IASA Information Bulletins are no longer published but previous issues are available below. IASA Members may see the previous issues of the IASA eBulletins and Newsletters [1].
Iestyn Hughes writes: "The IASA "homepage" should be launched on Monday 27 January 1997. The internet address for the new IASA homepage is [http://www.llgc.org.uk/iasa/index.htm] [2]
Member institutions which have their own URLs are encouraged to send them to Iestyn, by conventional post or by e-mail, so that links may be provided from the IASA pages to their own institutions.
Members wishing to add information about their organisations to the IASA pages must send their contribution as ASCII files, on disc or via e-mail to: R Iestyn Hughes, Assistant Keeper National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3BU, U.K. e-mail: iestyn.hughes@llgc.org.uk [3]
IASA's hard-pressed Editor and Treasurer have finished compiling the replacement for the 1989 Membership List. This will be known as the IASA Directory and will be ready for distribution to all members in February.
As members may know, we are continually trying to explore easier and more efficient ways of collecting membership dues. The global spread of membership as well as IASA's relatively small size remains a headache for the Treasurer. However, for 1997, options have been explored which will, in the first instance, make things easier for those IASA members who are also members of ARSC, and particularly those living in North America who do not have the benefit of European GIRO exchange.
With the invoices being sent out in 1997 I have been offering those North American IASA/ARSC joint members the option of mailing their cheques direct to the ARSC Executive Director in the United States: Peter Schambarger, ARSC, P.O. Box 543, Annapolis, MD 21404-0543, USA.
Peter and I and the ARSC Treasurer, Steve Ramm, are discussing mutually beneficial approaches to collecting dues, with the aim of ensuring two things: firstly, to make life a little easier for members; and secondly, to make sure that a higher percentage of membership dues ends up in IASA and ARSC coffers rather than in the banks'.
Members are invited to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the Muscat, Oman Conference in October.
The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation at the IASA annual conferences by those who have no alternative funding and to encourage continuing participation in the work of IASA.
Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.
IASA Committees may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences.
Funding for grants is limited and they will only cover a proportion of the costs involved.
Proposals for travel grants to attend the Muscat conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by 24th February 1997 in order to be considered at the mid-year Board meeting to be held 26-27th February 1997. However, exceptions will be made this year for late applications due to the lateness of this Bulletin. If you know that your application will not be ready in time, please notify the Secretary General of your intention to apply and forward your application as soon as possible after the above deadline. Notification of awards will be sent to applicants during March and April. Please send your application to: IASA Secretary General, Albrecht Häfner, Südwestfunk, Sound Archives, D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany. Fax 49 7221 92 20 94
Research grants are also available to assist in carrying out specific projects and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project which concerns the interests of IASA and which requires start-up funding or which requires financial support for work already underway is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (address above). Applications will be considered as and when the Board meets, so the next chance will be at the mid-year meeting 26-27th February and then at Annual Conference in October.
A formal announcement about the next IASA Conference in Muscat, Oman will be made in due course. Those who attended the Conference last year in Perugia will have heard Dr Issam El-Mallah's presentation about this exciting venue but we felt that others might already be in need of some basic information in order, for instance, to bid for financial support to attend.
IASA is on its own this year. The main conference will be held October 4-9; there will be a three-day pre-conference held October 1-3 (involving the Cataloguing Rules Editorial Group) and two additional days October 10-11 have been reserved for IASA Board meetings.
The venue for the Conference is the Oman Centre for Traditional Music which is part of the Ministry of Information and it is expected that Ministry buildings will be available for the various conference meetings.
Dr El-Mallah says that it is still too early to say what the costs will be but he expects it to be cheaper than Perugia.
He adds: "The Sultanate of Oman is a very beautiful country indeed. You can find very old Arabian traditions which have disappeared in most other Arab countries". If the IASA Editor can get the required permission, Dr El-Mallah's article about the Oman Center for Traditional Music, which was published in World of Music vol.33 (1), 1991, will be re-printed in the next issue of the IASA Journal.
IBAC was founded in Århus in Denmark in September 1969 to promote international participation in the scientific study of biological sounds, or bioacoustics. Its primary achievement since then has been the organising of fourteen international symposia in nine different European countries. The subject of bioacoustics is really a marriage of the two fields of biology and physical acoustics, and with its dependence on technology, the interdisciplinary nature of IBAC meetings has attracted scientists, amateur sound recordists, archivists and electronic engineers. IBAC has also sponsored the publication of the news bulletin Biophon. In recent years, attempts have been made to develop standards and international co-operation in such areas as analytical measurement, descriptive terminology, recording techniques and archival documentation for bioacoustic recordings.
The last symposium, held in October 1996 in the historic university town of Pavia in northern Italy, was attended by seventy participants from fourteen countries. The programme included a series of spoken papers on the latest research in sounds of insects, whales, fish, mammals and birds, followed by technical discussion and two roundtable sessions on 'audio copyright and licensing' and 'reliability of DAT for archiving'. Just as rewarding were the opportunities for socialising after hours with such a mix of nationalities in the restaurants in the old part of Pavia.
The XVI IBAC Symposium will take place at the Center for Bioacoustics, Texas A&M University, Texas, USA, October 14th-18th, 1997. This will be the first IBAC Symposium to be held in the United States and it is being co-sponsored by the Acoustical Society of America. The IBAC Chairman is currently Dr Gianni Pavan of Pavia University and the Secretary is Richard Ranft, British Library National Sound Archive.
Richard Ranft
This is copied from the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) Press Release No. 106, Geneva, December 20, 1996.
In Geneva, on December 20, 1996, the WIPO Diplomatic Conference on Certain Copyright and Neighboring Rights Questions adopted two Treaties, namely the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. Any member State of WIPO may accede to those Treaties.
Both Treaties include provisions which offer responses to the challenges of digital technology, particularly the Internet. They provide an exclusive right for authors, performers and producers of phonograms to authorize the making available of their works, performances and phonograms, respectively, to the public, by wire or wireless means, in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them (language which covers on-demand, interactive transmissions in the Internet.) In relation to that right, and the rights of communication to the public, in general, the Conference adopted an agreed statement expressing the understanding that the mere provision of physical facilities for enabling or making a communication does not itself amount to communication. The Treaties contain provisions on obligations concerning technological measures of protection and electronic rights management information, indispensable for an efficient exercise of rights in digital environment. The Conference also discussed whether or not specific provisions are needed concerning the application of the right of reproduction concerning some temporary, transient, incidental reproductions, but did not adopt any such provisions since it considered that those issues may be appropriately handled on the basis of the existing international norms on the right of reproduction, and the possible exceptions to it, particularly under Article 9 of the Berne Convention.
Both Treaties recognize a right of distribution to the public of copies. They leave to national legislation to determine the territorial effect of the exhaustion of rights with the first sale of a copy (and, thus, whether or not parallel import is allowed).
The WIPO Copyright Treaty also contains provisions on the copyright protection of computer programs and original databases and on the right of rental in a way similar to the TRIPS Agreement.
Furthermore, the WIPO Copyright Treaty raises the minimum duration of protection of photographic (which in the Berne Convention now is 25 years) to the duration of protection of other works under the Berne Convention (50 years).
The WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty covers the protection of the rights of performers other than their rights in the audiovisual fixations of their performances, and, in addition to the above-mentioned provisions related to the digital technology, and the provisions on the right of distribution, it also contains protection on other economic rights of performers and producers of phonograms in a more or less similar way as in the 1961 Rome Convention and, as far as the right of rental is concerned, in a way similar to the TRIPS Agreement. The Treaty also recognizes moral rights for performers in respect of their live aural performances and their performances fixed in phonograms.
