

And the elected board members:
Mary Case, who created CIDOC's wonderfull Washington conference.
Carsten Larsen, who did the same thing in Copenhagen some years ago.
Anne Claudel, who gave a lot of input into the Lljubljana conference.
And Yolande Morel, who did the same for the Stavanger meeting.
In fact we do not really say goodbye, luckily most of them remain active' CIDOC members. I herewith want to thank them all for their good work. CIDOC' 'lives' by the input of such active members.

The chair's of CIDOC working groups are observers on the Board. Some of the' Chairs remain 'on board', others were newly appointed.

Archaeological Sites Working Group
Henrik Hansen, Denmark who replaced Roger Leech,
United Kingdom.

Contemporary Art Working Group
Harald Kraemer, Austria

Ethno Working Group
Alenka Simikic (during 1996 this position was taken
over by Penelope' Theologi, Greece)

Iconography Working Group
Claire Constans, France

Internet Working Group
Cary Karp, Sweden

Multimedia Working Group
Jennifer Trant, United States who took over from Costas Dallas, Greece.

Services Working Group
Anne Claudel, Switserland Josephine Nieuwenhuis, United States
(replacing Jeanne Hogenboom)

Standards Working Group
Pat Reed, United States
Nick Crofts, Switserland

This working groups is combination of the former Data Modelling Working' Group, chaired by Kati Spiess, United States and Terminology Working Group,' chaired by Toni Petersen, United States.

The working group reports can be found in this issue of the newsletter. Some' activities need mentioning here: the Internet Working Group, mainly Cary' Karp, has been contributing to the CIDOC-L and particularly the Internet' developments of ICOM. The Ethno Working Group will launch a major' publication during the next conference and so will the Multimedia Working' Group. And to finish on board issues: it will be hard to follow in the footsteps of' the former Chair, Andrew Roberts. I want to thank him here for all his excellent contributions and let me' assure you: apart from giving me experienced advise every now and then, he' is still putting a lot of work into the committee. We can all see that when' we browse through the impressive CIDOC webpages our committee has. These' were put together by Andrew. And he is actively involved in the' organization of the Nairobi meeting.

Which brings us to conferences. The Stavanger meeting was an excellent one.' We have to thank the local CIDOC organizers for that, particularly Jorn' Berger Ostby. During the conference CIDOC took the opportunity to present' its publications to a wider ICOM audience, including ICOM president Dr Saroj Ghose. Some interesting sessions (and discussions) were held on' developments on use of the Internet. We haven't quite finished discussing' that aspect of our constantly evolving work in the field of museum' documentation: the coming conference will include a whole day devoted to' the issue.

The 1996 annual conference at the National Museum of Kenya will focus on' various museum documentation aspects adn on the outcome of documentation' efforts within ICOM's AFRICOM programme. The discussion on Internet is' already mentioned. But we will also adress issues like: museum' documentation in Africa, documentation and the fight against illicit' traffic of cultural heritage, documentation of non-material cultural' heritage, and we will ask ourselves 'how suitable are (western) standards' and terminology on African museum documentation practice'. During the' 1997 conference in Nurnberg and hopefully the 1998 conference in Melbourne' we will continue these discussions.

The CIDOC board is also looking into possibilities to take these aspects of' museum documentation to a wider audience the coming years, e.g. by' developing a set of publications that are training oriented and by' preparing a special issue of the ICOM Study Series. After all, the subjects mentioned illustrate where museum documentation' stands these days and CIDOC is the forum to address such issues.