Information Bulletin no. 57, January 2007

Building an Archive for the Future

The BAA Council (Baltic Audiovisual Archival Council) invites everyone who is interested in the future of their archives to the annual conference for 2007 in Riga, the elegant capital city of Latvia, a small Northern European country.  Riga is famous for its architectural legacy and its world class opera house.  The Old Town has secured a place in UNESCO’s prestigious World Heritage List, and is made up of buildings from the Middle Ages and subsequent periods of Swedish, Polish, Russian and German influence.

The IASA Conference will take place from 15-20 September 2007.  The theme of the conference, Building an Archive for the Future, will address the responsibilities audiovisual archives are facing in a world undergoing rapid change.

The following website is being developed, and registration details will be available soon:

http://www.baacouncil.org/index.php?m=32

Important Notice: The eBulletin has arrived

The IASA Information Bulletin has finally arrived in electronic form!  

The IASA Information Bulletin used to be published quarterly, but since the advent of the eBulletin, it will be published only twice a year (January and July), and the new e-Bulletin will be published and mailed electronically in April and September.  

The first eBulletin was e-mailed late last year to all the members for whom we had e-mail addresses.  If your organisation is an institutional member, you might not have received the eBulletin, in which case please let us know and we will make sure you receive it. 

www.iasa-web.org

IASA is in the process to change the look and feel of the current website. The domain will also no longer be hosted by the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, Wales, who graciously hosted and maintained the website for us for free. As is the case with all good things, this also had to come to an end. 

We would like to thank Sara Weale and Vicky Foulkes for their commitment over the years to ensure that the website stayed up to date. Sara was also responsible for the conversion of the IASA Cataloguing Rules to HTML, a daunting task. IASA is grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the National Library of Wales’ small team of web designers and administrators. 

We are thrilled to welcome to IASA:

Shadreck Bayane from Gaborone, Botswana, eMail: sbayane@ppadb.co.bw joins IASA as he is an Archives and Records Officer at heart and by profession. 

Candice Feldt, from the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, eMail: feldt@fas.harvard.edu,  is the Head of Cataloguing at the Loeb Music Library at Harvard, and needs to be aware of what is going on in the field of sound and audiovisual archives, especially with regard to cataloguing, preservation and digitisation practices.  

Kurt Johnson, from Austin, Texas, USA, eMail: kurtidoj@yahoo.com, is a information science/ethnomusicology student at the University of Texas, and works at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. 

Richard Yeoman-Clark, Audio Archivist at the National Film and Television Archive, Kingshill Way, Berkhamsted, UK, eMail: richard.yeoman-clark@bfi.org.uk, joins IASA because the National Film and Television Archive is the main UK independent archive for British film and television.  They hold over 30 000 tapes of the British parliamentary sound recordings from 1978 until 1990, the ACTT Oral History  Project tapes, and audio recordings from the National Film Theatre interviews from the 1960s until now.  The film holdings include many film and television soundtracks on both optical and magnetic formats, many of which are on an acetic base and are now being digitised in order to preserve them from deteriorating owing to ‘vinegar’ syndrome. 

The Swedish Center for Audio Migration/Sveriges Ljudmigreringscentrum, Västervik, Sweden eMail: info@ljudmigrering.se  was established in May 2006, and is Sweden´s first large-scale business in the audio migration area.  They are active in Västervik and Hultsfred in the southern part of Sweden.  They aim to preserve and provide access to the national audio heritage.  The digitalized material will be stored and hosted by them.   

AIATSIS AV Archives – Audio, Canberra ACT 2601 Australia, eMail: mark@aiatsis.gov.au.  AIATSIS is a major archive of Indigenous research materials and resources.  It comprises three main arms: Research, Library, and AV Archives.  AV Archives comprises four main arms, Collection Management, Pictorial, Film/Video and Audio.  The Audio section holds 40 000 hours of material in its vaults dating back to the early 60s and beyond. 

