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Actes du XIVe Congrès International des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du SpectacleBeograd 15-20 septembre 1980. Beograd : 1982. ISSN 0361-7500 The Presentation of TANDEM by the National SIBMAS Centre of the Federal Republic of Germany I
Harald ZielskeSome Introductory Remarkspp. 77-80
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Colleagues! As the chairman of the National SIBMAS Centre of the Federal Republic of Germany and on behalf of its members, I would like to make just one or two introductory statements before I hand over to my colleagues Dr. Huesmann and Dr. Meder, who will do the main work in this presentation of TANDEM. The computer-based theatre documentation system TANDEM, as it is presented here, has been developed throughout the past six or seven years by the joint effort of the West German SIBMAS members. It is true, some of our members really played the active part in this devolopment work whereas others only contributed critical advice in this matter. Nevertheless, TANDEM should be regarded as the common achievement of the whole of the National SIBMAS Centre of West Germany. To many of you TANDEM is nothing completely new, During the past years, it has been on various occasions that we could inform you about the fact that TANDEM is being developed: TANDEM, for instance, has been several times on the agenda of meetings of the SANDAS Commission; and last November, during a national SIBMAS meeting in Munich at which guests from foreign contries took part, as from Austria, Switzerland and Sweden, we had a full demonstration of TANDEM in almost the same way as it is now prepared, on a much larger scale, of course, for this congress. That we now, for the first time, present TANDEM to the forum of an international congress means that the purely experimental phase of the TANDEM development has come to an and that we now consider TANDEM to be fully operational. However, this international presentation of TANDEM does not mean that no further developments have to be expected. On the contrary, the development of TANDEM will and must go on, and will be a permanent task to all of us. For, whatever the future results of this development will be in detail, it is quite sure that TANDEM means a complete change - a revolutionary change, I might say - of all the methods we have used in our documentary work up to today. And this complete overthrow of traditional working methods in theatre documentation, as I dare to predict it here, cannot be just a national matter, it cannot be developed to be used in only one of the SIBMAS member countries. TANDEM is a system and technical device to be operated on an international level, it can easily cross borders and pass over long distances. Our present demonstration of TANDEM, therefore, aims at especially proving the international applicability of the whole system. And at this point, I have to hesitate for a moment. For, as to the international applicability of TANDEM, to its capability to cross borders and operate over long distances, the prepared presentation of the system still is an experiment. Last November during the national SIBMAS meeting I have just mentioned, we successfully tested TANDEM under the conditions of a relatively short communication link between Munich and Frankfurt, and within the facilities of just one national telephone network. Today, it is for the first time that we try to get theatre documentary material on our terminal screen at - a place that is hundreds of miles away from our data centre in Frankfurt, at a place located in a foreign country that is not even a direct neighbour to West Germany. So this is some kind of a "world-premiere" of TANDEM, and as such it still is and must be experimental. I sincerely hope - and even pray a little bit - that this experiment will not turn out to be a failure, but a complete and convincing success. Now, before the curtain rises to this "world-premiere" of TANDEM, let me just draw your attention to some purely practical points, which are, however, of some importance regarding the forthcoming presentation. First: The whole TANDEM system is, of course, not designed to be publicly demonstrated to a large auditorium. It has been designed to serve the needs of the individual scholar or practitioner, or the collective work of a small research team. Therefore, this presentation can show you only in very rough outlines what TANDEM really is, how it works, what it is able to do. Especially, what is happening on the terminal screen, what can be read there, will hardly be seen by anyone of you in this hall, who you are all, more or less, sitting too far away from the screen. To compensate this handicap, we have provided for a certain number of special performances of TANDEM during the following days, and I would like to invite all of you who are interested in TANDEM in detail to take part in these special performances. However, in order to reach a maximum degree of information to all participants of these performances, the number of participants at each single performance should be limited to, let us say, not more than ten. I think, we have arranged enough of such special performances so that all of you interested in taking part really can take part. Anyway, I would like to ask you to put your name into special lists that have been prepared by us and that are at your disposal at the Congress office. This will help us to see how many of you will take part in these demonstrations and how many of such special performances are really necessary. The second point I still have to mention is: These special demonstrations of TANDEM will have to be performed during the afternoon hours. This is because it is much less difficult to establish the necessary telephone communication between Belgrade and Frankfurt after midday, when telephone lines are not as busy as they generally are in the morning. So we preferred to choose this "afternoon timetable" in order to ensure the whole TANDEM presentation to become really successfull. Now, to prepare for this success, it is now the turn of my colleague,
Dr. Huesmann, who will make you familiar with a number of important facts
about TANDEM, i.e. he is going to tell you why TANDEM has been introduced
and developed at all, how it works, what has been achieved up to now, and
what are the aims of its further development in the near future.
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