Information Bulletin no. 50, September 2004

Prominent IASA Member to Retire

One of our most prominent IASA members, Dr Ulf Scharlau, has decided to retire from active life by the end of September this year and, after 31 years in a leading position at the Archives & Documentation department of Süddeutscher Rundfunk (SDR, one of the German public service broadcasting corporations, now Südwestrundfunk), to devote himself to his family and his numerous hobbies.

Music has been the dominant element in his life. Already during high school he enjoyed five years of musical education (violoncello, clarinet, theory) at the Music Academy in Frankfurt. Subsequently, he studied musicology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and got his PhD in 1969 with a doctoral thesis on "Athanasius Kircher as Music Author". Playing the violoncello became his favourite, and for a long time it has been his greatest pleasure to play that instrument in a string quartet.

No wonder he began his career, first as a freelancer, in the music department of the German Broadcasting Archive until 1973, when he was offered an appointment as head of SDR's radio sound archive. Since 1981, he has been senior head of the archives & documentation department. Owing to his extensive professional experience, he received a teaching assignment for media documentation at the Academy of Library and Information in Stuttgart in 1993 and in 1998 was awarded Professorship.

Ulf played an active role in IASA. In the late 1970's IASA won his support for active work on the Executive Board: 1978 - 1984 Treasurer, 1984 - 1987 President, 1987 - 1990 Past President of the Association. He has always given IASA his advice and support.

Although his professional life has now come to an end, Ulf Scharlau will remain a true IASA member for many years and pass on his experience to the young colleagues. For the "third stage" of his life, we wish him a pleasant retirement full of music, active as well as passive.

Albrecht Häfner
SWR

Souvenirs de Oslo - A Joint Experience

This year's IASA conference turned out to be a congress. At least for our joint sister organisation, IAML. As far as I had been told, IAML held a congress when there were elections... and so it was! Massimo Gentili-Tedeschi was elected the new IAML president for three years to come. As far as IASA is concerned, elections will be held next year. The board appointed a new Nomination Committee.

Oslo greeted us with the warmest week in years. At +32°C Oslo was the warmest place in Europe. Luckily, the site for the conference was at the university library and at least the larger auditoriums had air-conditioning. Most of the 340 delegates (from 41 countries) were staying at the Blindern student home on the campus. A lot of people and a lot of sessions. This year, being both an IAML-ite and an IASA-ian, I had difficulty seeing all the people I knew to be there. Also at the various functions people ended up queuing for most things, which at least offered a good opportunity to chat.

The theme of the conference was "Music and Multimedia". The preliminary programme stressed the MUSIC theme, but when I received the final printed programme, while registering for the conference I found that, while music was still the main focus, more lectures on "IASA matters" were to be presented. It is a pity, because I think many IASA members turned down the conference because of the focus on music in the preliminary programme. There were more surprises to come during the week, as changes of sessions had been made on-line and on posters at the entrance to the library. One session contained only one (1) speaker. The subject - Focus on Africa - was an interesting survey on how Africa is documented in writing and in the digital domain. An interesting subject - and we did get to be first in the coffee queue... But it was strange to find that the people who chaired the session had no idea who some of the speakers were, and had not received information on how to contact them.

The last time IASA and IAML met was in Perugia in 1996. Both organisations have developed certain "rituals" for dealing with sessions and procedures, and sometimes there were clashes in programming as well as in culture. I don't think many IASA members understood the meaning of the first session, the "Information Session", which had been included to give people a chance to present or update a project without the formal stress of the ordinary agenda. As a person with double identity (but not personality...) I was familiar with the new IAML information session from Tallinn last year. IASA deals with these issues during its General Assembly - and will continue to do so, I think.

The IASA/IAML sessions ran parallel, which of course forced me to choose between IAML and IASA. One very useful session was "Documentation: Whose Turn is it Now?". Here Rainer Hubert talked about how the Österreichische Mediathek in Vienna is working with automatically generated metadata in the digital process, and how in the future they might be working with a system that could make a text file out of the sound file itself. Metadata is a big issue for both IASA and IAML. The Cataloguing and Documentation Committee will tackle this problem in the coming years, and look into the different standards that are in use. Chris Clark talked about the database structure at the National Sound Archive in London. The importance of semantics, structure and syntax was emphasised.