Virginia Danielson from Watertown, Massachusetts 02472, USA, eMail:vdaniels@fas.harvard.edu, has represented her institution for years now and would like to become an individual member as well, especially in order to receive publications. 

David Nolan, 534 E. 11th St. #14, New York, NY 10009, USA, eMail: dnolan@92y.org, is  the audio archivist for the 92nd Street Y in New York City, a non-profit institution with a collection of over 10 000 hours of audio and video recordings of their public events since 1949.  He also consults with a number of smaller libraries and archives that have audio collections. 

Katie McCormick, Special Collections, J.Murrey Atkins Library, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC 28223, USA, eMail: kmccormi@uncc.edu.  Her main job responsibility is for the oral history collection at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; previously she worked with an archival collection of traditional Irish music at Boston College.  As an archivist, her primary professional interest is in sound preservation. IASA is, in her opinion, the leading organization in the field of sound and audiovisual archiving. 

Travel Grants for IASA Members

IASA's policy is to encourage members to apply for travel grants to enable their attendance at the annual conference. Normally, 50% of traveling costs (cheapest standard class return air or train fare between the applicant's home and the conference venue) will be met. These grants are subject to the Association's financial position, and applications are prioritised according to the following factors: 

1. Applicants who are to present a paper at the annual conference will be given higher priority will have a better chance of receiving a travel grant than other applicants.

2. IASA may, in addition, approach the local conference organiser and request that the grantee's registration fee be waived. The decision in each case will be up to the conference organiser.

3. Applications must be sent in writing (by letter, fax or e-mail) to the Secretary General in response to the announcement of travel grants as published in the IASA Information Bulletin and on the IASA List-Serv. Applications must contain the full amount of the traveling costs in US$ or Euros, confirmed e.g. by an official travel agency.

4. Applications by representatives of institutional members must be countersigned by the director or a senior officer of their organisation as evidence that their attendance has been authorised.

5. Accommodation and subsistence costs will not be supported.

6. IASA will not pay grants in advance of travel.

7. The Secretary General will check all the applications received by the appointed deadline, and submit them to the Executive Board for discussion and approval.

8. Applicants will be informed as soon as possible of the result after the Board's decision has been reached

Costs will be reimbursed on presentation of copies of the travel documents by the grantee to the IASA Treasurer during the conference. Otherwise, payment will be made after the conference, and the method of payment will be specified in the application, including to whom monies are to be paid, and how this will be done.

IASA travel grants are intended for members only; accompanying persons are not eligible.

The deadline for applications for travel grants to attend the IASA Conference in Riga is 1 March 2007. The Board will reply to applications before 31 May 2007. Please fill in the travel grant application form available on http://www.iasa-web.org/travel-grant-application-form

Or contact the IASA Secretary-General:  

IASA Secretary-General
Gunnel Jönsson
Radio Archive
Swedish Broadcasting Resources
SE-10510 Stockholm
Sweden

Phone: +46 8 784 15 35
Fax: +46 8 784 22 85
Mobile: +46 70 229 31 71
Email: gunnel.jonsson@srf.se

Why not host an IASA conference?

Are you interested in hosting an IASA conference?  Let us know.  We are keen to hear from you.

Hosting an IASA conference involves: 

• Providing a conference venue

• Making the local arrangements for hotels and banquets

• Choosing the conference theme and providing input into the programme

• Overseeing the conference finances

• Welcoming guests to your institution and your country

• And a dozen other things, including some that would be completely unexpected, but would add to the fun

To assist in organising the conference, IASA has prepared conference guidelines, which are currently under review.  If you wished, the Board would gladly circulate the conference guidelines on the understanding that they were being revised to simplify and clarify the organisation, roles, and responsibilities surrounding an IASA conference.

Expression of interest, and requests for more information, should be sent to:

Gunnel Jönsson
IASA Secretary-General
Radio Archive
Swedish Broadcasting Resources
SE-10510 Stockholm
Sweden

Phone: +46 8 784 15 35
Fax: +46 8 784 22 85
Mobile: +46 70 229 31 71
Email: gunnel.jonsson@srf.se

IASA TC-04 now available in Spanish

In eBulletin No 1, we reported the Spanish translation of the IASA-TC04, ‘Lineamientos para la producción y preservación de objetos de audio digitales’ , translated by Antonio Limas.

