Joining nations 1947-1990

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JOINING NATIONS

Co-operative documents ofthe Commissions By 1952 a number of the Commissions had recommended the pub– lication of documents resulting from their co-operative activities, thus necessitating a mechanism for ensuring the publication in a satisfac– tory form of appropriately authorised documents. The upshot was a fairly strict procedure for the approval of such documents and for their subsequent editing and translation before the dispatch of the texts to the member societies for publication in their journals. The same procedure was followed after the foundation of Welding in the World; its first priority was to publish documents of this type, the member societies being also authorised to reproduce them in their journals. Authors' documents recommended for publication by the Commissions From the earliest years of the IIW, the Commissions have recom– mended for publication individual contributions submitted to them for discussion. After the rules concerning publication were more precisely defined in 1958 the authors of such documents were re– quired to surrender their copyright to the IIW which then informed member .societies each year of the documents in this category avail– able for publication by them. The first two categories of document mentioned above have over the years constituted perhaps the principal means of making known the work of the Commissions - in theory via the journals of the member societies as well as that of the Institute. However, it has to be admitted that, with a few outstanding exceptions, the former have been unable to devote much space to IIW material; this has meant that, throughout its existence, the Institute has been relatively little known by the mass of people responsible for welding in the member countries.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL WORK

The IIW had no sooner come into existence than it accepted respon– sibility for a periodical publication. This was the quarterly Biblio– graphical Bulletin for Welding and Allied Processes which had previously been published by the French welding organisations. By its nature, it