Stefano Cavaglieri, Pio Pellizzari (Fonoteca Nazionale Svizzera, Lugano) and Ottar Johnsen, (Ecole des Ingénieurs, Fribourg) held a well attended session and reported on their work in a lecture called "VisualAudio: A New Preservation Strategy for Fragile Disc Recordings by Means of Photography". The record is photographed, the picture scanned and then digitised on black and white film. The film is digitised onto a sound file. And the result is - SOUND. The first prototype of the equipment has just been replaced with a new, better version. Visit the homepage: http://www.eif.ch/visualaudio/. This system can be used by archives with large collections. A similar system has been developed in Berkley, USA.

Working in the Radio Archive at Swedish Radio it was great to see/hear how my Scandinavian neighbours in Norway and Finland have attained some goals in their digital work. NRK in Norway has digitised 40 000 tapes and the producers can now search the Intranet and download a copy in browsing or full quality. This project with the National Library in Mo i Rana began around 1996/97 and will continue for a while. In Finland, YLE can - after 10 years of pre studies, projects, and trial and error - look at a system that could handle both digital archive materials and newly produced digital files. Pekka Gronow reported that the metadata the producers added to the sound files could be improved.

Overall, the sessions were good. I did not attend any session during the week in which the speaker read from his/her manuscript without looking at the audience. At last - I almost added... But listening to people dedicated to their work, collection, or archive was fascinating and uplifting.

The IASA Award this year was given - since no nomination was made - to the Technical Committee for their work on the new IASA publication "Policy Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects". Completed under Kevin Bradley's watchful eye, this publication will surely be of great value to all kinds of archives and collections when entering the world of digitisation.

To add to the fun, here are some statistics I noted:

Most frequent speaker:

Kevin Bradley (3)

 

Hallgjerd Aksnes (2)

 

Siren Steen (2)

Fastest speaker:

ibid (minus 2)

Most spectacular session:

VisualAudio: a New Preservation Strategy for Fragile Disc Recordings by Means of Photography

Hottest day:

Tuesday +32°C

Drawback of the week:

Excursion to Dröback

We were treated with great hospitality by the city of Oslo, the organising committee and all the volunteers. The receptions were fully attended. The Norwegian evening was a wonderful event with porridge, prawns/shrimps, beer, Norwegian music and dance. A fantastic menu at the final dinner rounded the conference off.

So - in spite of some differences in approaching our annual meetings - there are still some things that connect IAML and IASA. During this week there were two words that appeared in many sessions and in the small talk during coffee breaks: Metadata and co-operation. Maybe we will meet again - better prepared, we hope, for a truly joint conference/congress.

Oslo is a great summer city. And those of us who visited the Munch museum may have been among the last to see the now "kidnapped" pictures the Scream and the Madonna by Edvard Munch. We hope they will be back before any of us return to the soft Norwegian light.

The web site for the congress now (late August) includes a web magazine with articles and pictures from the week: http://www.iaml-iasa-2004.musikk.no/magasin/front.htm

Gunnel Jönsson
Swedish Broadcasting Resources

And the Winner is...!

Several associations in our field of activities have awards regularly: ARSC has its Awards of Excellence, FIAT/IFTA its Television Archive Award. As the membership and the activities of IASA are fairly heterogeneous, it was not easy to define what kind of award would best fit the image of our association. After the failure of the first attempt at an IASA Awards Committee, the Board took charge of the matter and decided that the award should focus on one of the major activities of IASA, namely training. As IASA has no training committee, the question was which person or committee had special merits in that field. It was not difficult to single out the Technical Committee which, in the last few years, had actively been organising workshops and tutorials and has now, as a first, published its recommended standards in a handy booklet, Guidelines on Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects.

The award came as a complete surprise to the Technical Committee. Lars Gaustad, the chairperson of the Technical Committee, commented: "I have to say I was completely taken by surprise when the announcement of the very first IASA Award was made; an award given to the Technical Committee for our contribution to the work of disseminating and raising professional standards. Although nothing specifies the work done on the (publication of the) Guidelines on Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects as the main reason, I do feel that this last stone in our work was the deciding factor. I felt very proud receiving the award on behalf of the committee, and I do know that my colleagues feel proud of being awarded not just the IASA Award, but also the very first one. We will however, not rest on our laurels, but continue to work for the best of the sound and audiovisual archiving community, also in the years to come."