The minimum duration of protection of the rights covered by the Treaty practically corresponds to the duration under the TRIPS Agreement (50 years) rather than under the Rome Convention (20 years).
The Conference also adopted a resolution expressing regret that, in spite of the efforts of most Delegations, no agreement was reached on the rights of performers in the audiovisual fixations of their performances and calling for the convocation of an extraordinary session of the competent WIPO Governing Bodies in the first quarter of 1997 to decide about the schedule of further preparatory work in view of the adoption of a protocol to the Treaty on such rights, not later than in 1998.
The Conference did not discuss the draft Treaty on Intellectual Property Rights in Databases which would have granted protection also for non-original databases. It adopted a recommendation on the convocation of an extraordinary session of the competent WIPO Governing bodies to decide on the further preparatory work of such a Treaty.
The official texts of the Treaties can be obtained from WIPO in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Russian and, are being made available, in English, French and Spanish, on the Internet (http://www.wipo.int [4]).
The 19th Tonmeistertagung (International Convention on Sound Design) was held in Karlsruhe, Germany on November 15-18, 1996.
The Tonmeistertagung is organized by the Education Enterprise of the Association of German Sound Engineers and is a combined convention which offers a programme of papers and lectures dealing with current issues in the sound design field and offers appropriate suppliers and manufacturers the opportunity to exhibit.
The biennial Tonmeistertagung has made Karlsruhe its regular venue. Previous conventions took place there in 1992 and 1994. It has gained more and more international acceptance: of the 184 exhibitors in 1996, 24 were from countries outside Germany, in addition to the numerous international companies which have German branches.
About eighty papers, five round tables, twenty product fora and three excursions dealt with topics from areas such as multi-channel sound, sound reinforcement, digitial techniques, sound quality control and assessment, architectural acoustics, sound design and recording practice, studio design and construction, post-production, computer-aided broadcasting, mass storage and archiving, music acoustics and sound aesthetics, psychoacoustics, etc.
Within the "mass storage and archiving" topic, IASA General Secretary Albrecht Häfner reported on "The digital mass store in broadcasting archives: initial experience at Südwestfunk", and Dietrich Schuller gave a paper on "The problem of transferring analogue archive material in the digital domain", the conclusion of which was that digitization is the "state of thinking ahead". When embarking on the digitization of large collections, usually implying years and years of work, those parts of the collection which deserve preferential transfer must be suitably prioritised. The speaker pleaded that the original carriers must not be disposed of subsequently, as transfer technologies will continue to improve in the future thereby enabling us to transfer analogue material with a precision substantially higher than today.
The next Tonmeistertagung will be held in 1998.
Albrecht Häfner
Current forecasts about the communications industry from the American company Veronis, Suhler & Associates Inc., (investment bankers to the communications and information industries), published in their 10th Annual Communication Industry Forecast Press Release, indicate that sound archives could benefit in many ways from substantial growth in the recording and broadcast industries over the next four years, if only as recipients of new product.
A favorable economic outlook, improved advertising spending across all segments, increased consumer spending on emerging media, and a pickup in expenditures on business information will be among the major factors behind the projected 7.0 percent compound annual growth of the Communications Industry over the 1995-2000 period. The Forecast predicts that total Communications Industry spending will climb to $353.3 billion in 2000, from $251.5 billion in 1995, and will move up to third position in terms of growth among the top-12 U.S. industries, trailing only electronic equipment and components and telecommunication services.
Among the ten industry segments covered by the Forecast, Interactive Digital Media (IDM) will register the largest five-year compound annual growth with a 19.4 percent gain, followed by Subscription Video Services (8.5 percent) and Recorded Music (8.1 percent).
In the same period, according to the Forecast, television, recorded music, consumer books, home video, and the interactive digital media -- principally on-line services, the Internet and video games -- will take up more of consumers' time. By 2000, the number of hours per year devoted to overall media usage by the average consumer will rise to 3,540, from 3,401 in 1995."
More detailed prognostications are given for central IASA concerns, the radio and recording industries, but while their coverage of radio is confined to United States (where deregulation is the driving force), some useful information on global developments can be gained from their overview for the recorded music industry.
"1995 contained four principal messages affecting the outlook for the recorded-music sector. First, it might take several years for growth in demand to catch up with the excess capacity that now exists in the retail marketplace, although a part of the correction occurred in 1995.
Second, it appears that the CD album format began to mature in 1995. In the past, CD sales were fueled by both the purchase of current releases and of catalog titles that consumers wanted to have in the CD format. The catalog aspect of CD sales is waning, and the CD market will become more dependent on current releases over the forecast period than it was over the last five years. Consequently, the growth rates of 20 percent and higher that characterized the format in the recent past will not in all likelihood continue.
Third, CD spending will benefit from what appears to be a definitive decline in the popularity of the cassette format. Although the convenience of the cassette format has helped sustain sales in recent years, it will probably not be enough in the future. Unit sales of cassette singles fell 10.4 million in 1995, while unit sales of CD singles rose by 7.9 million.
Fourth, the price of CD singles in 1995 came down by 14.6 percent, spurring an 84.9 percent rise in unit sales and a 57.9 percent increase in spending. The average CD single price dropped to $5.15 in 1995 from $6.03 in 1994, and unit sales nearly doubled, increasing to 17.2 million from 9.3 million. CD singles captured most of the sales lost to cassette singles and outsold music videos for the first time since the music video format has been tracked. If prices for CD singles continue to ease, as they are expected to do based on the 1995 experience, the CD single format will become a major factor in the recorded-music industry.
Demographics: Over the next five years the fastest-growing segments of the population will be 10-to-19-year-olds and people 45 and over. While the older demographic group buys recorded music far less intensively than the younger generation, there has been an upward trend in sales for the 45-and-over group that should mitigate the adverse sales impact of their growing share of the population. On the plus side, the 10-to-19-year-old group will expand by 7.9 percent over the next five years, and the number of 20-to-24-year-olds, the most intensive music-buying segment of the population, will increase by 1.5 percent, a turnaround in respect to the 3.7 percent decline of the 1990-1995 period. Altogether the number of 10-to-24-year-olds, the key demographic segment for recorded music, will expand by 3.2 million over the forecast period. Thus, the surge in births that began in the early 1980s is beginning to fuel demand for recorded music.
Genres: Among the principal recorded-music genres, urban contemporary posted the largest increase in 1995, moving into third place with an 11.3 percent share. Unit sales for urban contemporary recordings increased 16.7 percent to 126 million from 108 million. Unit sales of country, the second-largest category in 1995, edged up to 186 million from 183 million, accounting for 16.7 percent of the total. Sales of rock recordings, the dominant category with 33.5 percent, suffered a relatively modest 5.4 percent decline to 373 million units. Pop music, the fourth-largest category with a 10.1 percent share, also experienced a modest drop in unit sales to 112 million from 116 million.
DVDs: Digital video disc (DVD) players are scheduled to reach the consumer market in 1996. Although DVDs will provide a significantly better picture and sound than videocassettes, they will not improve on the quality of the CD, which is already digital. However, at prices ranging from $500 to $900, DVD players will be far more expensive than even upper-end CD players.
If the DVD does gain market share, it will be as a replacement for the VCR rather than the CD player. In this regard, the ability to record is crucial, and that feature is not expected to be available until 1998. Consequently, the DVD should not be a major factor in the recorded-music industry over the forecast period.
