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The Organising Committee of the ASRA IASA 2008 Conference, No
Archive is an Island, cordially invites you to the conference
and to the magical city of Sydney. The venue of the conference
is the Australian National Maritime Museum which is situated on
Darling Harbour and is surrounded by cafes and restaurants,
galleries, an I-Max theatre, and many shops and other
attractions. Please visit the conference website
www.iasa2008.com to see
the venue and the point at which our plans currently are.
Registration will open in the near future.
There are some chronological changes this year. The IASA
executive and the ASRA IASA 2008 organising committee have
decided to highlight the section and committee meetings.
Accordingly the conference starts with what hopefully will be
a unique welcoming reception on the evening of Sunday 14
September 2008. The reception will be held in the Maritime
Museum’s stunning waterfront room with wide terrace and sweeping
views of Darling Harbour and the historic fleet. It will be a
beautiful welcome to Sydney and the Harbour, and we seriously
hope the weather will play along!
If you are attending an IASA meeting for the first time, there
will be a session earlier on the day of the Reception to share
with you how an IASA conference functions, and what happens at
the meetings and sessions. The section and committee meetings,
which are the heart of our organisation, will be held on Monday
in nearby rooms generously provided by the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The conference then continues at
the Maritime Museum through to Friday 19 September, followed by
the conference dinner on Friday evening. The Conference week
will include a tour of the National Archives of Australia and
the ABC in Sydney.
On the Monday 22 September there will be a special two day bus
tour and overnight package to Canberra, the national capital
(numbers permitting) to visit the National Film and Sound
Archive, The National Library of Australia and the Australian
Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Those who elect to come to Canberra can also choose to spend the
weekend between viewing the sights of Sydney and the surrounding
attractions, such as sunny and picturesque beaches, the
neighbouring Blue Mountains, wildlife parks, and wineries.
We look forward to seeing you in Sydney…..
Kevin Bradley
Convenor: 2008 IASA-ASRA Conference
Registration for the conference will soon
open. Please visit the website regularly for registration
information.
IASA's policy is to encourage members to apply for travel
grants to enable their attendance at the annual conference.
Normally, 50% of travelling 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 travelling 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 Sydney is 1 May 2008. The Board will reply to
applications before 31 July 2008. Please fill in the travel
grant application form available on
http://www.iasa-web.org/iasa0008.htm
Or contact the IASA Secretary General:
Gunnel Jönsson
e-mail: gunnel.jonsson@srf.se
Heike vom Orde, Carl-Maria-v.-Weber-Str. 10c 86157
Augsburg, Germany is the head of the IZI (International
Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television)
documentation department, a department of the Bavarian
Broadcasting Corporation (BR). Heike wants to join IASA as a
full individual member to enhance her knowledge on other types
of sound and audiovisual archives and to share experiences with
colleagues from other broadcasting companies across the world.
Emmanuel PERRIN, EJP Foundation, 9d avenue Alfred Cortot,
1260 Nyon, Switzerland. The EJP foundation is dedicated to
music purposes. The collection holds approximately 20 000
scores, 3 000 books and 50 000 recorded music references. The
EJP Foundation recording studio is mainly dedicated to the
production of music teaching materials and is currently working
to open the library to scholars (primarily students of
conservatory, and university researchers).
Curt Carlsson, Törners väg 58 SE 18157 Lidingö Sweden.
The IASA Membership was a birthday present from his wife, Gunnel
Jönsson!
Alessandro Bellafiore, Viale Regina Margherita, 42 90138
Palermo, Italy, hopes by subscribing to IASA that it may be
an opportunity to be more informed and to meet people able to
give training and development chances.
MediaServices GmbH, contact person: Paul Leitner,
Eichetwaldstrasse 6 A-5081 Anif Salzburg, Austria.
MediaServices GmbH is a group of (currently four) senior
professionals within the media industry. The company delivers
consulting and delivers tools for this market, especially for
the content preservation area. Paul Leitner, the founder of
MediaServices GmbH, has more than 20 years of background working
for major international companies in the media market. He
teaches Archives & Content Management at the University of
Applied Sciences in Salzburg.