Kurt Deggellar, IASA President, said: "I hope IASA will continue to handle the award in a pragmatic way and distinguish persons or groups which contribute in a particular way to the development of our association."

IASA's TC-04 Adds Value

The IASA Technical Committee (TC-04) launched its latest publication at the recent joint IASA/IAML Conference, held in Oslo. The Guidelines on Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects hopes to provide guidance to audiovisual archivists on a professional approach to the production and preservation of digital audio objects.

The Guidelines on Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects can be ordered at 25 Euros per copy from Ilse Assmann at assmanni@sabc.co.za

Nominating Committee for IASA Elections 2005

The IASA Board has nominated the following people to serve on the Nominating Committee to prepare for the 2005 IASA election of the Executive Board. The Nominating Committee is Sven Allerstrand of Sweden, Sam Brylawski of the USA, and Ray Edmondson of Australia.

Sven Allerstrand: sven.allerstrand@ljudochbildarkivet.se
Samuel Brylawski: sbry@loc.gov
Ray Edmondson: ray@archival.com.au

New Members

Richard Ssewakiryanga, Center for Basic Research, 15 Baskerville Avenue, Kololo, P.O.Box 9863,Kampala, Uganda joins IASA because the Centre for Basic Research (CBR) has 30 researchers working on several topics of social relevance to Uganda and the African region. As an institution they wish to enhance their knowledge and skills in archiving and preservation of the different research materials we produce. They have a growing number of audio-visual and digital materials, but do not have the requisite skills in-house to keep these materials. They hope their membership of IASA will help them acquire the necessary skills.

Brenda Nelson-Strauss, 3314 Gosport Court, Bloomington, IN 47401 USA. She is the current President of ARSC.

Gregory Moss, 31 Carnegie Crescent, Narrabundah, 2604, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Gregory is employed at ScreenSound Australia as electronics engineer responsible for sound preservation. He is interested in participating in the broader forum of sound archives internationally.

Paul Haden, 10-12 Kirkdale Avenue, Leeds LS12 6AP: Most of my work is spent restoring and transferring audio archive material.

Cirio Yves, Rue du Centenaire 2, 1227 Carouge (GE), is working in the sound archives and has already participated in IASA's workshop. He wants to keep in touch with people who do similar things...

Jackie Bishop, EMI Archives, Dawley Road, Hayes, Middlesex UB3 1HH: The EMI music Archive is home to one of the world's largest and most diverse music collections, dating back to the late 1890's. It houses 1/2 million master audio and video tapes, 7 million music-related paper documents, 80,000 metal master stampers, a collection of 78s and LPs and thousands of artist photos. The Archive also houses many artefacts related to the company's history.

Derek Walsh, 25 Sundrive Park, Kimmage, Dublin 12, Ireland from the Society for a National Sound Archive Ireland, which is rejoining IASA.

Lemmers Frederic, Bibliotheque Royale De Belgique, Section De La Musique, 4 Boulevard de L\'Empereur, B 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium: The music department from KBR (National Library of Belgium) houses a sound archive collection of 50 000 sound records. We began a project to catalogue and to digitise this collection.

To Have or Not to Have...

At the last IASA Executive Board meeting, the high cost of postage for four Information Bulletins and two IASA Journals was discussed. The Board agreed that two IASA Journals should be produced yearly, but that the four Information Bulletins could be reduced to three per year. The idea of an electronic newsletter was also discussed as a replacement for the traditional Information Bulletin.

We would like you to assist the Board in this decision. Please let us know which format would suit you the best, and how often you would like to receive the Information Bulletin.

IASA Task Force on Selection

The IASA Task Force to establish selection criteria of analogue and digital audio contents for transfer to data formats for preservation purposes recently published its preliminary findings and is awaiting your comments before publishing its final document.