This publication is available from the Phonoteca Nacional in Mexico City and can be ordered at no cost from Perla Olivia, perlaolivia@gmail.com.

A Busy Year for the  German/Swissgerman Branch

Detlef Humbert reported during the General Assembly at the IASA conference in Mexico that the German/Swissgerman branch had 116 members, 61 of which were institutional members and individual members with a professional background in audiovisual archives and similar institutions, and 55 members who were mainly private collectors and discographers.

As usual, the biggest event besides the international IASA conference was the annual meeting of the branch last November, hosted by Ecole d’ingenieurs et d’architectes de Fribourg (EIF), the College of Engineering and Architecture of Fribourg in Switzerland.  

The recurrent theme of the two-day meeting was the presentation of the VisualAudio project to the public at the end of the prototype phase, by the joint team of scientists from EIF and Fonoteca Nazionale Svizzera (FNS), the Swiss National Phonotheque of Lugano.  VisualAudio is the amazing result of Stefano Cavaglieri’s and Pio Pellizzari’s idea of taking a photograph of a worn or broken record for long-term storage, with the option of scanning that photograph and receiving an audiofile of good quality at the end of the computing process. 

Another topic of intense interest was a collection of papers with an ensuing panel discussion on the question of Keeping the Originals, chaired and introduced by Kurt Deggeller, on the basis of Ray Edmondson’s ‘Audiovisual Archiving – Philosophy and Principles’.  Papers on Special  Collections of Music in their Historical Context, the General Assembly, and an Open Forum rounded off the 2005 meeting. 

By request of the members, Ray Edmondson’s important work on Audiovisual Archiving published by UNESCO in 2004 has been translated into German at IRT (the German Broadcasting Institute in Munich).  The intention is to pass it on to branch members as an ‘ethic foundation-stone’ for their work.  The Board of the branch is in contact with UNESCO Publishing, and is discussing the distribution in print and on their website. 

After having taken part in an EU project initiated by Austrian GHT (Society for Historial Sound carriers) with Pio Pellizzari as a consultant and an observer, the Swiss institutional member Fonoteca Nazionale Svizzera has prepared its database FNSbase 2000 for input by potential participants of the discography project ‘FDHT’.  This is still awaiting lots of data to cover the German record production of the shellac era.  If you want to know more about that, please contact Pio Pellizzari. 

Branch members have received issue No 9 of our printed publication ‘Schall & Rauch’ (i.e. sound and smoke transmitted information since the early days) in July this year, carrying for the first time a colour cover photo showing the scanning of a record during the VisualAudio process, which is also the main article inside. 

If you like to get in touch with the German/Swissgerman branch, you are invited to visit our website www.iasa-online.de (which you can also reach from the IASA website www.iasa-web.org).

Detlef Humbert
Secretary, German/Swissgerman Branch

The Archival Legacy of the Rwandan Tribunal – An Audiovisual Treasure 

The tragic events of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda underscore the level to which we humans can sink.  The work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [ICTR] has shown the international community’s resolve to prevent such things from happening again. Even with current events unfolding in Darfur, the benefits of the work of the ICTR and its sister tribunals for the former Yugoslavia [ICTY] and Sierra Leone [SCSL] (See http://www.un.org/icty/ and http://www.sc-sl.org for information on the work and achievements of these organisations) cannot be overestimated.  It has been demonstrated in many public forums that the process of reconciliation in Rwanda has been aided by  the ICTR’s work.  ICTR, ICTY and SCSL are completely aware that, even though their mandate would only be fulfilled once trials and appeals were completed, their current structures cannot remain in place indefinitely.  They are ad-hoc and temporary in nature. At present, work is being undertaken to take stock of the current situation and point to procedures to ensure fulfillment of the tribunals’ mandates, and preservation of the tribunals’ archives beyond their closing dates, currently scheduled for 2010.  Only if trials and appeals are carried out properly, and their archives made accessible and preserved for posterity, will the work of the courts be perceived as fully completed. 