Prism Sound, contact person: Chris Allen, William James House Cowley Road Cambridge CB4 0WX, UK. Prism Sound provide some
of the world's most prestigious and demanding audio facilities,
projects and applications in the world with the highest calibre
audio hardware. From supplying audio converters for digital
archiving purposes to providing bespoke audio test solutions,
Prism Sound have always approached audio with a no compromise
attitude resulting in the some best performing devices
available. Membership in the IASA means that Prism Sound can
reach like-minded institutes and individuals who are as fervent
about audio and the preservation of sound as they are.
Tommy Sjöberg, Bagarbyvägen 54, SE-191 34 Sollentuna, Sweden.
Tommy has been an institutional member, but has left the
institution and want to retain membership.
Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), contact person: Malachy Moran,
Audio Services & Archives, Radio Centre, Donnybrook, Dublin 4,
Ireland.
MARTLab, contact person: Alberto Gaetti, c/o Conservatorio
Cherubini Piazza delle Belle Arti, 2 50122 Firenze, Italy.
MARTLab is involved in the recovery and restoration of audio
documents, research and production in the field of musical
technology
On 18 September 2007, the IASA Training & Education (T&E)
Task Force held a meeting at the Maritim Park Hotel in Riga,
Latvia. The members of the T&E Task Force, Pio Pellizari, Judith
Gray, Albrecht Häfner, Gisa Jähnichen, Simon Rooks, Guy Marechal
and Nadja Wallaszkowits welcomed Kevin Bradley as their guest,
who reported on a planned training programme three weeks prior
to the annual IASA conference 2008, which is hoped to take place
in Canberra, Australia. Discussions were encouraged by
presentations covering audiovisual archiving in educational
context, bibliographies of T&E-related publications and the
re-edition of material on "Selection" (first edited by Helen P.
Harrison in Vienna 1984), as well as concentrated actions in
gaining multifunctional training and education material.
The meeting (re)founded the T&E Committee of IASA and elected a
new T&E committee: Pio Pellizari (Chair), Judith Gray
(Vice-Chair) and as Secretary, Gisa Jähnichen.
The next meeting of the Committee will take place in Lugano,
22-23 February 2008.
In September 2007 the Phonogrammarchiv (Vienna, Austria) was
awarded the UNESCO Jikji Prize. In its application the Archive
announced that the prize money would be spent for the
safeguarding of an audiovisual collection in Eastern Europe or
in a developing country.
In the course of the last nomination round the José Maceda
Collection, nominated by the Philippines, has been inscribed to
the International Register of the Memory of the World-Programme.
José Maceda (1917 - 2004) was the nestor of South-East Asian
ethnomusicology. After World War II he intensively engaged in
recording traditional music from the Philippines and the
South-East Asian region at large. His estate embraced, amongst a
remarkable collection of musical instruments, about 2500 hours
of recordings, mainly on analogue tape. The collection is
currently held by the University of the Philippines.
Following contacts between the Phonogrammarchiv, Professor
Maceda, and the University of the Philippines, dating back to
2000 and 2004, it was considered to use the prize money for the
safeguarding of that collection. As, however, the prize money of
USD 30 000 is not sufficient to safeguard the entire
collections, negotiations have been established in autumn 2007
to find additional funds for the project. Dr. Ramon Santos, the
Director of the José Maceda Collection, was successful in
raising considerable additional funds, which, together with the
Jikji Prize money, are sufficient to start the project.
During a visit of Dietrich Schüller in Manila at the end of
January 2008, a principal agreement has been reached which also
includes technical cooperation between Manila and Vienna.
Audio and video carriers
Recording principles, storage and handling, maintenance of
equipment, format and equipment obsolescence, February 2008,
edited by George Boston
Exciting news is that the TAPE project has issued a full text
version of presentations used in TAPE workshops by Dietrich
Schüller and Albrecht Häfner. This publication, compiled by
Dietrich Schüller, is an overview of audio and video carriers.
The text systematically describes recording principles, storage
and handling, maintenance of equipment, format and equipment
obsolescence for each type of carrier, and includes a list of
recommended reading. It also provides a solid, non-technical
introduction for all those professionally managing sound and
video collections.
It is available as a PDF file at
http://www.tape-online.net/docs/audio_and_video_carriers.pdf
The programme of British Library Sound Archive internships is
now in the middle of its inaugural year. Three interns have
already completed their two month internship, with a fourth due
to finish at the end of February. The first of two interns
undertaking a five month placement started the internship in
January. This first round of internships are funded by the
Heritage Lottery Fund, the American Trust for the British
Library, The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust and The Ernest Cook
Trust
The individuals participating in the internships are already
working in institutions such as regional audio archives, local
broadcasting organisations, or anywhere that has a significant
audio archive that requires conservation and management.