The Task Force on Selection for Digital Transfer was commissioned by the IASA Executive Board in February 2000, with the aim of examining the issues underlying the process of setting priorities for the digital transfer of analogue and digital audio content. The Task Force was also commissioned to deliver a statement of principles for use by sound archives in their planning for digitisation. The members of the Task Force were drawn from IASA's Cataloguing and Documentation, Discography and Technical Committees, and its National Archive and Radio Archive Sections:

Per Holst
Majella Breen
Gila Flam
Isabelle Giannattasio
Pio Pellizzari
Dietrich Schueller

The Task Force on Selection for Digital Transfer can be ordered, free of charge, from Magdalena Cseve: csevema@uzem.radio.hu

Comments should be sent to Per Holst: PER@dr.dk

IASA at the International Congress on Archives in Vienna (August 24 to 26)

In the framework of the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA), ICA (the International Council of Archives) and IASA agreed to organize workshops and a paper session on audiovisual archives during ICA's 2004 Congress in Vienna. ICA felt it would be easier to assign a specialised organisation to deal with this topic than to build up a proper activity in that field. IASA was interested in presenting itself as an ideal partner for consulting non-specialised archives in the field of audiovisual archiving.

ICA and IASA agreed on a programme of six workshops: three on "Sound Recordings in Archives: Best Practices for Preservation and Access" in French, English and German and three on "Moving Images", also in the three languages, and a paper session.

The workshops on sound, in German and English, were held by two members of the IASA Technical Committee, Dietrich Schüller and Albrecht Häfner, while the French version was presented by Yves Cirio, a staff member of the Swiss Association Memoriav. The workshops on moving images were held by Nikolaus Wostry from Austria Filmarchiv on film, and on video by Felix Rauh from Memoriav.

The paper session chaired by IASA's immediate past president, Crispin Jewitt, was on "Current Developments in Audiovisual Archives ". Crispin read a paper on "Sound and Moving Images as a Record of Society: Pattern of Public Provision", Chris Clark asked "You seek simplicity: we provide ontologies. But is there time?". The head of the ORF archives (Austrian public radio and television), Peter Dusek, spoke about "Broadcast archives as repositories of national and local audiovisual heritage by the example of the ORF Vienna", and Kurt Deggeller presented "Memoriav: A network for the preservation of the audiovisual heritage in Switzerland".

Finally, IASA was also present in the exhibition area with a booth where the more than 2000 delegates of the congress could get information on the activities of our association.

It was a very interesting experience and the co-operation with ICA should be continued.

Kurt Deggeller

Memoriav/IASA President

IASA at the BroadcastAsia 2004 Exhibition

At the invitation of the ABU, the Asia&Pacific Broadcasting Union, Dietrich Schueller and Albrecht Haefner gave a one-day tutorial on "Techniques and Methods for the Preservation and Restoration of Audio Material in Sound Archives".

The tutorial took place on 15 June at the fringe of the BroadcastAsia 2004 exhibition held in Singapore, and was organized by the ABU. Nearly 40 participants, mostly from broadcasting corporations, attended the event. The tutorial covered every aspect of audio preservation: stability and life expectancy of storage media, safeguarding of original carriers, handling & storage, optimisation of signal extraction & retrieval, transfer to digital, digital mass storage systems, and small scale/low cost approaches to digital archiving. Dietrich focused on the mechanical carriers and magnetic tape, whereas Albrecht concentrated on optical storage media and the most important aspects of digitisation. The tutorial was complemented by Gordon Reid, CedarAudio UK, with a most interesting demonstration of the latest restoration tools for declicking, decrackling, and denoising.

All in all, the tutorial met with a great response, encouraging the parties involved, such as ABU and AIBD (Asia&Pacific Institute for Broadcast Development), to consider continuing activities related to audiovisual archiving, e.g. to design and implement a concept for a small scale/low cost Digital Mass Store in one of the SE-Asian countries. This, after demonstration of its reliability, could serve as a standard solution for other archives in that region.

Albrecht Häfner
SWR

Preserving the AudioVisual Heritage - Transition and Access

The Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) was held in Toronto, Canada, at the Isabel Bader Theater from 24 - 26 June 2004 and was organised by the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) on behalf of the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archive Associations (CCAAA). The programme co-chairs and on-stage hosts were Grover Crisp and Michael Friend.

There were more than thirty papers read at the JTS and this overview cannot do justice to them all, nor give any detailed comment. Any that I mention here are my own 'highlights'. It should be noted, too, that any opinion expressed in this article is my own and not necessarily that of the British Library. Several of the papers had themes where 'visual' took precedence over 'audio' - the event was organised by AMIA after all!

