Joining nations 1947-1990

52

JOI N ING NATIONS

marketed by various member societies and that future sections should in principle be published in Slovenia under the supervision of Pro– fessor Stular. These developments could hardly be seen as evidence of popular enthusiasm for the IIW's work on terminology, notwithstanding its essential contribution to the dissemination of welding knowledge. The difficulty perpetually confronting Commission VI is that the number of people to whom its work is indispensable, principally librarians and translators, is insufficient to justify publication on a normal commercial basis, thus making all the more remarkable the achievement of Professor Stular in ensuring the publication of suc– ceeding sections. In the related fi eld of documentation, another setback was re– gistered. The plans for a Franco-German documentation centre had been abandoned in I 977 and in 1979 the Study Group 'Thesaurus and Exchange of Abstracts' reported that for various reasons it was not practicable to establish an IIW documentation centre. The Group thus envisaged restricting itself to more modest objectives - the continued supervision of the exchange of abstracts scheme, the up– dating of the IIW's Thesaurus and the preparation of a General Bibliography of Welding. After 30 years, there can have been few present in Bratislava who recalled how in 1949 the launch of the Bibliographical Bulletin was greeted with optimism as the first concrete achievement of the IIW. The disappointment caused by these developments was relieved by the award in Bratislava of the Edstrom medal to Mr Granjon, not only in recognition of his work over the last five years as Scientific and Technical Secretary but also of the substantial contribution which he made from I 948 to 1974. So seriously does the IIW and its members take its industrial vocation that 2 I years were to elapse between the holding of the I 959 Assembly at the seaside resort of Opatija and the 1980 Assembly at Estoril. Unfortunately the mood of the I 980 Assembly was not to match its cheerful location. One disappointment was the announcement that the invitations from the USSR and India for the 1981 and I 982 Assemblies had been withdrawn because neither country was in a position to guarantee that the delegations of all member countries would receive identical treatment in Kiev and New Delhi. The IIW thus found itself for the first time uncertain whether it would even be possible to hold an Assembly in the following year. In the event, the Portuguese delega-