The Veronis, Suhler & Associates Inc homepage is at http://www.vsacomm.com/ [5]
Caruso came to Plymouth twice: in 1909 to give a recital (reviewed in the Plymouth Evening Herald) and in 1913 aboard the liner Wilhelm II bound for Germany. A self-caricature which Caruso drew on that latter occasion is now in the collection of IASA-member and former BBC presenter Joe Pengelly.
Joe Pengelly's interest in Caruso has recently taken audible form with the publication last year of Enrico Caruso: electrical re-creations on Archiphon ARC 116. This compiles several Victor and HMV Caruso re-creations from the 1930s and adds two audacious new recreations of Sullivan's The Lost Chord and Handel's Ombra mai fu.
Joe was assisted in this work by Peter Cox and David Lane. Together they felt that with modern recording equipment and working from the quietest available pressings they could improve on the Victor and HMV re-creations. In 1992 and 1993 they set about bringing Caruso "back to life" in Plymouth.
For The Lost Chord the organist of Sherwell United Reformed Church in Plymouth, Bart Squance, listened on headphones to the previously recorded voice of Caruso to which he added a new organ accompaniment. With Caruso's voice on one track and the new accompaniment on the other it was possible at the post-production stage to re-balance Caruso's voice to produce a mono recording.
For Ombra mai fu Caruso's original was fed to the Devon String Orchestra conducted by Nigel Amherst in a recording studio in Staverton. This arrangement ensured that Caruso's voice shared the same acoustic as the new orchestral accompaniment, with the strings accompanying Caruso as if he were present. This new recording is in stereo.
Re-recordings presumably raise some ontological issues but given that the art of phonography is based on make-believe few will object to the desire to gain new insights into one of the most celebrated singing voices of all time through such innovative use of modern technology. Those of us who heard Joe's enthusiastic presentation of the results of this project at the IASA-ARSC Conference in Washington in 1995 can vouch for their success on purely musical terms and there can be no doubt that Caruso's image has been left intact. A harmless exercise, therefore, when compared to Charles Dodge's Any resemblance is purely coincidental where the "first and greatest icon of phonography" (Eisenberg The recording angel), through an electronic re-working of one of the singer's greatest hits Vesti la giubba, is made to take humiliating pratfalls. Not that Caruso's ghost would be in any position to protest after a lifetime of caricaturing just about everyone in sight and on one famous live occasion slipping a hot sausage into the hand of Nellie Melba during the aria Che gelida manina (Your tiny hand is frozen).
In the past few years a strong need has been identified by recordists, researchers, librarians, and archivists having a specific interest and knowledge in the music of the British Isles, for a more systematic approach to the preservation of recorded sound collections held in private hands. In October 1995 a meeting was held at the National Sound Archive (NSA) in London with a selected group in order to identify the NSA's potential role in fulfilling this need. The NSA was perceived as being the only national institution with the credibility and facilities for required preservation, storage and accessibility. A short-term resolution was to raise funds to employ a person to undertake the audio preservation and cataloguing work on collections identified as being in immediate danger. Building on the initiative of the Folk Arts Archive Research Project, generously sponsored by The National Folk Music Fund (NFMF), which produced a survey of collections held privately and in institutions, and on the outcome of the meeting, we proposed a pilot project that would at once start immediately on preservation work, and serve as experience on which to base further applications for a continued programme. The pilot, funded jointly by the NFMF and the NSA, will focus on the Mike Yates collection, prioritised for attention at the group's meeting in 1995.
The Yates collection is considered one of the most important still held in private hands. Roughly 120 hours of music recordings, consistently of outstanding quality, were made primarily in southern England and the United States, from the late 1960s to the mid-80s. They include primary (and frequently first) recordings of a range of artists such as Frank Hinchliffe and Johnny Doughty in England, and members of the Wallin family from North Carolina, preceding recordings made and subsequently released by large organisations like the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. In America he followed in Cecil Sharp's footsteps, recording in the Appalachian Mountains, though, unlike Sharp and other collectors of his time, Yates also recorded a great deal of instrumental music. But possibly his most important recordings are those he made among travellers in Kent and other southern counties in England. While a fair amount of the recordings have been published (on the Topic, Homemade Music, and EFDSS labels), because of Yate's exceptionally high standards, the collection includes very high quality recordings never released.
Recordings will be digitised for archive and playback purposes, and a catalogue will be produced on the NSA's database, CADENSA. Copies of the recordings and catalogue will be deposited at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.
Janet Topp-Fargion
The Council on Library Resources, FindLaw Internet Legal Resources, and the Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources have jointly sponsored the Copyright & Fair Use Site at Stanford University. This comprises a searchable collection of resources including primary materials, legislation, articles, example curricula, and pointers to other Internet/web resources.
The Stanford Fair Use site can be found at http://fairuse.stanford.edu/ [6]
The Research & Development Department of the British Library was renamed the Research and Innovation Centre (RIC) last June. Its web pages can be found as part of the British Library's Portico address (http://portico.bl.uk/ric/overview.html [7]) and here you can read about progress with the UK's attempts to extend legal deposit to sound recordings. But a growing selection of RIC reports are to be found on the United Kingdom Office of Library and Information Networking (UKOLN) site at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/papers/bl/ [8].
Of interest to those contemplating services based on digitisation programmes will be the recent report compiled by the Marc Fresko Company The Impact of Digital resources on British Library Reading Rooms (British Library Research and Innovation report 3), 1996. The full HTML Version of the report is available at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/fresko/digital-media/contents.html [9]. Here, exclusively for IASA Bulletin readers, is part of the abstract:
The study finds that this is an area which has received little attention. For the most part, it is not possible to produce meaningful quantitative estimates. Qualitatively, some factors will tend to increase demand (digital catalogues, Internet access in Reading Rooms, access to CD-ROMs) while others will decrease demand (remote access to digital resources, whether digitised by the British Library or not). The study produces a model which categorises the different kinds and uses of digital resources, and which allows for more detailed analysis.
Also check out http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/papers/bl/sdi [10]. This leads to the British Library Research and Development Department Sources of Digital Information Report. From this page you can download the entire report. The files are Microsoft Word for Windows 2 format. The report lists and describes over three hundred sources of digital information, not all of which are available on the Internet.
The Research and Innovation Centre produces a quarterly Research Bulletin and has recently compiled a list of its publications which are mostly in the form of reports ranging across the whole spectrum of library and information work. These (but not the reports themselves) are obtainable free of charge on request from the Support Unit, The British Library Research and Innovation Centre, 2 Sheraton Street, London W1V 4BH, tel. 00 44 (0)171 412 7051 or 7053.
A report on the Telematics for Libraries Concertation meeting Exploitation of R&D results held in Luxembourg last June has been published (Luxembourg: Commission of The European Communities, 1996).
The objective of this meeting was to exchange experiences and information on the problems of exploiting the results of the projects which made up the Fourth Framework Programme, which included JUKEBOX.
The problems (which will not come as a great surprise to anyone) can be summarised generally as follows:
partnerships or consortia cease to exist when the Commission's funding runs out and the parent organisations find other things for their staff to do;
participants tend to be more committed to research than commercialisation;
research is often too remote from commercial viability;
technological developments overtake the results;
ownership protection:
and for libraries and archives in particular:
experience with commercialisation is limited;
the intended market is too small to support the commercialisation;
there is no money to take the idea forward to exploitation.
Recommendations by the various partnerships to the Commission to deal with these problems cannot be met in full by the Commission and it cannot assume the role of a consultancy firm. However, it does encourage partnerships to budget for representation at conferences and dissemination as part of the planning and it has now issued clear guidelines for the presentation of deliverables and creation of web sites. The Commission's own web site, the part devoted to the Libraries Programme, also provides many links to worldwide resources which may assist with exploitation.