The JTS website: http://www.jts2004.org/ provides details of the event.

Phil Feiner read a paper during the first session of the first day, the Thursday, titled Digitally Generated Colour Separation Masters and discussed the problems faced by archivists with the preservation of digital intermediates that form part of current post-production processes for motion pictures. This was followed up by a paper written by Josh Pines and Jim Fancher on The Use of Colour Separations for Preserving Visual Metadata Information in Digital Intermediates. On the following day, Friday, Charles Poynton (who probably had the shortest journey to JTS seeing as he lives in Toronto) read an absorbing paper: An Archivist's Introduction to Digital Image Science. Charles's talk was a fast-moving tour of digital image capture, storage and display. How Many Pixels in "Lawrence of Arabia"? was read by Dr William Glenn, John Galt and James Pearman. Archivists and restoration specialists are now using digital image solutions and digital imaging tools to 'restore' lost or degraded images, so the need to assess images prior to digitisation is becoming increasingly important. (This paper had a tangential interest for me in that the British Library has recently acquired the Peter Newbrook Collection of British jazz recordings. Many of the recordings in the collection - British Library Sound Archive reference C1126 - are associated with the Esquire record label that he ran with Carlo Krahmer. Peter Newbrook was the second unit cinematographer on David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia).

Andrew Bonello spoke on the Digital Re-Registration of Separations. A recent project at Cinesite in Los Angeles involved full restoration of the 1956 film Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot from 35mm VistaVision separation masters. Cinesite developed new digital techniques for the restoration as well as existing tools. Dr Alan Masson and Douglas Greenfield led a panel discussing developments in optical soundtrack technology and, in particular, high-magenta and cyan dye optical tracks and red LED readers. Balazs Nyari and Simon Lund's paper was entitled Restoration of the "Cinemascope 55" Widescreen Format. When the 35mm Cinemascope format became popular in the mid-1950s, 20th Century Fox created Cinemascope 55, a unique and short-lived format. The format proved to be unsuccessful and was used in only two films, The King and I and Carousel - and preservation of these titles from the original negatives has been problematic. A special screening of a restored and extended version of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was presented on the Friday evening, complete with a re-mixed 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack.

Audiovisual Content in the Digital Domain - Digital Mass Storage Systems for Archives was the subject of a panel discussion on the opening day of JTS, led by Ian Gilmour, Trond Teigen and Mike Handy. Archives are currently grappling with the necessity of building huge file storage systems to manage a wide variety of media and this discussion provided an update on the evolution and experiences in implementing Digital Mass Storage Systems. Peter Brothers' paper Disaster Avoidance and Recovery of Magnetic Tapes suggested solutions and methodology in case 'the worst happens' (and how to prevent it happening in the first place) based on his twenty years of experience in this field. Peter Z. Adelstein advocated ISO standards for magnetic tape storage (ISO 18923), tape care and handling (ISO 18933) and optical disc storage (ISO 18295). The standard for optical disc care and handling is still under discussion (but will be published as ISO 18938). Peter's paper was titled International Standards on Preservation of Information Recording Materials. Daniel Teruggi's presentation PrestoSpace: Preservation Toward Storage and Access Standardised Practices for Audiovisual Contents in Europe. The project's objective is to provide technical solutions and integrated systems for complete digital preservation of all kinds of audio-visual collections by building up preservation factories offering affordable services to custodians of all kinds of archives and collections.