In addition, ongoing activities such as witness protection, enforcement of sentences, and review of trials will ensure that the tribunals honour their commitment to the accused, the victims, and the international community.  It requires a residual mechanism to deal with those issues.  The legacies (legacies defined as the judicial and historical achievements of the tribunals) of the tribunals need to be promoted to the international community through their achievements.  

The archives if the ICTR consist of a myriad formats and a huge amount of jurisprudence, evidence, and audiovisual records.  The audiovisual collection will comprise, come 2008, 13 000 audio cassettes, 7 000 DVCAM videotapes, 7 000 VHS videotapes and 15 000 audio CDs – or a total of 40 000 unique hours of recordings.  By 2010 the audiovisual material would have added an additional 15% to those figures.  The environmental conditions of the ICTR’s location in Arusha, Tanzania, have also posed challenges to the preservation of the collection since 1996.  In addition to the judicial archives, the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICTR has its own evidence databases, containing similar amounts of audiovisual material and documentary evidence.

Given the levels of literacy and general lack of development in many areas, such as Internet access and education, the audiovisual collection takes on greater value as a tool for dissemination of information among the affected communities in Rwanda.  The same can be said for the Sierra Leone experience.  Through an active outreach programme, the ICTR has been able to sensitise even rural Rwandans to the work of the organisation.  Also, through capacity building projects, we have been able to transfer skills to the Rwandan judiciary and archivists in general regarding the value of the audiovisual records.  

The ICTR is actively seeking partners in Africa, or wider afield, to assist us in ensuring our archival legacy is accessible and preserved over time.  Our focus naturally is on Rwanda and working towards duplicating the archives to deposit in that country.  We also are willing to proceed with collaborative projects with other institutions interested in acquiring copies of the ICTR archives.  The originals are and will remain the property of the United Nations, but our approach is to encourage wide dissemination of the public portions of the archives to ensure as wide as possible access to the materials.  Our audiovisual collection is a unique part of the judicial archives, and we also are looking for partnership opportunities to assist us in further preserving the collection.  We are also willing to develop joint training efforts in Rwanda with audiovisual archivists and organisations to transfer knowledge on how best to maintain such audiovisual heritage in Rwanda and possibly the broader Great Lakes region.  

We are also requesting anyone who may have the resources to review our audiovisual collection management practices to contact us. We are concerned that owing to budgetary constraints we may not be maintaining our audiovisual collection in a manner conducive to permanent retention.  If anyone could provide a pro-bono service in this regard we would welcome any information. 

Any individuals or organisations wishing to be involved in these developments should contact the ICTR for more information. The first point of contact should be Tom Adami, Archivist, adami@un.org.  For general information on the work of the ICTR, see http://www.unictr.org

Tom Adami
Chief Archivist, Arusha, Tanzania

News from UNESCO

The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, adopted by the General Conference at its 33rd session, in 2005, comes into force on 18 March 2007.  After the very difficult negotiations to set up the text of the Convention, its ratification by more than 30 member states in a very short time is a great success.

Kurt Deggeller
IASA Representative UNESCO relations

SEAPAVAA - UNESCO workshop

Two one-week seminar workshops on AV Archives Collection Management, organised by SEAPAVAA and UNESCO within the Information for All programme, took place in Jakarta from 27 November to 1 December, and in Manila from 4 to 9 December.  The Training Centre of the National Library of Indonesia hosted the Jakarta event, which was attended by 34 students eager to learn more about modern AV archiving methods.  Subjects were ethics and principles (IASA TC-03), selection criteria, cataloguing and documentation, deterioration and obsolescence; methods of control, collection management, handling and storage of carriers; audio data reduction; preservation (in particular all the aspects of sound digitisation according to TC-04); disaster preparedness; response, and recovery.  IASA member Albrecht Häfner was invited to act as one of the resource persons and, since another international expert had cancelled their participation at short notice, had to cover most of the topics.  In Manila, the same course was held for about 30 students at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines, hosted by SEAPAVAA.  Printouts of all the lectures were handed out to the students to enable them to study the material again later, or share it with colleagues.

