The IISH was reasonably successful during the 60th year of its existence. The international committee appointed by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) to assess the Institute's recent performance reached favourable conclusions. We installed a new computer system to improve access to the collections and linked up to the Internet. Remarkably, these changes hardly affected cataloguing productivity. Third-party o funding enabled the Research Department to expand into the Institute's largest single section and to publish an unprecedented number of books and articles.
We offered facilities for conferences and other meetings to French demographers, Indian labour historians, Russian and American archivists, and the International Council on Archives, among others. Together with the Rijksmuseum we organized a large exhibition in Amsterdam's ciry centre on ï the occasion of the centenary of Dutch Social Democracy. Once again, the Institute's staff is to be commended for shouldering a heavy workload in good cheer.
As in 1994, the financial situation was cause for concern. Although the total annual turnover has remained relatively stable at close to NLG IOM ($6.25M) over the last few years, a steadily increasing share is non-structural. As the IISH is not the only institution facing this problem (which results entirely from changes in government policy), we should probably not complain. Inevitably, however, our substantial investments in library automation and the like coincide with growing difficulties in maintaining basic services.