Lars Gaustad's paper Web-Based Heritage Documentation was a report on the use of Open Archive Initiative protocols to make cross-platform database searches possible through one interface. The paper detailed a specific project to document the industrial and cultural heritage memorabilia related to an offshore oilfield in Norway. Restoration of Smooth Pitch Variations Over Long Timescales - "Wow" was the subject of Gordon Reid's paper. For me, this was the highlight of JTS. "Wow" can be encountered on almost any analogue recording medium and is one of the most disturbing artefacts of coarse-groove discs. In some instances it is possible to make mechanical corrections to this artefact, but Gordon's paper outlined a signal processing approach that is being developed by CEDAR Audio Ltd, a development that I hope will come to fruition in the near future. Sylvain Stotzer's paper VisualAudio: An Optical Preservation Technique for Phonographic Recordings detailed an optical technique to retrieve sound information from an analogue disc without any mechanical contact. The process involves taking a photograph of each side of the disc using an analogue camera. A print can be made on archival paper and the image can also be scanned and processed to extract the sound. Dietrich Schüller's gave a paper on Policy Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects. Audiovisual archives have a responsibility to preserve cultural heritage covering all the spheres of musical, artistic, sacred, scientific and communications activity held as published and un-published recorded sound and image. Dietrich's paper presented the IASA policy document TC-04. Alain Carou addressed the technical and statistical issues of optical disc testing in his paper Twenty Years After: Degradation Survey of a Large Collection of Optical Discs. Most audio-visual collections contain many different formats and carriers, each of which requires specific storage conditions. This is a luxury that few archives can provide. Jean-Louis Bigourdan read a paper titled Assessing Storage Environment for Mixed Media Collections, in which he outlined a Media Storage Quick Reference (MSQR) tool to assist archivists in making informed decisions on storage conditions for a wide range of materials kept in mixed media collections.

I found attendance of JTS 2004 a valuable and rewarding experience, and look forward to the next get-together in three or four years' time.

The proceedings of JTS 2004 will be published as a CD-ROM disc in the autumn of 2004, where full details of the event's papers and subsequent discussions can be found.

Nigel Bewley
British Library Sound Archive

Metadata for Audio

The AES 25th International Conference, Metadata for Audio, was held in London June 17-19 2004. Some of the more interesting papers were:

  • The new attempts by IRT in Munich to set up a new metadata "universal" standard, by Andreas Ebner. It looks as if this project would be even bigger than P-Meta.

  • The BBC, on the other hand, is now setting up a pilot project for business-to-business exchange of metadata using P-Meta to see if P-Meta really does work outside the paperwork world.

  • The Digital Media Project, by Richard Nicol from the British Telecom (http://www.dmpf.org/manifesto). The mission of the DMP can be defined as "to promote continuing successful development, deployment and use of Digital Media that respect the right of creators and business players to exploit their works, the wish of end-users to fully enjoy the benefits of Digital Media technologies and the interest of various value-chain players to provide products and services". Digital Media includes new emerging experiences made possible by Information and Communication Technologies along with mainstream media experiences such as Compact Disc, Digital Versatile Disc, Digital Audio Broadcasting and Digital Television.

Broadcasting Implementations:

  • TokyoFM Broadcasting
    is using MPEG2 in their broadcasting system. As metadata standard they are working with the TV-Anytime schema presented in XML. A kind of minimum information is the ID of the content and "the name of the content", both seen as sufficient for content downloading service on account of the on-air program. For program guide services on the web, more metadata is needed.

  • Radio Nacional de España
    has digitised their collections in a joint project with IBM in Spain (190 000 hours). The project ended in December 2002. They have used the BWF file extension chunk to fill in the metadata and are awaiting guidelines from the EBU.

  • NRK
    has developed the SAM standard (EBU Tech 3293) in an extended XML schema. Within the XML file it is possible to have the DublinCore fields you need and also add internal fields from your own systems. NRK has now implemented this for transfer of near-on line production audio files to different parts of the company, and above all to the digital archive.

Gunnel Jönsson
Swedish Broadcasting Resources

Dietrich Schüller Vicepresident of UNESCO's IFAP Council

At the 3rd Meeting of the Intergovernmental Council for the Information for All Programme (IFAP) Dietrich Schüller was elected vice-president.

The Council consists of 26 member states and acts as a consultative body for the regular programme of UNESCO in the fields of communication and information. IFAP concentrates on preservation of information and universal access to it, participation of all in the emerging global information society, and the ethical, legal and societal consequences of ICT development.

Memory of the World is an instrument under this programme to enhance preservation of and access to documents of all kind. For more information visit http://www.pha.oeaw.ac.at/home.htm

Audiovisual Archiving: Philosophy and Principles

The updated version of UNESCO's "Philosophy of Audiovisual Archiving", first published in 1998, was released recently. The new edition, bearing the modified title Audiovisual Archiving: Philosophy and Principles, is nearly twice as long as its predecessor and covers additional topics that have assumed a bigger profile in the intervening years. These include the impact of digitisation, the nature and concept of preservation, archival ethics, professional autonomy, terminology and nomenclature. Although much useful content from the first edition has been retained, it has been revised and the book has been completely restructured.

