The Right to Read is the Right To Mine: But Not When Blocked by Technical Protection Measures
NATIONAL PROGRESS REPORT OF BELGIUM 1986-1988
Lisette Danckaert, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Brussel
The main event has been the 'Open door week' held in the partly renovated Institut Géographique National (the Belgian Survey). which was a tremendous success. Both old realisations and modern equipment and techniques were shown. An exhibition was also organized. The collections had formerly been removed to an other part of the premises.
Other movings af collections with subsequent impossibility of consultation happened in the Army Museum and in the Ministry of Public Works, prior to a possible division of the collections of the latter due to the planned regionalisation.
Several map collections of the University of Louvain-la-Neuve are undergoing a process of classification and cataloguing.
The laboratory for human geography of the Université libre de Bruxelles, also housing the collections of the Royal Belgian Society of Geography, has been removed to new premises. These are shared with the School far architecture, and the collections will be unified presently.
The cataloguing of printed atlases kept in the major libraries is progressing, with about 2,000 titles reckoned, of which some 1,300 are computer-printed. Maurice Charlier, who has planned the project, is supervising the activities.
A cataloguing of globes in the public and in some main private libraries has been started by the university of Leuven, linked with Peter van der Krogt's program in the Netherlands.
The map supplement of the Bibliographie de Belgique has been modified and is now ordered thematically.
No truly important acquisition can be reported. The main one in the Royal Library is a deposit by the Walloon Community of colour reproductions of some sheets drawn in the beginning of the 19th century by the Militaire Verkenningen, the Survey of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The travelling exhibition of reproductions of maps and views of the Belgian coastland by the National Archives, with catalogue, is still touring the country.
Two important publications have been issued; one is illustrating a sample of the maps in the collection of J .B. Nothomb, first minister of Public Works in the new kingdom of Belgium, bequeathed by him to the Prussian state. This collection has been separated in two parts, and is now kept in both nationa1 libraries of West- and East-Berlin. The other publication is the complete reproduction of the Albums de Cray by the Crédit communal de Belgique. All the extensive possessions of prince Charles de Croy at the turning of 1600 have been surveyed during his lifetime, bringing thus much valuable in formation an quite a number of villages.
An ambitious project about cartography in Belgium is planned for 1994, the year of the 400th anniversary of Mercator's death, with a book and an exhibition.
A project for centralising in one institution the 'heavy' restoration of documents on paper kept in the public collections of the state, including the Royal Library and the National Archives, is under discussion.
