On the Waterfront 45

The final months of 2023 were dominated by the preparations for the evaluation of the IISH that will take place in March 2024. KNAW institutes undergo evaluation by an international commit­tee every six years. At the IISH this committee examines not only the results of the research department but also those of the collection department. A self-assessment report has been drafted to assess to what extent the five main goals have been met in the strategic programme for the past five years. The significant increase in outreach activities in recent years means that an important recommendation of the previous evaluation committee has been fulfilled.

On 1 January 2024, Frank de Jong started at Collections as Sustainable Accessibility Pro­gramme Manager. Thanks to temporary extra funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science toward improving public services to better meet the expectations of the general public (see On the Waterfront 43, p. 2), the IISH can invest in improving accessibility of the col­lections in the coming years. Acquisition and processing of collections, for example, will be organized more in cooperation with users and will thus become accessible to broader groups. The projects Frank will be managing relate to all facets of work at the Data and Collections depart­ment (collecting, managing, adding metadata and making materials available quickly) and are conducive to the sustainable accessibility of our collections. Innovations in accessibility and en­hanced search options will be the topic of a pres­entation at the upcoming Friends Meeting, in which Richard Zijdeman and Ivo Zandhuis of the Data and Augmentation department will explain what Linked Open Data (LOD) entails.

This issue includes a report on the presenta­tion by Ulbe Bosma at the previous Friends Meet­ing about his book The World of Sugar, two re­ports presenting new acquisitions, as well as an interview with Ed Kool, another long-time staff member who retired recently. His responsibili­ties included arranging transport of many acqui­sitions over the past four decades. The article by Maxim Waldstein, a visitor of the Reading Room, on a never-opened book by Viktor Chernov, breathes new life into the section ‘From all nooks and corners’, while the interview with Sjoerd van Veen offers a first example of a Friend explaining his reasons for joining our colourful group.

Aad Blok