The training is supervised by the Sound Archive’s technical and
curatorial staff and is based around the IASA publications TC03
and TC04, covering archiving principles and practices
respectively. The content of the programme is flexible and can
be adapted to cover topics that are of particular importance to
the intern. There is an emphasis on learning through hands on
experience with interns completing projects based on existing
audio collections held in the British Library. These projects
involve applying the specific audio archiving skills, acquired
at the start of the internships, to the handling, archiving,
documentation and data migration of the selected collection
items. This provides the interns with valuable experience in a
working sound archive to international archiving standards.
The Sound Archive will shortly be advertising the second round
of internships which will take place between September 2008 and
July 2009. This second round of internships will be funded by
the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Derek Butler Trust and the
American Trust for the British Library.
For further information please visit the British Library
website:
http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/internships.html
or contact Alison Faraday:
alison.faraday@bl.uk
A new non-profit association Baltic Heritage Network was
founded at the BaltHerNet Baltic Seminar in Tartu at Estonian
National Museum on January 10-11, 2008. The seminar was
organised by the Expert Team on the Estonian Archives Abroad (in
cooperation with Estonian National Museum and Karl Ristikivi
Society) and sponsored by the Compatriot Programme (Estonian
Ministry of Education and Research). All three Baltic states
were represented with 22 registered participants from 17
institutions.
NPA BaltHerNet was established to foster network cooperation
between the national and private archives, museums, libraries,
institutions of research, public associations and organisations
collecting and studying cultural heritage of the Baltic diaspora
to facilitate the preservation and research of the historically
valuable cultural property of the Baltic diaspora, as well as to
ensure accessibility of these materials to the public. NPA
BaltHerNet will develop and encourage cooperative networking
domestically and regionally (within and between each of the
Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), as well as
internationally (Baltic States, the worldwide Baltic Community).
NPA will also develop and administrate the electronic
information portal Baltic Heritage Network (http://www.balther.net),
a multilingual electronic gateway to information on the Baltic
cultural heritage of the Baltic diaspora.
A Board of 5 members and an Audit Panel of 3 members were
elected. Board: Piret Noorhani (President, Estonian National
Museum), Linas Saldukas (Vice-President, Lithuanian Emigration
Institute), Gatis Karlsons (Vice-President, Directorate General
of Latvia State Archives), Karin Kiisk (Secretary; Tartu
University), Birgit Kibal (National Archives of Estonia). Audit
Panel: Tiiu Kravtsev (Panel Chair, Estonian State Archives,
Merike Kiipus (Estonian Literary Museum), Anne Valmas (Academic
Library of Tallinn University).
During the year 2008 presentations of the gateway and the new
organisation will be arranged in Baltic states and Baltic
communities worldwide. Information on the organisation will be
available at:
http://www.balther.net/.
Piret Noorhani
Estonian National Museum
J. Kuperjanovi 9, 50409 Tartu
Tel. +372 7350 423
Piret.Noorhani@erm.ee
Do you own Lorenz-Stille or Philips-Miller recordings and are
interested in having them transferred to modern media, whether
analog or digital?
AUDIORAMA, the Swiss Audiovisual Museum, specialises in the
preservation of audiovisual equipment. It has successfully
restored two recorders that can read these formats. Such
machines are extremely difficult to find today, which is all the
more regrettable because there is a considerable number of
archives kept in good condition, waiting to be transferred.
The Lorenz-Stille recorder in their possession reads 3 mm steel
tape at a speed of 1.5 m/s. It was used by the Swiss
Broadcasting Corporation until the early 40s, but this format
was still in use at the BBC as late as the mid 50s.
The restoration of the Philips-Miller recorder took two years of
thorough technical research based on the museum’s expertise and
substantial collection of documentation. The bands are standard,
7 mm wide, with a reading speed of 32 cm/s.
Transfers reproduce the original sound quality which is in both
cases between 60 Hz to 8000 Hz with noise levels less than 50 dB
in full modulation.
Experience and competence AUDIORAMA’s Competence Centre
is composed of a broad range of technical specialists in the
restoration of audiovisual equipment. They were responsible for
the repair and maintenance of over 600 radio receivers, TV sets,
audio and video recorders in 2006, concentrating on rare and
exclusive objects. They carry out transfers and give advice on
the preservation of audiovisual archives.