Since one of the main barriers to the exploitation of JUKEBOX is copyright law, it is useful to know that a new service ECUP+ exists to help deliberations about a follow-up project. ECUP+ is a concerted action to enhance awareness among information professionals of copyright issues and several regional workshops have already been held. It is coordinated by EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Associations) in The Netherlands. Details of the service can be found within the EC web-site at http://www2.echo.lu/libraries/en/eblida.html [11] or at the EBLIDA web site http://www.kaapeli.fi/eblida/ecup [12].
| Date | Event | Location |
| 1997 Feb 12 - Mar 11 | ASEAN 3 Seminar | Manila |
| Feb 28 - Mar 1 | UNESCO NGO Round Table on Audiovisual Records | Paris |
| Mar 10 -12 | International Congress on Ethical, Legal and Societal aspects of digital information | Poitiers |
| Mar 24 - 28 | SEAPAVAA General Assemble | Jakarta |
| Apr 1 | Midcom: The Middle East Communications Exhibition | Abu Dhabi |
| Apr | FIAF Congress | Cartagena, Colombia |
| Apr 30 - May 3 | ARSC Annual Conference (hosted by the Country Music Foundation) | Nashville, Tennessee |
| Jul 23 - 26 | Second ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~diglib97/ [13] | Philadelphia |
| Aug | IFLA Seminar: Bridging gaps through technology | |
| IFLA Seminar: New developments in national library services | ||
| Aug 16-19 | Sound & Imaging Technology '97 | Hong Kong |
| Aug 31- Sep 5 | IAML Annual Conference | Geneva |
| Aug 31- Sep 5 | IFLA Council and General Congress | Copenhagen |
| Oct 4-9 | IASA Annual Conference | Oman, Muscat |
| Nov | UNESCO General Conference | Paris |
| 1998 | ||
| 1998 March | SEAPAVAA General Assembly | |
| May | ARSC General Conference | Syracuse, NY |
| Jul 20-24 | Conservation conference: Care of photographic, moving image and sound collections | York, UK |
| Aug | IFLA Council and General Conference | Amsterdam |
| 1999 | ||
| May? | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| 2000 | ||
| 2000 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jersusalem |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 29 Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AS, UK,
tel. 44 171 412 7411, fax 44 171 412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14],
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 21 BY 15 MARCH 1997
A warm welcome to the following institutions who have recently joined IASA:
- Russian State Archives for Sound Recordings
107005 Russia, Moscow, 2nd Baumanskaja 3
Director: Vladimir A. Koljada, fax 007095 267 1389
The collection contains all kinds of sound recordings amounting to 4.5 million items in total.
- Latvian State Archives of Film, Photo and Phono Documents
Skunu Str. 11, LV-1047, Riga, Latvia
Director: Inta Kanepaja, fax 529954
The collection contains 5000 sound recordings, 62000 films and 250000 photographs
- Biblioteca de Catalunya. Fonoteca
Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 657 bis, 08010, Barcelona, Spain
Director: Margarida Estanyol, fax 343 265 66 35
The Fonoteca is responsible for the preservation of Catalan sound recordings acquired by legal deposit.
We also welcome a new individual member Mary Ellen Kitchens from the Schallarchiv, Bayerischer Rundfunk and new a associate member Dr. Steve Johnson, Independent Media Appraiser, Bloomington IL, U.S.
Members will be saddened to learn of the death in November last year of Philip Lieson Miller from New York. He was Chief of the Music Division at the New York Public Library at the time when the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound were planned, designed and built at the Lincoln Center in 1965 and was a prime mover in getting the Archives established. A keen collector and regular reviewer of sound recordings, Philip was one of the founders of ARSC and became its first President in 1967. He also enjoyed a long association with IASA.
Bruce Russell has taken over from Stephen Riley as Chief Archivist at Radio New Zealand Sound. For more information contact soundnz@mail.tpnet.co.nz [15]
The IASA "homepage" was launched in early February, address:
http://www.llgc.org.uk/iasa/ [16]
The IASA Editor will not be commissioning web-site material from anyone so it's up to you if you want to see changes or additions made. Many thanks to those institutions who have provided their URLs to Iestyn Hughes at the National Library of Wales.
There was some discussion of the text at the mid-year IASA Board meeting and it is likely that changes will soon be made in line with the new publicity material which Martin Elste and Magdalene Cséve are working on.
Members have also enquired about adding sound to the site and information about institutions which do not yet have a presence on the Internet. Iestyn says both enrichments are feasible. The best way for dealing with the latter is to create a short homepage for the various institutions based on information which the institutions must undertake to provide.
Sound files can be associated with any one of those institutions listed as well as to existing linked sites. An alternative for the sounds idea is to create an "interesting sounds" page. Iestyn's organisation is prepared to load the sound files, depending on demand.
To create "whole pages" he will require:
- a disc containing the text (in English, or English and another language) in a Microsoft word processor format - or as ASCII text;
- photographs which can be scanned or as digital files in GIF or JPEG format;
- a logo, bromide quality or digital version in GIF or JPEG format;
- sound clips (not more than thirty seconds duration) either as a very clearly labelled DAT tape, or as a disc file in 16bit .WAV format (8bit is acceptable, but not 32bit).
- moving images either as .MOV files or PAL standard on analogue tape - either Betacam SP, or SVHS / VHS which can be transferred to .MOV files.
To include "interesting sounds/images", rather than whole pages, the same formats apply.
- sound files in .WAV 16 or 8bit
- moving image in .MOV files (or MPEG 1 if the other is not available)
- photographs and logos in .GIF or .JPEG
If people cannot create these files themselves then send DAT/Betacam SP/SVHS/VHS (to PAL standard). Stills and logos can be sent as high quality hard copy.
It goes without saying that ALL RIGHTS MUST BE CLEARED on any audio or visual items submitted and evidence of clearances supplied to Iestyn.
The IASA Web-Master's address is: R Iestyn Hughes, Assistant Keeper National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3BU, U.K. e-mail: iestyn.hughes@llgc.org.uk [3].
IASA is very grateful to the National Library of Wales for agreeing to host and maintain its web-site.
There is now a tinfoil site at http://www.tinfoil.com [17] including informative, entertaining and well-illustrated sections on early recorded sounds and wax cylinders an "Edison 150th Anniversary Commemorative"(which includes the inventor reminiscing about his favourite invention, the phonograph) and a Cylinder of the Month.
Each month a different wax cylinder recording is featured. The cylinder is digitally recorded directly from the original and the entire recording is available for downloading. March "cylinder of the month" was from 1899, an early concert cylinder recording: The Grand March From Tannhauser played by the Edison Grand Concert Band.
Site owner Glenn Sage (glenn@tinfoil.com [18]) welcomes comments, questions, corrections, and suggestions. Needless to say, there is a well-developed list of related sites and topics, including other vintage recording sites in America and the Edison National Historic Site page at http://www.nps.gov/edis/ed500000.htm [19] with its wealth of photographic images of early phonography and Edisonia.
The South African Broadcasting Sound Archives' homepage was launched in February. The internet address is: http://www.sabc.co.za/units/soundarc [20].
You will by now have received your copy of the 1997 IASA Directory. Many thanks for all the feedback, in some cases amounting to a wholesale proof-reading which I am sorry to say was not properly carried out by the authors given their commitment to producing it to the agreed deadline. In view of the large number of errors (which, it has to be said, must also be present in other IASA documentation since the Directory was largely derived from extant sources) and the unhappiness caused by the general omission of diacritics, especially umlauts, Mark and I have agreed to produce a new Directory in 1998 rather than wait another two years.
