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40th IUPAC COUNCIL
Meeting
Berlin, Germany: 13-14
August 1999
Report
of Secretary General
The Bylaws say that the Secretary
General shall be responsible for carrying out "the business of
the Union..." Currently this business includes major items such
as the organization and management of our scientific work, which will
be discussed at length in later agenda items. Here I would like to concentrate
on giving you a summary report of the activities in our Secretariat.
At the time of the last General Assembly, we had recently decided to
move the Secretariat following the retirement of Mo Williams. John W.
Jost had become the new Executive Director, but the bulk of the routine
business was still being conducted in the Secretariat at Oxford. At
that time the Officers were quite optimistic that the transition would
go well and that an effective Secretariat would soon be established
in Research Triangle Park (RTP). Our optimism was well placed; the new
Secretariat has been even more successful than we anticipated! For a
number of months after the closing of the Oxford office in October 1998,
Dr. Jost carried the entire burden of the Secretariat almost alone,
but he has now recruited three very able staff members and is planning
to recruit a fourth. Dr. Fabienne Meyers has been largely responsible
for developing and maintaining the IUPAC World Wide Web site [www.iupac.org]
and is now also handling the administration of scientific projects in
conjunction with the Divisions and the Project Committee. Dr. Alan J.
Senzel is responsible for managing and editing all printed publications,
primarily Pure and Applied Chemistry and Chemistry International.
Ms. Linda Y. Tapp, as Administrative Assistant, handles a myriad of
activities. The fourth staff member will be responsible for dealing
with PAC and CI subscribers as IUPAC takes over direct
management of its publications.
Administrative Functions. Dr. Jost has reorganized the basic
administrative functions of the Secretariat to take advantage of computer
automation and has outsourced a number of functions that had been labor-intensive
in-house activities at Oxford. The database of more than 1000 members
of all IUPAC bodies is now on the Web site, where it is continually
updated. This database will be expanded to include IUPAC Fellows, a
group that will grow significantly in future years. Scientific projects
under the new project-driven system will be tracked in an integrated
computer system from initial proposal through review, approval, funding,
progress and completion, together with relevant fiscal data. Extensive
use of e-mail, along with creation of list-servers, permits rapid and
inexpensive communication with virtually all members of IUPAC bodies,
with IUPAC Fellows, and with our NAOs.
The important daily banking functions, including issuance of foreign
exchange checks, have been moved from Merrill Lynch, where they were
handled indirectly with a subsidiary bank, to the Wachovia Bank. This
is a large bank that is particularly strong in southeastern United States
and has a branch at RTP with a foreign exchange department. Service
is now rapid, efficient and almost flawless. Accounting is carried out
by a local accounting firm, and this arrangement has also proved to
be very good. The Secretariat can now accept any major credit card for
purchases. This capability is increasingly used for payment of small
fees (e.g., for Associated Organizations and individual Affiliate
Members) and for purchase of such items as individual copies of special
issues of PAC. Large-volume document copying is handled by a
local printing firm with excellent overnight service. All of these changes
have resulted in more rapid service at a lower cost, thus freeing financial
resources to improve the Union's scientific programs and its public
relations.
Web Site. Priority has been given to establishment of a comprehensive
World Wide Web site. While the Secretariat was in Oxford, the Royal
Society of Chemistry had generously allowed IUPAC to establish a temporary
presence on its web site, and that was carried out with very limited
resources. At RTP the IUPAC site, with its own domain name (www.iupac.org)
is housed on the SunSITE at the University of North Carolina, with mirror
sites in the UK, Germany and Japan. The site contains a vast array of
information about IUPAC - general news
about the Union, all information that is in the IUPAC
Handbook (but continually updated), contents and selected documents
from PAC,
the complete text from CI,
a current Conference Calendar,
information about IUPAC projects
and project submission forms, application for Affiliate
Membership, and much additional material. The site is designed with
minimum graphics to permit rapid communication over normal telephone
lines and to allow less than state-of-the-art computers, thereby facilitating
worldwide access.
The web site serves as the principal source of information for members
of IUPAC bodies, but it is increasingly being configured as the public
face of IUPAC. Many aids permit rapid navigation from one part of the
site to another and to links with other sites. Use of the site has increased
dramatically in the last year, from approximately 3000 "adjusted
hits" in March 1998 to more than 16,000 in February 1999. Statistics
indicate that each visitor to the site now views an average of six pages.
Publications. The Bureau approved the termination of the contract
with our official publisher, Blackwell Science, at the end of 1999.
From January 1, 2000 the Union will act as its own publisher. The reasons
for this change and the significant potential advantages of the new
arrangement will be described in detail in the report later by the Committee
on Printed and Electronic Publications. However, by mutual agreement
with Blackwell, IUPAC took over all responsibility for publication of
Chemistry International in January 1999. We have contracted with
a Production Editor and a Printer/Distributor to handle the functions
previously carried out by Blackwell. This arrangement is working very
well, with a significant decrease in the time required for production
and more flexibility in dealing with "last-minute" news. Production,
which had fallen behind schedule last year, is now current, with printing
and distribution by the beginning of the month of issue. Costs have
also decreased.
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