Swiss Audiovisual Museum AUDIORAMA is the Swiss
Audiovisual Museum. It is based in Montreux, home of the famous
Montreux Jazz Festival and birthplace of Eurovision. Its
prestigious collections consist of over 6 500 objects and tens
of thousands of spare parts, circuit diagrams, books, reviews,
CDs and DVDs, all of which are systematically catalogued.
AUDIORAMA offers a permanent exhibition, as well as regular
conferences, lectures, concerts and temporary exhibitions.
For more information, visit their website
www.audiorama.ch, or
contact:
AUDIORAMA
74, avenue de Chillon
1820 Montreux / Territet
Switzerland
Phone +41.21.963.22.33
Fax +41.21.963.02.94
info@audiorama.ch
International Working Conference
Amsterdam & Hilversum 10-12 April 2008
A wide range of professionals around the world is currently
involved in the creation of unprecedented rich and invaluable
audiovisual cultural and knowledge resources on the internet.
These range from national audiovisual archives, broadcasters,
professional cultural producers and institutions to civic and
p2p file sharing initiatives.
The De Balie Centre for Culture and Politics in Amsterdam and
the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum, in
collaboration with Knowledgeland, Images for the Future, and
Virtual Platform, will hold a two-day international conference
on the economies, sustainability, and opportunities for the
creative re-use of public audiovisual resources and archives.
While the level of activity and investment in this area is
enormous, the question of the longer-term sustainability of
these audiovisual resources remains wide open. Continued massive
public investment is one obvious solution, with equally obvious
drawbacks. The conference intends to look at alternative
economic models that already exist, and the possibility to
develop a model that can sustain invaluable public resources.
The Economies of the Commons conference will focus on
three core issues: strategies for sustainability, new modes of
value creation, and the potentials for creative reuse around the
digital commons.
These issues will be related to current projects, such as Images
of the Future (the largest digitisation project of audiovisual
heritage in the Netherlands), P2P Fusion (European research
project on audio and video sharing), BBC Creative Archives,
Prelinger Archives, Smithsonian Global Sound and UbuWeb. The
conference brings together a highly international group of
specialists, including Peter Kaufman (Intelligent Television),
Rick Prelinger (Prelinger Archives), Roei Amit (INA), Kenneth
Goldsmith (UbuWeb), Anthony McCann (Hallam University), Hubert
Best (Best & Soames / FOCAL), Lucy Guibault (University of
Amsterdam), Florian Schneider (Kein.tv) and many others.
Special public evening programs will introduce the topics of the
conference to a wider audience and present best practice
examples.
A one-day seminar at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and
Vision in Hilversum, on Intellectual Property Rights issues in
the digital audiovisual domain, precedes the conference on
Thursday April 10, the results of which will feed into the
conference program.
Enquiries about the conference programme and registration can be
directed at:
Eric Kluitenberg
De Balie
Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10
1017 RR Amsterdam
www.debalie.nl
e-mail: erick@balie.nl
Van Gogh’s down at heel boots were the first thing to appear on
the test website of the European digital library. The website,
branded
Europeana, will break new ground by bringing together
millions of digitised resources from Europe’s archives, museums,
libraries and audio visual collections through a single
portal.
The European digital library project began to develop the
Europeana web portal in autumn 2007 with funding
from the European Commission. The project is one of the
Commission's flagship i2010 initiatives to create
a European Information Society for growth and jobs.
Europeana is developing practical, user-defined tools for
exploring and sharing content in a multilingual interface. The
tools will make it easy for users to combine or compare related
material across different countries – for example the artefacts,
imagery, records and writings relating to the Roman Empire, the
Vikings or the Renaissance. The prototype will give direct
access to at least 2 million digitised objects, including
books, photos, maps, sounds, films and archival records from
Europe's libraries, archives, museums and audio-visual
collections.
Van Gogh’s Pair of Shoes is the starting point for
Europeana’s promotional web video. Introduced by Nancy
Sinatra’s 1966 hit,
These Boots Are Made For Walkin’, the video takes the
audience on a series of journeys through Europe - on pilgrimage,
seeking work and marching to war.