Introducing N I N C H: Networked Cultural Heritage Newsletter:
http://www-ninch.cni.org/news/news.html [21]
This describes itself as a "news and information digest for those working to preserve and provide access to cultural heritage resources through networked digital technology" and is published through the NINCH-Announce listserv of the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage. Free distribution is welcomed with due acknowledgments.
Here is a selection from the most recent issue, No. 6, February 7, 1997:
"Corporate digital archive: Simon and Schuster's new Corporate Digital Archive, reported recently by Business Week, is an indication of how one commercial publisher is realizing the benefits of digitizing older material. Initially, the archive will be used for searching and accessing the publisher's archive of 40,000 images for re-use in its own publications. However, with a goal of generating half of its revenues from electronic publishing by the year 2000, the company plans on direct sales of its images. The new system can add a digital watermark, calculate royalty payments and track the use of an image throughout the Internet. (See Business Week 23 Dec. 96 p80)
Copyright and database legislation: next steps unclear: Currently there is no clear indication of the next steps forward with copyright legislation. The WIPO Treaty has to be ratified by the [U.S.] Senate but whether any substantial implementation legislation will be required is uncertain. Such legislation could provide the opportunity for clarifying domestic positions on the Treaty (and its Agreed Statements), including the extension of fair use and other limitations and liability by service providers for online copyright infringements.
There is currently some jockeying within government agencies and committees as to where the lead and main interest will come from: the Patents and Trademarks Office, the Copyright Office in the Library of Congress, the Commerce Department, the National Economic Council, the White House itself, individual House and Senate members, the Senate Judiciary Committee or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
It is quite clear however that a form of the deferred WIPO database treaty (last year's domestic HR3531--see http://www-ninch.cni.org/News/Newsletter2.html#New Database Bill [22]) will not only be discussed at other WIPO meetings in the next few months but will be introduced as legislation. There is also the possibility that a version of last year's NII Copyright Protection Act will be re-introduced.
Unicode babble: Unicode is a universal character encoding scheme for displaying non-standard character sets for "just about every letter or glyph for all known languages, alive and dead"--from Ahom and Akkadian Cuneiform to Tircul and Ugaritic Cuneiform. Following discussion about Unicode on the Humanist listserv, John Unsworth spoke of the early version of software being developed at Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities called Babble.
Once a UNIX prototype, Babble is now being developed as Java software. Babble will display, search, and manipulate texts which have already been created in Unicode. "Babble will provide linked scrolling, linked searching, multiple text display, and some SGML awareness." John offers pointers to programs one can use to create Unicode texts in the first place and offers to keep anyone interested apprised of Babble developments. Contact him at jmu2m@virginia.edu [23]
Movements: Jennifer Trant, formerly Policies and Standards Manager for Britain's Arts and Humanities Data Service, is now based in Pittsburgh, working as a private consultant specializing in the application of technology to museums, cultural heritage and the arts and as managing editor of Archives & Museum Informatics: a cultural heritage quarterly.
The State Media Archive in Aarhus announces the re-release of G&T and HMV originals recorded in 1906-1912 on Vilhelm Herold: Opera arias and songs Nimbus NI 7880. The recordings have been transferred from originals in the collection of the State Media Archive of the State and University Library in Aarhus and published in collaboration with Nimbus Records.
The Danish tenor, Vilhelm Herold (1865-1937), was not only a legend in his own country; he was also much sought-after in other countries. He appeared in quite a few European opera houses where he sang in the original languages. He was welcomed as a guest in Berlin, Budapest, Dresden, Kristiania (Oslo), London, Prague, Stockholm and Stuttgart. When he appeared at Covent Garden in 1907 as Lohengrin, some people thought him the nearest thing to the famous Jean de Reszke that they had heard. The similarity to de Reszke is not strange; in 1903 Herold went to Paris to study with Giovanni Sbriglia to further develop his voice, and the same Sbriglia had also taught the de Reszke brothers.
Herold started to record in 1899 when he was thirty-four. During his career more than 200 recordings were made and that resulted in 135 titles being published. He stopped singing in 1915 but his records sold well into the 1930s. Even as late as 1946, two hundred copies of two duets with Helge Nissen were made for the Danish market and 197 copies were sold.
Today few are familiar with Herold's recordings but this publication in Nimbus's Prima Voce series, where we also find well-known singers such as Caruso, McCormack and Tetrazzini, may attract a new generation of admirers for Vilhelm Herold.
Elsebeth Kirring
The meeting took place on 27th and 28th February in Brussels. It was organised by the European Commission DGXIII/E-4, outside the scope of the Libraries Programme, being concerned with electronic publishing (principally CD-Rom and Internet publishing).
There were 57 participants from Europe and the USA with a good mix of private and public sector, consultancy organisations and national institutions.
The purpose of the meeting was to begin the process of formulating EP [European Project] themes under the forthcoming 5th framework research programme. The projects supported by this programme will run from 1999 to 2002. The event was intended as the first milestone in an extended iterative process. The Commission is anxious to tailor its research expenditure to the needs of the real world and will continue to use this group for consultation. It remains to be seen how credible the results of these efforts will prove.
The meeting was structured around general sessions with guest speakers and "breakout sessions" which separated the meeting to brainstorm four themes:
Mass market publishing, catalogues and shopping
Public information and publishing for the citizen
Content generation
Digital collections
I was part of the group looking at digital collections. Two ideas that were presented by our group were a personal application using geographic information systems, and a commercial service for content providers providing on-line access to digitised sound and video collections. The full range of results are being written up and I can circulate them later if anyone is interested.
Crispin Jewitt
George Boston reports on the Meeting of the European Broadcasting Union Working Group on broadcast interchange file format held in London on December 13th 1996. This is an abridged version of the full report submitted to the IASA Board in January.
"The meeting was called to give archivists the opportunity to comment on the draft proposals for a file format for the transfer of digital audio between sites within an organisation and between organisations. This meeting formed one part of a two-day meeting of the EBU Project Group on Digital Audio Production and Archives.
The proposal is for an extension to the Microsoft WAVE format. A WAVE file consists of several "chunks" of data (a chunk being a set of data within a Resource Interchange File Format - RIFF - file; WAVE files are are particular type of RIFF file). The audio information is one chunk within the file. It is preceded by several mandatory chunks specified by Microsoft that contain information to identify the file as being in WAVE format. The proposal would insert additional chunks of data, some mandatory, some optional, into the basic WAVE format file between the Microsoft and the audio chunks. This additional data would provide information relevant to broadcasters and broadcast archives.
No information about the proposal was supplied before the meeting and most of what was distributed during the meeting, in the form of working documents, is still confidential. It is hoped that a public domain document will be issued in January 1997 [it would appear that more news about this may be forthcoming after the AES Convention taking taking place in Munich at the time of going to press. Ed.]. Only some of the data chunks have been fully defined. There are several obvious additional pieces of data required, e.g. an identifier for the institution to prevent duplication of identification numbers when items are exhanged between institutions, links to full catalogue information, information on copyright and use restrictions.
It was agreed that very long programmes should be broken down into shorter sequences (e.g. movements of symphonic works, acts of plays, etc.) each sequence held in a separate WAVE file linked to the other sequences to make up the whole. Index points, as used on Cds, must also be catered for.
Still to be agreed is the method for handling multi-track items such as Dolby 5+1 cinema sound tracks.
The standard should also fit into an html package. This means that it would be compatible with the proposed Memory Of The World standard.