The new text was prepared by Ray Edmondson with the collaboration of an international reference group which includes many names familiar to IASA members. The project was carried through under the dual auspices of UNESCO and the CCAAA (Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archive Associations) and its publication celebrates the 25th anniversary of the UNESCO Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images - one of the key international declarations of principle in the history of the audiovisual archiving movement.

Hard-copy versions in English, French and Spanish are being released progressively by UNESCO: copies are available on request to Joie Springer at UNESCO headquarters (j.springer@unesco.org) . The English text can also be downloaded as a pdf file - go to http://www.ccaaa.org/ and follow the prompts. The author welcomes comment and feedback on the issues raised in the new version! (ray@archival.com.au)

Operatic Discography Encyclopaedia

Carlo Marinelli, discologist and author of over 500 opera and ballet discographies, has written several thousand files of discographical editions, collecting data not only on operas for which he intends to write a full discography, but also for all the other operas on disc, taking into consideration works recorded all over the world and with different kinds of recordings. This fifty-year-long task, carried out almost daily, has resulted in a handwritten encyclopaedia. The author is currently digitising his files for the Internet in order to systematise and complete them, as well as to make his work available to the largest possible number of people. The creation of ODE Operatic Discography Encyclopaedia, and its digitisation for the Internet stems from this work.

ODE is dedicated to Paola Bernardi, harpsichordist, pedagogist and musicologist (Vicenza 1930 - Roma 1999) and can be consulted at http://www.carlomarinelli.it/.

In this encyclopedia, the denomination OPERA includes not only lyric operas proper, but also symphonic-vocal-choral compositions that have been staged though not originally intended for theatrical performance, as well as vocal-choral-orchestral compositions based on dramaturgy, be it on account of the presence of characters or because of the music's or the libretto's intrinsic nature. Naturally, the denomination OPERA, strictly speaking, stands for all music meant to be staged (opera, melodramma, dramma per musica, operetta, musical, musical comedy, Singspiel, zarzuela, dramatic cantata or scene, etc.). The encyclopedia is ordered alphabetically by title. In the case of operas with the same title, the alphabetical order follows the author's last name.

Data has been compiled according to the following criteria:

  • Title of opera in original language

  • Author's name and last name

  • Characteristics of opera

  • First performance

  • Characters: ordered in accordance with the libretto, insofar as possible

  • Discographic editions chronologically ordered by year, month and day, when available

  • Interpreters ordered by character played (vocal register in parenthesis, when ascertained)

  • Chorus, orchestra and conductor

  • Record label and number, recording characteristics, number of records and duration of recording, when available

Letter 'A' is available for consultation. It should be noted that the task described above necessitates a long time for completion, since it acquires value only if data for each entry is characterised by the highest degree of completeness and conformity with reality.

ODE can be described as 'work in progress', therefore its update is an ongoing process.

Integrations, corrections and comments are welcome.

For more information, write to Prof Carlo Marinelli at carlomarinelli@mclink.it

Soundscapes: Reflections on Caribbean Oral and Aural Traditions

July 25 - July 29, 2005
The University of the West Indies, Barbados

The Department of African American Studies, Ohio University and the Learning Resource Centre of The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill announce the conference Soundscapes: Reflections on Caribbean Oral and Aural Traditions, scheduled for July 25 - July 29 2005 at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados.

One of the idioms through which the Caribbean gains its distinctive identity is its sound, both musical and vocal. Soundscapes: Reflections on Caribbean Oral and Aural Tradition seeks to explore the various sound texts that are unique to the Caribbean. While the focus of the conference will be on Caribbean sounds, papers that establish the nexus between the Caribbean and societies, countries and regions that have contributed to its culture, as well as those that demonstrate how Caribbean culture has influenced other cultures, will be welcome. Explorations of the aesthetic, economic and political dimensions of Caribbean sound will also be considered. Papers on how various aspects of popular culture can be used as entertainment-education forces in the Caribbean are encouraged.

Soundscapes: Reflections on Caribbean Oral and Aural Traditions, which will coincide with Barbados' annual Crop-Over festival, also invites papers that explore Caribbean oral and aural heritage, and their contemporary manifestations and dynamics.