The purpose of the video is to encourage European institutions
to make their digital content available to Europeana. As
Martine de Boisdeffre, Présidente of the European Regional
Branch of International Council on Archives said, ‘Users expect
to be able to connect the different types of cultural heritage
material. To make these possible, organisations need to provide
their metadata to Europeana. So many excellent digital
resources lie below the surface of the web at present, and
aren’t easily located by search engines. Europeana will
make this material accessible as never before’.
The demo of Europeana and the video can be seen at
www.europeana.eu. Users’
responses to the demonstration site are being
surveyed online
and in focus groups around Europe. Thorough testing will
continue throughout the building of Europeana. This is
being done to ensure that when the prototype is launched in
November 2008, it will give users all the functionality that
they expect.
More information about Europeana can be found at
http://www.europeana.eu.
More information about the European digital library can be found
at
http://www.europeandigitallibrary.eu/edlnet/
or contact
Jonathan Purday on 00 31 [0] 70314 0684
Jonathan.purday@kb.nl
Baltic Audiovisual Archival Council (BAAC) recently announced
its 2008 conference which will be held 24-27 September 2008 in
Tartu, Estonia. The conference will be hosted by the Estonian
Literary Museum and the Estonian National Museum. The conference
theme is Transformation as Stability: Audiovisual Archives in
the Era of New Media /The one who evolves, endures J. Rainis/
Call for papers
The deadline of abstracts for papers is 11 April 2008.
BAAC is an organisation uniting institutions and individuals
concerned with audiovisual heritage about the Baltic States,
Scandinavian countries and the worldwide Baltic diaspora. The
BAAC annual conference (known already as Riga Seminar) will take
place in Tartu, the historical university town in the southern
Estonia.
The conference will take a look at the rapidly developing media
and the changes it has brought to audiovisual archives. The new
media has turned our world from a textual to an audiovisual one.
In order to ensure their continuous existence audiovisual
archives have to change, accept new roles
and acquire new skills. Changes have affected the social values,
but have they also changed the value systems in archives?
The theme gives an opportunity to examine the problems of
ever-altering archiving forms of digital media, and coping with
the constantly growing amount of resource materials. An archive
as a symbol of stability and continuity has to combine tradition
with innovation. In developing new solutions and renewing the
archiving criteria, are archives moulding their users or are the
users shaping the archives?
User expectation and usage practices of audiovisual materials
have certainly changed. How do these changes influence the
everyday archival work?
Will the analogue material be there only to serve as a guarantee
of trust in the future of "intangible archives"? Audiovisual
archives today have to preserve fading crafts to providing
hi-tech access tomorrow. We hope to look into the digital future
not neglecting our analogue heritage.
To survive archives should look back to history, and see how
radical political changes and censorship have influenced their
realm.
The conference language is English.
Please send abstracts of up to 400 words to:
maarja@kirmus.ee
The programme committee:
Juozas Markauskas
Piret Noorhani
Aldis Putelis
The programme committee will announce the papers accepted for
the conference by the end of April.
Conference organisers:
Marin Laak- Estonian Literary Museum
Piret Noorhani- Estonian National Museum
Maarja Savan- Esonian Literary Museum
Conference fee: The estimated conference fee will be 20
EUR
Updates about the conference will be published on BAAC website
www.baacouncil.org
For more information contact:
Maarja Savan
Baltic Audiovisual Archival Council
+372 7377 721
Vanemuise 42
51003 Tartu
Estonia
eMail: maarja@kirmus.ee
The Sound Directions project at Harvard University and
Indiana University recently announced the publication of
Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation,
which is available as a PDF from the Sound Directions website at
www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/sounddirections/. This
168-page publication presents the results of two years of
research and development funded by the National Endowment for
the Humanities in the United States. This work was carried out
by project and permanent staff at both institutions in
consultation with an advisory board of experts in audio
engineering, audio preservation, and digital libraries.
Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation
establishes best practices in many areas where they did not
previously exist. This work also explores the testing and use of
existing and emerging standards. It includes chapters on
personnel and equipment for preservation transfer, digital
files, metadata, storage, preservation packages and interchange,
and audio preservation systems and workflows. Each chapter is
divided into two major parts: a preservation overview that
summarises key concepts for collection managers and curators,
followed by a section that presents recommended technical
practices for audio engineers, digital librarians, and other
technical staff. This latter section includes a detailed look at
the inner workings of the audio preservation systems at both
Harvard and Indiana.