The EBU will be placing a "Gold Standard" file on the Internet. If a set of digital audio equipment can access and handle the file, it will be able to handle material presented in the Broadcast Exchange Format. This will be followed by "Silver Standard" files from manufacturers. Both file categories were expected to be available for the AES Convention in Munich last month.
In summary, the standard will simplify the transfer of sounds across networks but it will not improve the difficulty facing sound archives, especially broadcast archives, with regard to the receipt of compressed digital sounds. Sounds that have been permanently converted to a lower compression standard in order to fit into a communication chain will be less of a problem than those that have been compressed and de-compressed since these rely heavily on good quality, precisely aligned CODECs for coding and decoding the original signal. In addition, if the compression system used is "lossy" - data reduction as defined by the IASA Technical Committee - it will create more problems for the archive and subsequent users in the long term".
Sally Hine writes: There has been yet another reorganisation at the BBC - the third in as many years. The forty or so middle managers from the four library groupings (Broadcast Archives, Document Archives, Information Research and Music) have now been restructured into Service Delivery Units.
The new Service Delivery Units are:- Research Services, Intake, Storage and Accommodation, Cataloguing and IT Support. The 550 staff in BBC Information and Archives have all been mapped into one of these delivery units, so for example the Selectors from the Sound Archive have been mapped into Cataloguing with a manager covering all the cataloguing areas in all the libraries and archives, and the Current Library operation has been mapped into Intake with an overall Service Manager. I am now a Research Services Manager in Broadcasting House and am responsible for the "front of house" operations of the Sound Archive and the Music Library at Broadcasting House (gramophone records, popular music song sheets and sheet music as well as books on music.) The philosophy behind this restructuring is that eventually we will be "one service" and that our libraries and archives will all be "one stop shops", with sound, television, printed material and music being available from one central enquiry point.
The other news from the BBC is that, as a result of the sale of transmission to a private company, we have had to move out of our "state-of-the-art" archive store and technical area at Brookmans Park in Hertfordshire. The storage facilities at Brookmans Park were designed for us only 5 years ago and it has been a little distressing to have to move about 500,000 items across London to Brentford in Middlesex, where the Television Archive resides. However, it makes a lot of sense to store the two collections together. We save on the rental of Brookmans Park and the staff (five Archive Technical Assistants) are in a better environment (there are about 120 staff at the Television end). There have been a couple of disagreements - in the Sound Library we file our material from left to right and at the other end they "snake" it (I am reliably informed that the Greek term for this procedure is striphogirisma), but everyone has had to compromise. The move is nearly complete as I write this (March 1997) and we have had a little disruption to our service but not too much.
Announcing the First European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, 1-3 September, 1997, Pisa, Italy, http://www.area.pi.cnr.it/ErcimDL/dl3.html [24].
"This conference is the first of a series of European conferences on research and technology for digital libraries funded by the CEU TMR Programme. In particular its objectives are: to bring together researchers from multiple disciplines whose science relates to the development of digital libraries; to provide an opportunity for these scientists to form a research community in Europe specific to digital library development and to enable them to discuss issues and strategies specific to the European context; to assist young researchers in establishing relationships with senior scientists in their areas of interest; to enable review and discussion of research under way in, Europe, the US, Japan and other countries on digital libraries; to stimulate researchers, especially young scientists, to explore new areas of interest in digital library development; to establish a forum for discussion of issues specific to Europe such as interoperability, multilinguality and intellectual property policy and information commerce; to provide an opportunity for researchers in the relevant enabling technologies and information sciences to discuss issues related to interoperability between world wide distributed digital libraries."
A brief item from America:
NDLP
"The National Digital Library Program (NDLP) at the Library of Congress is a large scale project to convert historic collections to digital form and make them widely available over the Internet", so begins the explanation in An Architecture for Information in Digital Libraries by William Y. Arms, Christophe Blanchi and Edward A. Overly in the February issue of D-Lib Magazine.
This is a significant article on the follow-up to the American Memory Program and it can be read at
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february97/cnri/02arms1.html#overview [25].
The front cover of the latest issue of the British music industry paper Music Week carries the brazen slogan "Publish... or be robbed!". Framed by a familiar Netscape window bearing the url of the Cerberus Digital Jukebox http://www.cdj.co.uk/ [26] this is the young London-based company's boldest challenge yet to the recording industry and "want-to-be-a-part-of-it-all" sound archives intent on testing the uncharted waters of distributed sounds on the internet. For Cerberus DJ is the guard to the gateway, not to Hell, but to what its creators have termed the "Virtual Pressing Plant - global distribution, no manufacturing, no returned stock, no shipping costs, no high street costs, no piracy".
Cerberus was regarded two years ago as one of the reasons why some areas of the recording industry in the U.K. were reluctant to endorse Project JUKEBOX but one year later a respected member of the National Sound Archive's Technical Advisory Committee, Anthony Griffiths, was singing the company's praises following a demonstration of the system.
Cerberus has mostly been associated with the promotion of rock bands without recording deals but there has clearly always been much more to their mission. To quote from the introductory page of their website,
"Cerberus Central Limited (CCL) set out with the aim of protecting both the composer and the artist by constructing an approved and accountable digital distribution system. This system enables users to purchase CD quality audio on-line, download it to anywhere in the world via the internet and charge a fraction of the cost of a CD. This system became known as The Cerberus Digital Jukebox and soon won approval from the world's publishing and recording industries.
CCL first approached the Music Publishers Association in 1994 at the MPA's Annual General Meeting. CCL explained to the gathering that unless the music industry formed some sort of defence to the illegal distribution of copyright on-line, the very fabric of the industry could be destroyed. CCL presented the MPA with a unique solution, a solution that was relevant to all copyright not just audio.
When a client wishes to purchase a song, he/she sends The Jukebox his/her personal details (Credit Card Number). This is achieved by using Cercure ATM, our credit card transaction software. The Jukebox then creates a unique Cerberus Audio Player for the client. Every time a client wants a song, they send The Jukebox their Player details and The Jukebox then allows them to download a song which has been encoded to their Player. This system, known as "Coded Bitstream Reliant Software" was patented by CCL.
If a client obtains a Cerberus Player and illegally publishes CBR Audio files on the internet, they can be traced from their personal details embedded into their Player. The Player also contains the clients on-line banking details. If you give away your Player you are giving people access to your bank account".
Evidently the most crucial element in the system is Multimedia Protection Protocol (MMP) devised by the Fraunhofer Institute für Integrierte Schaltungen in Erlangen for distributing digital multimedia data with copyright control:
" By using MMP it is possible to distribute digital music tracks and videos freely while keeping control of the usage of the tracks. Using MMP, fees and royalties can be deducted and calculated.
MMP is a flexible system that also can store and transmit additional information (like the International Standard Record Code ISRC, the composer, artist, duration etc.).
Because MMP ciphers parts of the data, it is especially able to protect compressed multimedia data (like ISO/MPEG Layer-3 audio)".
A further boost to their endeavour has come with a massive endorsement from EMI Publishing who have "signed a mandate for the digital distribution of over million songs with CCL. The contract will be extended to cover all operators of Virtual Pressing Plant and will, in effect, clear all publishing rights for over 20% of the world's music for Internet distribution".
Cerberus Central Ltd was started in 1994 and has since opened offices in Japan, USA, South America, Singapore and Australia to become not only the largest UK Internet software developer but the largest in Europe.