Although a good command of English as seminar language had been required, several of the students seemed to find it hard to put questions, express comments, or make remarks.  It must be emphasised that attendance of a seminar, workshop, or similar training event should not be hampered by a language barrier that makes any success of training and education rather questionable.  On the other hand, some students complained that their upper management was unaware of the importance of their archives as a significant part of their country's cultural heritage, resulting in a lack of financial resources.  Another of their criticisms was that air-conditioning facilities, as the basic tool of archives in tropical countries, were either non-existent, or worked only during office hours.  Furthermore, missing spare parts for replay equipment was a constant problem.

It was not clear whether a follow-up training course would be organised, but the seminar might prompt some of the participants to establish a communication forum, e.g. in the form of a SEAPAVAA branch, for those in charge of handling AV documents.

Albrecht Häfner
SWR

Scholarship goes to Zimbabwean Archivist

Ishumael Zinyengere of Zimbabwe was recently awarded a fellowship and a scholarship to attend the Certificate Program at the George Eastman House.

Ishumael currently attends the L Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, as part of a Rockefeller Archive Center Fellowship for Visiting Archivists from the Developing World.  This Grant allows a visiting archivist to observe, and participate in, the centre's activities.  The visiting archivist then undertakes an archivalproject that was planned in consultation with the centre’s executive director and staff prior to his/her arrival.   

Ishumael was also awarded the Sony Scholarship by AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists), which paid his stipend at the Selznick School of Preservation. 

Ishumael is very excited about this scholarship: ‘The awards have made it possible for me to attend the Certificate Program at the George Eastman House.  This school covers the broader aspects of our profession.  Every day is a new experience.  Learning how to preserve film and looking at the different aspects of how to do that enlightens me as an audiovisual archivist.  I only hope I can give this knowledge to as many African archives, including television archives as I can.’ 

For more information, visit the Rockefeller Archive Center website: http://archive.rockefeller.edu/grants/visitingarchivist.php

IASA wishes Ishumael all the best with his studies – Ed

The SLBA Migrates 1.5 Million Hours of Audio-visual Material

During 2006, SLBA (the Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images) ran a project to establish an infrastructure for mass-migration of substantial parts of its analogue audio and video collections to digital files.  The files were subsequently made directly accessible online.  A number of ‘unconventional’ methods are used, such as high-speed transfer, automation using robotics, and a suite of custom scripts that automatically process the digitised files.  The infrastructure includes an in-house developed migration asset management system that handles both physical and logical material logistics, including metadata, final storage, and linkage to the description database records.

SLBA’s first selection covers nearly 1.5 million hours, and this material will be migrated in approximately three years.  Production lines covering additional formats may also be added. 

At present, two ¼ inch open-reel audio formats are being migrated to Broadcast Wave files at a rate of 1500 hours per day on one shift.  By March 2007, SLBA will be under way with the robotic migration of 576 hours of audio per day from the data tape format QIC, and the robotic migration of VHS tapes to MPEG files at a rate of 252 hours per day through 12 VHS players running 24/7.  Impending video formats to be migrated are Digital Betacam and DVC-Pro.  

With the help of some external consultancy, SLBA developed the roboticsystem by way of adapting a data-tape robot, creating machine control and communication software, and quality control functions.

Improved preservation and access capabilities motivate this enormous effort.

For more information, contact:

Martin Jacobson
Head of Technology and Development
The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images
martin.jacobson@slba.se

JTS 2007

The JTS Programme Committee is actively soliciting proposals via the JTS website, and IASA members are encouraged to submit their ideas.  The AMIA office and AMIA volunteers are working diligently on logistics, and the details are falling into place.  The website address is www.jts2007.org.  IASA’s representative on the Programme Committee is IASA Technical Committee Chairperson Lars Gaustad (Lars.Gaustad@nb.no ) 

If you require information on logistics, please feel free to write to Keith LaQua (AMIA Executive Director: klaqua@amianet.org), or Laura Rooney (AMIA Operations & Events : lrooney@amianet.org ) in the AMIA office.  