This first phase of the Sound Directions project produced
four key results: the publication of our findings and best
practices, the development of much needed software tools for
audio preservation, the creation or further development of audio
preservation systems at each institution, and the preservation
of a large number of critically endangered and highly valuable
recordings. All of these are detailed in this publication, which
provides solid grounding for institutions pursuing audio
preservation either in-house or in collaboration with an outside
vendor.
The Sound Directions project had not anticipated a demand for
printed copies, and at this time the document is only available
as a PDF. They will asses the demand for and investigate the
possibility of a printed version.
For further information on the Sound Directions project:
soundir@indiana.edu
University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Monday 12th – Friday 16th May 2008
A five-day workshop will provide an intensive grounding in the
theory and practice of audiovisual archiving, enabling curators
to develop strategies to safeguard their collections. The
training will be led by a range of expert film, video and audio
curators from across Europe. They will address issues such as
the handling and storage of analogue originals, digitisation and
restoration, managing digital assets and enabling access and
reuse.
The workshop will begin with an overview of curation challenges,
addressing factors such as carrier composition, life expectancy
and obsolescence. The emphasis though will be placed on
practice, using case studies and workshops to enable delegates
to develop solutions for their specific context. By the end of
the workshop delegates will be able to identify which of their
collections are at most risk of loss, so work can be prioritised,
and will be able to recommend policy changes to improve the
management and dissemination of collections.
Organisation
The workshop will be run by Humanities Advanced Technology
and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow,
as a continuation of the training programme established by the
EC funded Training for Audiovisual Preservation in Europe (TAPE)
project, which was co-ordinated by European Commission on
Preservation and Access (ECPA) and ran between 2004 and 2008.
Course directors: Sarah Jones, HATII & Richard Wright, BBC
Archives
Delegate information
The workshop is aimed at curators responsible for
audiovisual collections. As this is an introductory course it is
suited to curators without specialist audiovisual training. No
specific technical expertise is required. The workshop will be
conducted in English so delegates are expected to have a working
knowledge of the English language to be able to participate.
Course fee: GBP 400
Fee includes a course pack, refreshments, lunches and a
conference dinner.
Registration closes on Friday 21st March 2008.
Places are limited so register now to avoid disappointment.
Please register online at:
http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/news/tape.html
For further information contact Sarah Jones at:
S.Jones@hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk
Tel: ++44 (0)141 330 3549
or write to
HATII
11 University Gardens
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, G12 8QJ
UK
European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA)
c/o Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
P.O. Box 19121, NL-1000 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Visiting address: Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29, NL-1011 JV
Amsterdam
T ++31 - 20 - 551 08 39
F ++31 - 20 - 620 49 41
http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/
The Dutch parliament has adopted a plan to switch the country's
public sector over to free software and ODF completely. Reasons
will now have to be given if proprietary solutions are
preferred.
The
Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber) of the Dutch parliament
adopted a
plan to switch the country's public sector over to open
standards. At the same time, authorities will be called upon to
use open source software wherever possible. The 26-page paper
from the Dutch Economics Ministry obligates governmental
services to provide reasons why they need to continue to use
proprietary solutions, such as operating systems or office
suites from Microsoft, starting next April; next December, this
duty will be imposed upon all public authorities. At the same
time, authorities are required to come up with a strategy that
includes a timeline for migration to open standards and free
software.
By June, the Dutch Standards Institute will be presenting a
Basic Interoperability Framework containing admissible open
standards. The plan adopted yesterday already stipulates that
the Open Document Format (OEF)
specified by the ISO is to be incrementally adopted for the
reading, writing, sharing, publishing, and reception of
administrative papers. By January of 2009, the Open Document
standard is to be implemented wherever possible. The Dutch
Parliament's plan only accepts standards for which no license
fees have to be paid, such as for patents.
Furthermore, implementation strategies have been worked up for
calls for tenders, purchasing, and the use of open source in all
ministries by the beginning of 2009 and for other authorities by
January of 2010. The project is to be enforced by a complaints
committee and a super-ordinate IT department, which will be
providing local assistance in the migration to free software.
The government and parliament adopted the road map, which was
supported by all parties, in order to improve interoperability.
Specifically, modular software components are expected to help
open standards be gradually adopted. Greater independence from
individual software vendors is another goal. At the same time,
the IT market is to be made accessible to everyone. The same
conditions are to apply for all providers so that innovations
can be stepped up. The paper also says that the migration plan
is intended to ensure the long-term reliability of public
administration and the usability of its documents. Finally, the
plan is designed to prevent software expenditures from rising.
