Call for Presentations: IASA 2011 - Frankfurt, 3-8 September 2011

The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives welcomes you to IASA 2011 – Frankfurt, 3-8 September, 2011

Website: www.2011.iasa-web.org

Call for Presentations

Digital Sense and Nonsense:
Digital Decision Making in Sound and Audiovisual Collections

Digital has been with us for many years now, so much so that there is little disagreement in the sound and audiovisual world that digitising our heritage collection is the best way to preserve and sustain access to our valuable content. Virtually all new materials are now collected in digital form so there is little choice but to manage our digital collections if we want to keep them for future users.  There are many examples of digital strategies working well, and many new initiatives which expand the number of users we reach and the way we use our collections.  So why is there still so much discussion, so much concern? Why are there still so many complex decisions to make?  Is it just that there are big hopes but bumpy roads, big promises but limited resources, incredible semantic possibilities but illegible road signs.

Is it due to the varied needs of the disparate field of creators, performers, recordists, intellectual property owners, depositors, collectors, archivists, technicians and users?  Is this because of the great diversity in the capabilities, competence and capital of their owners, curators and managers?  There is a great range of issues and concerns that all have in common: digitization now has become a necessity, standards are being agreed upon and mutual solutions are shared - but myths are also created and perpetuated... This conference will be a forum to review the field, investigate and discuss the following subthemes and expose the misinformation in the digital age:

  • Facts, advice and misinformation on the digital way
  • The challenge of format varieties
  • Added value and funding the feast
  • Metadata
  • Turning archives into assets
  • Mass digitization
    • Workflows and bottlenecks
    • Appropriate technology and suitable scale (or when small is beautiful)
    • Does one size fit all?
    • The big, the bad and the ugly
  • Open access and open standards
  • Access and aggregators
  • Managing change in the digital age
  • Management myths and technical realities
  • Storage solutions (and what about the original analogue material?)
  • Collecting sound and audiovisual materials in the digital environment
  • Social media and digital sound and audiovisual collections
  • Digital preservation and the digital divide: who can afford to digitize?
  • Training, education and learning within a digital domain


The IASA Executive Board invites presentation proposals (ca 250 words) for the 42nd IASA Annual Conference, to be hosted by the Hessian Broadcasting Corporation (Hessischer Rundfunk, hr), German National Broadcasting Archives (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, DRA) and the German National Library (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, DNB)  in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 3-8 September 2011.

Please find all conference information as well as the submission form on the conference website at www.2011.iasa-web.org.

For any further information or questions please contact the Organising Committee and the conference administrator through enquiries@iasa-conference.com

If you do not have internet access and you would like to submit a paper proposal, a paper or register for the conference, please contact the Conference Coordinator Jacqueline von Arb – by phone: +47 98 25 06 28 (GMT+1, or London time + 1 hr) or the Secretary General Ilse Assmann by fax: +27 (0) 11 714 4419