Questions about the programme should be directed to the Programme Committee co-chairs Grover Crisp (Grover_Crisp@spe.sony.com ) and/or Michael Friend  (Michael_Friend@spe.sony.com).

AMIA’s can be contacted at

Tel: 323-463-1500;
Fax: 323-463-1506;
Email: info@jts2007.org

Richard Green
IASA President

ARSC Annual Conference

You are invited to join friends and colleagues for the 41st annual conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2-5 May 2007. 

The event, hosted by the Ward Irish Music Archives in conjunction with the Sanfilippo Victorian Palace, will take place at the Hilton Milwaukee City Center, 509 West Wisconsin Avenue.  

Register early and save! Full conference registration postmarked by 9 April is $155 for ARSC members, $180 for non-members, and $115 for students.  After that date, registration is $180 for ARSC members, $205 for non-members, and $140 for students. 

During the conference, the Hilton Milwaukee City Center is offering a special room rate of $119 per night, single or double.  To reserve a room, visit:

http://www.hiltonmilwaukee.com/reservations.html.  At the Reservations page, click ‘Book Online’.  On the secure reservation form, enter ‘ARSC’ in the Group/Convention Code box, under Special Accounts.  If you have questions about, or difficulty with, your reservation, call the hotel directly on 414-271-7250.  The special rate is valid until 9 April. 

For the complete preliminary programme, registration form, and details of the conference, visit:

http://www.arsc-audio.org/conference2007.html

For information (including exhibitor and sponsorship opportunities), contact Kurt Nauck, Conference Manager, at nauck@78rpm.com or 281-288-7826. 

Conference Programme

ARSC is dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings -- in all the genres of music and speech; in all the formats; and from all the periods.  Reflecting this broad mission, the coming conference offers a diverse array of talks and sessions that will appeal to both professionals and collectors.  

The topic of this year’s Technical Committee Roundtable is ‘Small-Scale Audio Preservation Storage and Management Issues and Solutions’.  Talks planned for this session are:

• ‘The Best-You-Can-with-What-You-Have Practices: Digital Audio Preservation in a Small Non-Profit Institution’ (Andy Kolovos)

• ‘The Bits that Bite at the New York Philharmonic: The Long-Term Storage Conundrum’ (Adrian Cosentini)

• ‘The Transitional Repository -- A Safety Net for Small Digital Preservation Projects’ (John Spencer)

Pre-Conference Workshop: ‘Preservation of Audio in the Digital Domain’

This one-day workshop covers the basics of preserving audio in the digital domain, addressing difficult issues concerning equipment, technical metadata, workflow, and storage. Archivists, librarians, and collection managers -- anyone who works with archival sound recordings -- will receive guidance on formulating solid digital-preservation strategies, and a greater understanding of the issues involved in working effectively with IT personnel, audio engineers, and others pursuing the preservation endeavour.

The workshop will be held on Wednesday, 2 May, from 8.30 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the hotel’s Regency Ballroom.  The workshop registration fee is not included in the conference registration fee.  Early workshop registration (postmarked by 9 April) is $75 for ARSC members, $85 for non-members, and $40 for students.  Detailed information on the workshop can be found at: http://www.arsc-audio.org/Workshop_Flyera.pdf

Anna-Maria Manuel
ARSC Outreach Committee Chair

Mastering the Transition between SD and HD TV in AV Production and Post-production

HDTV (High Definition Television) is here.  The technology is now available and cost effective.  HDTV is a strongly potential market for production and remastering.  Digital High Definition will greatly influence the way TV programmes are produced and diffused.  This will lead to changes in the complete production and post-production film and video workflows. 