Potential topics include, but are not restricted to:

  • Ancestral retentions and Caribbean Creoles

  • Bachata, calypso, mento, reggae, son, etc. and health issues

  • Calypso, chutney, dance hall, reggae, salsa, etc. as economic forces for the Caribbean

  • Caribbean folksongs

  • Caribbean music and its contribution to inter- and extra-regional carnivalesque celebrations

  • Caribbean popular culture and its impact on the socialisation of the region

  • Economic issues associated with the sounds of the Caribbean

  • European vestiges in Caribbean popular culture

  • Impact of calypso across the African Diaspora

  • Interpretation of Caribbean society through popular culture

  • Interrelation between popular culture and Caribbean societies

  • India's presence in Caribbean language and music

  • Music and the Caribbean religious landscape

  • Sleeve art: its contribution and role in Caribbean music

  • Steel band: its cultural, historical, social and international dimensions

In addition to plenary presentations, panel discussions will be considered. Interested participants are invited to propose a provisional topic by November 30, 2004. Abstracts should be submitted by March 1, 2005. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words and should be sent in electronic form or hard copy to Dr Vibert C Cambridge cambridg@ohio.edu, or Department of African American Studies, Lindley Hall # 302, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701. Communication faxed to 740-593-0671 will also be considered.

Completed papers will be expected by June 30, 2005, When the organizers of the conference expect to publish the conference papers.

Accommodation
Arrangements are being made for participants to stay in the Halls of Residence on the Cave Hill Campus in Barbados of The University of the West Indies. Accommodation information will be available after January 15, 2005.

Travel to Barbados
There are direct connections between the USA and Barbados on American Airlines, BWIA and US Air. Air Jamaica (a code share partner with Delta) provides flights to Barbados via Montego Bay, Jamaica. British Airways and BWIA offer direct flights to Barbados from London. A valid passport is required for entry into Barbados.

Crop Over is a period of high volume travel to Barbados. Seats (inward and outward bound) are at a premium during this period. Prospective participants are strongly advised to make their airline reservations very early to secure the reservation dates they require.

Crop Over is Barbados' equivalent to carnival. During July there will be tents, Crop Over fêtes (public parties) and other many cultural events. The festival culminates on August 1, 2005.

For more information, contact Elizabeth F. Watson:
Tel: 246-417-4201
Fax: 246-424-8944
Email: watsone@uwichill.edu.bb

SEAPAVAA Web Site

In line with SEAPAVAA's goal to increase awareness of the association and the AV archiving field, we have launched SEAPAVAA's new web site at http://www.seapavaa.org/. It is a good source of information about the association and includes useful resources on AV archiving. More features will be added soon.

Let us know what you think and email us at info@seapavaa.org

Calendar of Events

2004

   
10-14 March ARSC-SAM Conference Cleveland, Ohio
18-24 April FIAF-SEAPAVAA Joint Congress Hanoi, Vietnam
24-26 June Joint Technical Symposium 2004 Toronto, Canada
8 - 13 August IAML-IASA joint Annual Conference Oslo, Norway
23 - 28 August ICA Annual Conference Vienna
October FIAT/IFTA Annual Conference Paris
9 -13 November AMIA Conference Minneapolis, U.S.

2005

   
29 March -2 April ARSC annual conference Austin, USA
May SEAPAVAA 9th Annual Conference & General Assembly Brunei
28-31 May 118th AES Convention Barcelona, Spain
3-12 June 61st FIAF Congress Ljubljana, Slovenia
25-29 July Soundscapes: Reflections on Caribbean Oral and Aural Traditions Cave Hill, Barbados
14-18 August 71st IFLA General Conference and Council Oslo, Norway
11-15 September IASA Annual Conference Barcelona, Spain
September/October FIAT Conference & General Assembly New York, USA
7-10 October 119th AES Convention New York, USA
30 November - 3 December AMIA annual conference Austin, USA

2006

   
April 62nd FIAF Congress Sao Paulo, Brazil
14-18 August 72th IFLA General Conference and Council Seoul, Republic of Korea
September IASA Annual Conference Mexico City, Mexico
October AMIA annual conference Anchorage, USA

2007

   
April 63rd FIAF Congress Tokyo, Japan
August 73th IFLA General Conference and Council Durban, South Africa

2008

   
August XVIth 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 51 BY 15 JUNE 2004
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