Four years ago, the Dutch Home Affairs and Economics Ministry
worked up the
OSOSS
(Open Source als Onderdeel van de Software Strategie, or Open
Source as an Option in your Software Strategy) migration plan,
which terminates at the end of this year. The OSOSS managed to
implement open standards in 60 percent of all administrations in
Holland; open source software is already used 47 percent of the
time. Since 2002, the OASE has also been promoting free software
for SMEs.
Despite these initiatives, the Hague aims to put even more
pressure on users to migrate to open standards and Linux so that
the company can play a pioneer role in Europe. Microsoft's
strong protests against the new plan were not long in coming:
rumour has it that Redmond threatened yesterday to take the
Dutch to the European Court of Justice to protest what the firm
sees as violations of competition law when the plan takes
effect.
The conference was held from 12-15 October 2007 with the theme
“Exploring New Worlds – Archives Meet the Interactive
Challenge”, and at the same time FIAT / IFTA celebrated its 30th
conference. There were approximately 240 registered
participants, the largest number in the last 30 years.
The conference was held under the notion of a possible
cooperation, or sponsorship by private providers for
digitization and access. Patrick Walker of Google opened the
discussion with his keynote speech on this topic. He gave
special emphasis to Google’s philosophy of support for a
commercial and user-friendly approach.
During the conference the private providers were able to state
their positions, and a session was devoted to this topic. The
idea of involving private providers such as MOG Solutions, Sony,
Google, AVID, Technicolor, and others, initially seemed
interesting. However it soon proved to be extremely difficult as
the discussions nearly always took place on two levels: for some
as a business and search for potential customers; and for others
as potential partners for outsourcing and know-how in new
technologies with a view to the long-term archiving of
audio-visual documents.
In addition to the presentations in the plenary sessions, the
conference offered a series of workshops.
Plenary Sessions
The plenary sessions consisted mainly of reports of
experiences in the areas of access, user needs, or marketing of
content in a new interactive environment and the associated
challenges. Other sessions presented ongoing projects such as
the EDL Project, or “Archives at Risk”. One session was
dedicated to the problem of legal rights, especially in the
marketing of archival content, whereby questions regarding
ethics, integrity, and authenticity of audio-visual documents
were discussed but without lasting results. It was noted that
although the problems of each country are different,
online-users are located everywhere. One morning was devoted to
digital technology, with questions about quality (resolution) of
digital AV-documents (primarily video) and the contradictions
between the needs of archives and re-use by the producers.
Another issue was the use of AV-documents in science and
research. There were excellent talks on the problem of
documentation, their quality and evaluation, and the
contextualization of AV-documents.
This was in stark contrast to the claims of YouTube: as little
detailed information as possible (metadata) for the benefit of
speed and simplicity. (“YouTube don’t need metadata!” was
proclaimed).
Discussions with the private providers often went in circles,
and questions which were important for the Archives were seldom
answered. Archiving is only the beginning of a long chain which
ends with the re-use, and if possible, a business. The providers
continually spoke of broadcast archives which should generate
output that is also financially attractive. Their proposals for
the archives were either mainly based on outsourcing of the
digitizing (Preservation Factory, Sony) or on the development of
structures and content management in digital archives. Questions
such as: What are the needs of an institution and its users?,
What are the possibilities of archiving (integration from
existing data)?, What happens, and why are there resulting
costs?, Maintenance?, System changes?, New developments?,
remained unanswered or were never discussed at all. Apart from
the issues of documentation / cataloging / metadata, concepts
were never addressed as a whole or even brought up. These should
be developed by the Archives before turning to the private
providers. This context would also require a new image of the
AV-archivist/cataloguer that moves beyond the new technologies
and the control over databases. Its responsibility is
increasingly the contextualization and placement of content.
The subject of high costs, relative to the financial problems of
the Archives, was repeatedly raised, but there were no useful
suggestions for the solution, even from the providers’ side.
Rather, they were of the opinion that it was up to the Archives
to find the necessary funds; they themselves could hardly have a
beneficial effect on costs.
Workshops
Eleven workshops took place, two or three at a time, on each
of the three afternoons, which made the choice and their
attendance difficult. The term “workshop” was used in a broad
sense, and covered lectures, mostly case studies, to a slightly
smaller audience with the opportunity to ask questions.