The Louis-Lumière National Film, Photography & Sound Engineering School, in partnership with FIAT, INA and FOCAL, organises a two-day International Seminar, from1 to 2 June 2007, to help all those concerned about the outstanding issues challenging broadcasters, programme producers, archivists and managers in this transition from SD (Standard Definition Television) to HD. 

This Seminar intends to explore all these issues and perspectives.  

Call for submissions : We invite the submission of top quality papers that present the state of the art, report original research, or critically discuss underlying methodological issues associated with the main themes of the seminar. 

Proposals are due by the first week of March 2007.  Notification of acceptance will be emailed to authors, and final copy of full papers for publication of the proceedings should be received by 24 May 2007. 

Registration : Registration will be opened on 12 March 2007.

Registration fees:

• 250€ for early-bird registration received before 20 April 2007
• 300€ for registration received after 20 April. 

Information on the final programme, registration and accommodation will be posted on our website (www.ens-louis-lumiere.fr), and FIAT and FOCAL will release this information. 

Any request should be addressed by email to r.billeaud@ens-louis-lumiere.fr
or by phone: +33 1 48 15 40 27, or fax: +33 1 48 15 40 12 

New URL for UNESCO Publication

In an earlier announcement the following publication was advertised as a download from the UNESCO website:  

MEMORY OF THE WORLD PROGRAMME
Sub-Committee on Technology
Risks Associated with the Use of Recordable CDs and DVDs as Reliable Storage Media in Archival Collections - Strategies and Alternatives
By Kevin Bradley. National Library of Australia, Canberra
UNESCO, Paris 2006  

Dietrich Schüller, in his capacity as chair of the sub-committee, informed us that this document had been amended by an executive summary, which would attract the attention of archivists, specifically the decision makers in archives. 

The publication is now available in a much simpler URL than the earlier one: 

www.unesco.org/webworld/risk

Mega International Exhibition in Bogotá

The Documentation Sciences Foundation has been included in the ARCA project (Articulacíon Congreso Academia), which is promoted and directed by the Senate of the Republic of Colombia.  The aim of this project is to give the law creation process greater transparency by the active participation of universities, institutions, thought centres, observatories, and civil community academic organisations, which will have the opportunity to contribute their ideas and knowledge.  

Bogotá will be running multiple cultural programmes as part of the UCI naming of Bogotá as the Latin-American Capital of Culture in 2007 and by UNESCO as the World Capital of the Books.  As a result, the Documentation Sciences Foundation is organising, together with Archiblios Foundation (Colombia), and the backup and participation of the Senate of the Republic of Colombia, an International Exhibition and Conference of Archives in Bogotá from 23 to 27 May 2007.

The aims of the conference are:

• To show the advancement and management of archives in Europe and Spain, taking them as reference for current and future development of archives in Colombia and Latin America, thus being able to improve the quality of the archival task among all our Latin American peoples.

• To have the opportunity to broaden the scientific knowledge that is involved in the documentation sciences by means of forums, conferences, and a graphic, photographic, bibliographic exhibition, as well as hi-tech equipment for the development and improvement of archives.

• To allow event participants to establish a reference framework for archival management in Spanish, Latin American and Colombian archives.

• To put pressure on our governments, administrations and politicians, drawing their attention through proselytizing, philosophical and epistemological activities, so that they understand the importance of archives in the economic, cultural and welfare development of our societies, and begin to improve the economic conditions and infrastructure of the archives.

The organisers invite interested individuals and organisations to participate in putting together a cultural and social International Archives and Information Society Exhibition.  They also invite any kind of material – except returnable or commercial material – related to the exhibition, to be exhibited at this international mega-event.

For more information, please visit: www.documentalistas.org/eventos/excol07/index1.php

Or contact

Ana V.
Information Department
Documentation Sciences Foundation
Protectorate - Spanish Ministry of Culture
www.documentalistas.org

Phone: +34 927 416 606

New German National Discography Available

Discography of Judaica Recordings

An annotated 78 rpm discography of sound documents relating to Jewish life in Germany; in the German language, or recorded in German speaking countries, covering Jewish life, humour, music and religion; Zionism; anti-Semitism; and the Holocaust, is now available at €60.00.  