Next November Britain's National Sound Archive (NSA) will begin transferring its operations to the British Library's building at St.Pancras a few miles to the north-east of its current address in South Kensington. The move is expected to increase the NSA's business considerably given that it will for the first time be visibly part of a much greater entity and will be able to accommodate more users. One of the biggest difficulties faced by those of us who are planning the move is that the architects never considered that audiovisual services would be run from the new building, at least not in the guise of the NSA's listening and viewing service. The decision to incorporate the NSA into the building was only taken two and a half years ago. Since then we have done our best to squeeze ourselves into existing reading room plans and to endear ourselves to colleagues demoralised by the widely publicised delays to the completion of the new library.
So, from 24th November this year people wanting to use the NSA's information and curatorial services will make their way to St Pancras and the first thing they will have to do is apply for a reader's ticket since access to the British Library reading rooms will continue to be controlled, though it will remain free of charge. The information services will be run from one of the two main humanities reading rooms. Unfortunately there was no space there for the listening service and that has had to be set up in another reading room devoted to rare books and music, which will not open until March or May next year. Therefore people wanting to listen to sounds or watch videos will still have to go to the Exhibition Road address for an interim period of up to six months.
Listening and viewing at St Pancras will be offered in enclosed study carrels: up to twenty-eight carrels have been wired for playback but realistically only eight are going to be readily available to the area surrounding the playback control room and these will probably have to be booked in competition with readers using other parts of the collection. These arrangements are bound to improve once the NSA is established in the new building. Staying out was not considered a sensible option.
How different the experience of our colleagues at the Bibliothèque nationale de France whose impressively massive new building in the inner suburbs of south-east Paris IASA Board members were privileged to view, with Gérald Grunberg as guide, during their recent mid-year meeting. Planned and built in a fraction of the time it has taken to get the British Library completed - but at considerably greater cost - the audiovisual services offered to the general public (as opposed to scholars, whose separate facilities will open later this year) have set a standard which will be difficult to emulate: in this initial phase, 78 seats are available providing access via a terminal with windowed interface to 2,800 video cassettes and 11,500 CD's held in a robotic system, 292 CD-ROMS and 500 hours of audio, 300 of images on a dedicated server. The next phase, for scholars, provides a further 67 seats with access to a server containing 300,000 still images, 30,000 multi-media items on a robotic system and an analogue/manual service to cover the other 300,000 or more items. I hope that Gérald will be able to offer IASA members a more detailed survey in a future issue of the Journal.
One area where the British solution can be expected to prevail is in the integration of research documents. While you can listen and view with ease in Paris, you will not be able to consult the scores and manuscripts from the music library since they are to remain in the BnF's old building in central Paris. In London's modest compromise the policy of closer integration between collections and services, as part of the overall corporate drive, has at least meant that written and recorded music will be accessible within the same reading room.
I look forward to comparing the audiovisual experiences of these two national libraries at the 1998 IASA Conference which will be hosted by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Chris Clark
| Date | Event | Location |
| Apr 28 - 29 | AES (UK) Conference "Measure of audio" | London |
| Apr 28 -29 | Electronic Commerce for Content II: a Forum on Technology-Based Intellectual Property Management http://www.ima.org/ip-ga/forum.html [27] | Library of Congress, Washington DC |
| Apr 30 - May 3 | ARSC Annual Conference (hosted by the Country Music Foundation) | Nashville, Tennessee |
| May 12 - May 14 | School for scanning: Preservation and Access in a Digital World |
Berkeley, California |
| May 27 - 30 | 5th European Conference on Archives: back to basics in the profession | Barcelona |
| Jun 20 - 23 | ASRA Conference | Sydney |
| Jul 23 - 26 | Second ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~diglib97/ [13] | Philadelphia |
| Aug 16-19 | Sound & Imaging Technology '97 | Hong Kong |
| Aug 24 - 29 | IFLA/Statsbiblioteket: 5th international conference on interlending & document supply "Resource sharing possibilities & barriers" | Aarhus, Denmark |
| Aug 31- Sep 5 | IAML Annual Conference | Geneva |
| Aug 31- Sep 5 | 63rd IFLA Council and General Congress | Copenhagen |
| Sep 1 - 3 | First European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (see item on page) | Pisa, Italy |
| Sep 6-11 | FIAT/IFTA Conference: "Television archives: between cultural heritage and profit" | Budapest |
| Oct 4-9 | IASA Annual Conference | Oman, Muscat |
| Nov 17-22 | AMIA conference | Washington DC |
| Nov | UNESCO General Conference | Paris |
| 1998 | ||
| 1998 March | SEAPAVAA General Assembly | |
| May | ARSC General Conference | Syracuse, NY |
| Jul 20-24 | Conservation conference: Care of photographic, moving image and sound collections | York, UK |
| Aug | IFLA Council and General Conference | Amsterdam |
| Sept? | IASA Annual Conference | Paris |
| 1999 | ||
| May? | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| 2000 | ||
| 2000 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jersusalem |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 29 Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AS, UK,
tel. 44 171 412 7411, fax 44 171 412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14],
and
Elsebeth Kirring, Statsbiblioteket, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark,
tel. 45 86 12 20 22, fax 45 86 20 26 36, e-mail ek@statsbib.aau.dk [28].
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 22 BY 15 JUNE 1997
Albrecht Haefner, IASA Secretary-General, writes: "the Muscat conference is approaching - may I encourage all of you to book your participation now, as our Omani hosts are waiting to make the hotel reservations. Those who have not received registration forms or have encountered difficulties with the registration date of 1st July, please contact me (e-mail: haefner@swf.de [29], fax: +49 7221 92 2094). Perhaps your superiors are presupposing that you intend to take a week's holiday week in a 1001 nights country: Oman is certainly oriental but our programme is as comprehensive as ever and - what is most important - the costs are very moderate!
There is a change to the provisional programme: the session of the Technical Committee on Sunday 5 October, 16:15-17:45, will, for the sake of better programme balance, be replaced by a session dealing with archiving and preservation of AV culture all around the world. There will be contributions from three continents - three ways, one goal.
Europe: The MEMORIAV Initiative - co-operation between producers and archiving institutions in Switzerland. Speaker: Kurt Deggeller, Fonoteca Nazionale Svizzera, Lugano.
U.S.A.: The Non-Profit Commission on Preservation and Access and its Task Force on archiving of digital information. Speaker: Hans Ruetimann, CPA, New York.
Australia: The national way - different media under roof at the National Film and Sound Archives in Canberra. Speaker: Ray Edmondson, NFSA, Canberra.
If you have any doubts about the proposed way to obtain your visa you are, of course, free to make your own arrangements at the appropriate embassy, but at your own expense. However, if you are choosing the arrangement offered, then you will not be charged for your visa. Our IASA member Issam El-Mallah who is the head of the Organising Committee will collect the forms, take them to Oman in early September and hand them over personally to the Immigration Department. From there, each applicant will receive a fax copy of his/her visa in time which will be accepted at the point of embarkation. The original visa will be handed over to you at Muscat Airport, where somebody from the Organising Committee will be waiting to meet conference delegates and to assist them through Customs.
Finally, a request to all speakers: please let me have an abstract (in English) of about 10-15 lines of your paper not later than end of August. It will be translated into Arabic and will be published, as is customary at the most international conferences, before the sessions for the audience's benefit.
Make your booking - I will be glad to welcome you in Muscat and am looking forward to meeting you at a most interesting conference".