Experiences with “open access”, web-TV and web appearances of
archives were presented. A good example was the project of the
EU Parliament. Originally, the idea was that the AV-documents
were kept only for the members of Parliament and would be
deleted after a period of time. Today there is an archiving
concept with a defined workflow and access on different levels
(journalism, EU members, web-TV, documentation for re-use, etc.)
Also interesting was the workshop from Sony and Preservation
Factory. Two problems were especially made clear: one was the
loss of control, and the other the lack of know-how on the part
of the Archives. Sony tries to reduce this problem with
communication concepts. There should also be a training and
educational concept drafted for the Archive but there were still
no concrete proposals made about this.
One very good idea was to organise a workshop for Africa and
another for Latin America. Unfortunately, these were held in
parallel. The workshop on Africa exhausted itself in long
discussions that confirmed the precarious situation of the local
archives -- lack of knowledge, no financial resources. In the
workshop on Latin America the participants put together a list
of wishes/demands for FIAT. These requests or demands are valid
for every AV organisation and it would be a good idea to pass
this list on to CCAAA.
Conclusion
The FIAT Conference offered many confrontations with the
latest technologies and their associated opportunities,
especially for the “access” and “dissemination” of AV-documents.
Problems of long-term archiving of digital documents and the
standardization of formats (video) were hardly discussed.
Inviting private providers as participants at the conference
seemed like a good idea, but one should be aware in advance what
to expect of them and what their role should be. Despite the two
workshops for Africa and Latin America, discussion of the
problems of these archives came up short in our view. With the
focus on new technologies, access and marketing, reference was
mainly to the archives of the EU and North America.
Pio Pellizzari
IASA Vice-President: T&E
Long-term preservation of modern cultural heritage, like
photographs, video recordings or digital information, poses a
serious challenge for numerous institutions. However, at the
same time it provides a highly interesting opportunity, for
specialists in this field to gain excellent professional
perspectives. With its two-year graduate programme "Conservation
of New Media and Digital Information" the Stuttgart State
Academy of Art and Design offers a key qualification for those
who are looking for a career in media preservation. And even if
studying full-time is not affordable, this programme offers the
student the opportunity to attend almost all classes as a guest,
and still get credit after successful participation, which can
be used at a later stage.
More information can be found at
www.mediaconservation.org. The application form can be
downloaded from this website. For more information contact the
academy by phone or e-mail
info@mediaconservation.org.
Klaus Pollmeier
(Programme Coordinator)
Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design
Conservation of New Media and Digital Information
Am Weissenhof 1
D-70191 Stuttgart
Germany
Phone: +49.711.28440-322
Fax: +49.711.28440-225
The 2008 Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T)
Archiving conference is going to take place in Bern,
Switzerland. It is the first time for attendees from Europe and
the US to meet in Europe for this conference. The conference is
scheduled to take place from 24-27 June 2008.
The IS&T Archiving Conference brings together a unique community
of imaging novices and experts from libraries, archives, records
management, and information technology institutions to discuss
and explore the expanding field of digital archiving and
preservation. Attendees from across the world represent
industry, academia, governments, and cultural heritage
institutions. The conference presents the latest research
results on archiving, provides a forum to explore new strategies
and policies, and reports on successful projects that can serve
as benchmarks in the field.
Techniques for producing, acquiring, preserving, indexing, and
retrieving digital objects and images are explored in depth. The
conference also strives to present unique perspectives from
industry and academia on media and technology obsolescence
business models for sustainability, formats and standards for
archiving, and solutions for content storage, access, and
management.
Please visit
http://www.imaging.org/conferences/archiving2008/
For more information, please contact
Rudolf Gschwind
Email:
archiving-bern2008@abmt.unibas.ch
Conference held at The British Library, 26-27 October 2007
The conference programme, speaker profiles, selected abstracts
and recorded presentations of the recently held conference at
the British Library, Unlocking Audio: Sharing Experience of Mass
Digitisation, are now available from the Unlocking Audio
website:
www.bl.uk/unlockingaudio
Richard Ranft
The British Library Sound Archive
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, e-mail
assmanni@sabc.co.za.
© International Association
of Sound and Audiovisual
Archives (IASA)
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR
INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 59
BY 15 May 2008
Printed and produced in
South Africa by Heypenni
Gold