Please contact the authors, Rainer E Lotz & Axel Weggenat : birgit-lotz-verlag@gmx.de to order the publication.

New Website for Memoriav

Since 8 January, Memoriav has a new website www.memoriav.ch.  The part in English has not yet been completed, but the French and German are already in good shape.

SEAPAVAA Website up and Running

We are happy to inform you that the SEAPAVAA website <http://www.seapavaa.org> is now up and running, after experiencing technical problems for some time. 

We hope you will find time to visit the site.  We are now able to accommodate requests for accessing the site for the symposium papers of the recent 10th SEAPAVAA Conference and General Assembly held in Canberra, Australia, from 12 to 17 November 2006.  

There may still be times, though, when some parts of the site, or some pages, are inaccessible, as some changes are still being made.  If you would like to comment on the site, please email the SEAPAVAA Secretariat at: <seapavaa@yahoo.com>. 

IASA Directory

The IASA Directory for 2005 – 2008 has been published and posted.  As usual there are a few entries that escaped our attention.  IASA appreciates any notification of updated detail or corrections and will amend our membership lists continually. 

Please note that the entry for the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision should read: 

Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Postvak BG 51
Postbus 1060
NL-1200 BB Hilversum
The Netherlands 

Contact person: Edwin van Huis (General Director)

Tel: +31 35 677 49 99
Fax: + 31 35 677 33 07
Email: secretariaat@beeldengeluid.nl

Calendar of Events

DATE	EVENT	LOCATION
2007
31 January – 1 February	Workshop: Developing the European Digital Library (http://www.edlproject.eu/)	Vienna, Austria
7-8 March	PREMIS tutorial: The Creation and Management of Preservation Information http://ldb.project.ltu.se/projectweb/portalproject/EnglishWeb.html	Stockholm, Sweden
7-12 April	63rd FIAF Congress	Tokyo, Japan
18-24 April	TAPE workshop: Management of Audiovisual Collections	Amsterdam, The Netherlands
26 April	Second EBU Technical Specialised Meeting on International Broadcasting	Geneva, Switzerland
2-5 May	41st ARSC Conference: Victorians & their Music Machines www.arsc-audio.org	Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
5-8 May	122nd AES Convention	Vienna, Austria
23-27 May	International Exhibition and Conferences of Archives	Bogotá, Columbia
1-2 June	International Seminar: Transition between Standard Definition and High Definition TVwww.ens-louis-lumiere.fr	Paris, France
25-27 June	31st AES International Conference: New Directions in High-resolution Audio	London, UK
28-30 June	7th Joint Technical Symposiumhttp://www.jts2007.org/index.htm	Toronto, Canada
6 – 31 August	ICCROM Course: Safeguarding Sound and Image Collections http://www.iccrom.org/eng/01train_en/announce_en/2007_08SoimaBRA_en.shtml	Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and São Paulo, Brazil
19-23 August	73rd IFLA General Conference and Council	Durban, South Africa
15-20 September	IASA Annual Conference	Riga, Latvia
21-23 September	32nd AES International Conference	Hillerød, Denmark
26-29 September	AMIA Annual Conference	Rochester, USA
5-8 October	123rd AES Convention	New York>, USA
24-27 October	SMPTE Technical Conference and Exhibition	New York, USA
2008
June	XVI International Congress on Archives	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
August	74th IFLA General Conference and Council	Québec, Canada
September	IASA Annual Conference	Sydney, Australia

Source: www.ccaaa.org/

This Information Bulletin was compiled by:

The Editor - Ilse Assmann,
SABC, PO Box 931, 2006, Auckland Park, Johannesburg, South Africa,
Tel: 27 (0)11 714 4041, Fax: 27 (0)11 714 4419, Email: assmanni@sabc.co.za.

Language editor: Dorothy van Tonder, SABC
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 58 BY 15 MAY 2007
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