Australia's Public Service award to former IASA President, Kevin Bradley

On May 3rd 2018 in a ceremony in Canberra, the Governor-General of Australia, the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove, will award our friend, colleague, and former IASA President, Kevin Bradley, with the Public Service Medal (PSM). The medal "recognises outstanding service by employees of the Australian Government" and is the highest award given to Australian public servants.

The award will entitle Kevin to place the initials PSM after his name.The letter, from Chief Minister Andrew Barr, informing Kevin of this honour states that the award "pays tribute to your outstanding public service through digital preservation of audio visual heritage". This is a very modest summation of Kevin's contribution to the audio-visual community. Below you will find a more extensive commendation from the 2018 Australia Day Honours List.

You can view live streaming of the award ceremony starting at 2:30 PM Canberra time (0:30 EST, 0:430 GMT)  https://www.gg.gov.au/investiture
Over the years, Kevin`s contributions to Australian heritage, to the audio-visual community and to IASA have been enormous. I am sure you will agree that this is a most deserving honour.

Congratulations Kevin!

Richard Green

https://www.gg.gov.au/australia-day-2018-honours-list

Mr Kevin James BRADLEY, Ainslie ACT 2602

For outstanding public service through the digital preservation of audio visual heritage material.

Mr Bradley has been the driving force in the development of innovative approaches to preserving, and providing Australians with access to, the National Library of Australia's significant collection of unique oral history and folklore recordings.

He has developed a fifteen-year plan to digitally preserve the National Library's audio collection, recognising that the imminent obsolescence of play back equipment risked the future loss of unique heritage. No other cultural institution is as far advanced in digital preservation of its audio collections, and the National Library's outcomes have been achieved entirely within existing resources.

He is a world expert in the preservation and digitisation of audio visual archival heritage material and was President and Executive member of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) and UNESCO's Memory of the World Subcommittee on Technology and Information for All Programme Technical Committee.

As Vice-Chair of the IASA Technical Committee, and with their input and support, Mr Bradley edited and wrote much of the content of the 'Guidelines for the production and preservation of digital audio objects' which has become an international standard.

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Here's the video from the award ceremony (plays from from 1:08:16 to 1:10:10):