And if you are still trying to make up your mind, here is some additional encouragement from Dietrich Schüller who knows the area well and has been involved in the organisation of the social programme for the conference: "Oriental hospitality is obviously one of the features of this conference. The conference fee includes a variety of attractive social gatherings, including a trip to Sohar, the city of Sinbad the Sailor. Furthermore, the farewell dinner, which will be hosted by the Minister of Information, takes place in the Al-Bustan Hotel, one of the most remarkable places on the Arabian peninsula. An attractive post-conference tour has been arranged which gives participants the unique possibility to visit a part of the Orient which is not yet spoiled by tourism, which has preserved much of its traditional cultural attractions and offers, likewise, the rare possibility to travel comfortably through most attractive natural surroundings including the desert as well as lovely garden cultures which are unique to this part of the world".
IASA is proud to welcome the composer and musical theorist Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Stockhausen as a full individual member of the Association. There is no point in attempting to summarise his importance and achievements here: these can be read about in music reference books or you can visit the official Stockhausen home page at http://www.jimstonebraker.com/stockhausen.html [30] or any of the hundreds of other sites associated with his music.
The purpose of Prof. Dr. Stockhausen's involvement with IASA is to collect and archive all of his works in audiovisual form. The address is Kettenberg 15, D - 51515 Kürten, Germany.
Enrolment in IASA has continued to rise during the last quarter. In addition to Stockhausen, we welcome as full institutional members:
- Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de Historia Contemporanea do Brasil, Fundação Getulio Vargas
Praia de Botafogo, 190, 22257.-900 Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Director: Lucia Lippi Oliveira
The collection is concerned with research and documentation of contemporary Brazilian history.
- Audiofile Inc.,
Klaus Heinz, Bayerische Srasse 8, D - 10707 Berlin, Germany
Company involved with the digitization of sound documents
and as full individual members
- Carsten Schmidt
Schaetzlerstrasse 32, D - 86152 Augsburg, Germany
private collector
- Norbert Nitsche
Mayerweckstrasse 2, A - 1210 Vienna, Austria
- Kevin Irelan
SYDA Foundation, South Fallsburg, New York, USA
and as associate indivual member
- Alexander Sieghardt
Sponnergassse 1, A - 3500 Krems, Austria
Kurt Deggeller (Fonoteca Nazionale Svizzera) reports on the 11th session of the UNESCO Inter-Governmental Council for the General Information Programme (PGI) held in Paris 2nd-3rd December, 1996 and the First International Congress on Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects of Digital Information, INFO-Ethics, in Monaco 10th-12th March 1997.
PGI, Paris
The main topics of this meeting were the election of a new Council and a renewed mandate for the PGI which produced a lengthy discussion.
Prof Mohsen Tawfik was unanimously elected Chairperson of the Council. Mr Phenny Birungi (Uganda), Ms Nathalie Dusoulier (France), Ms Tamiko Matsumura (Japan) were elected Vice-Chairpersons, Mr Dietrich Schüller (Austria) rapporteur and as members: Mr Hélio Kuramoto
(Brazil), Mr Christoph Graf (Switzerland) and Mr Adam Wysocki (Poland).
Three speakers were invited to prepare papers on important items in relationship to the work of PGI: Riccardo Petrella: The global societal impact of the new information and communication technologies; Joachim Tankoano: Internet: a tool for development and Pamela Samuelson: Information privacy and intellectual property in the information society.
For the debate on a renewed mandate of the PGI, Philippe Quéau, the appointed Director of the newly created Division of Information and Informatics, presented an information paper concerning the following activities: Memory of the World, Public Domain On-line, Virtual Laboratories, Virtual Learning Communities, Governance in the Information Age, Training of Information Specialists, Libraries and Archives as Gateways to the Information Highways.
In the discussion the main emphasis was put on a more realistic and adequate balance between traditional and new fields of information. Modern information techniques are invaluable tools for access to and dissemination of information; they are, however, not an end in themselves. It was stressed that cyberspace, despite its enormous potential and revolutionary access and search possibilities, will never replace the world of conventional documents.
In particular, the debate brought out the fact that libraries and archives continue to be the pillars of PGI. This needs to be emphasized in the new programme. It was observed that the role of libraries and archives in bridging traditional and new information technologies cannot be overestimated.
Dietrich Schüller as an Austrian delegate presented the IASA-resolution on Magnetic tape [see IASA Information Bulletin no.19]. The initiative received the support of the Council.
Finally the Inter-Governmental Council adopted a series of recommendations which mentions under point 4d that the co-operation with inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations (e.g. IASA) should be intensified in the development and execution of the expanded mandate.
Nearly 300 participants attended this Congress organised by UNESCO with the Principauté de Monaco. The programme contained three main topics: accessing digital information; preserving digital information and records; preparing our societies for the multimedia environment.
With this Congress UNESCO aimed to create a forum to reaffirm the importance of universal access to information in the "Global Information Infrastructure" and to define ways in which it may be achieved and maintained in the coming Information Society. In particular it should identify the major ethical issues (concerning production, access, dissemination, preservation and use of digitized multimedia information on the global information highways), identify the essential principles to be considered by countries when formulating their policies on these issues and make proposals for a strategy for international co-operation.
It became clear that the main concerns are not the same for the northern and the southern hemispheres of the globe. Northern experts expressed their concerns about security, identification, confidentiality, etc., of information, whilst the southern countries need first and foremost very heavy investment to access the information at all. According to statistics of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) the density of telephones per 100 inhabitants is 0.5 for African countries south of the Sahara and 4.2 in the north-African area. In western Europe there are 44.1 telephones per 100 inhabitants.
UNESCO Director General, Federico Mayor, proposed the foundation of a world commission on info-ethics similar to the world commission on bio-ethics.
Dietrich Schüller (Phonogrammarchiv, Vienna) reports: "The Sub-Committee on Technology for the Memory of the World Programme (MoW) of UNESCO met in London, May 15 to 17. This Committee (Chairman: Dietrich Schüller, Rapporteur: George Boston) was set up in 1994 to advise the Secretariat of UNESCO on technical issues related to the Memory of the World Programme. This programme has been established as a tool to raise the awareness of governments, polititians, custodians, and the public at large, to the vulnerability of documents of all kinds which constitute the collective "Memory of the World". As well as the need to improve preservation, emphasis is laid on access to documents, especially in view of the opportunities of the information age.
The Sub-Committee on Technology, which reports to the International Advisory Committee of the MoW Programme, started its work by issuing recommendations on the digitisation of documents of all kinds including, of course, audiovisual data carriers.
The purpose of the recent meeting in London was to finalise a paper on the preservation of original documents. The paper specifies the main risks of damage and deterioration for the various groups of carriers and summarizes measures for their proper handling, storage and preservation. It embraces documents of all kinds, from palm leaves to electronic documents and includes a guide to available standards and literature.
The agenda of the meeting also included a revision of the formerly issued recommendations on digitisation as well as the discussion of a draft proposal for the harmonisation of access to electronic documents within the Memory of the World Programme.
The results of this meeting will be presented to the International Advisory Committee at its forthcoming Meeting in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), September 29 to October 1.
It is regularly pointed out in the technical strata of IASA that one of the gravest problems facing us in the future is the obsolescence of playback equipment. The more sophisticated the equipment becomes, the harder it is to maintain, especially when companies withdraw products from the market after a relatively short time, as happened with Sony and Betamax. Since many sound archives will have taken note of the original claims for the superior quality of the Betamax format, it is likely that a number of you are facing problems similar to the National Sound Archive in the U.K. which, having adopted Betamax widely during the 1980s now finds it difficult to locate spares and the means to service and repair equipment. We were therefore relieved to find that one video company in London is now able to offer us the required back-up, which includes repairs to Sony digital processors. The address is: LRC Video Ltd., 3/5 Whitfield Street, London W1P 5RA, Tel. + 44 171 323 2107 (spares/accounts) + 44 171 323 2102 (service/sales) Fax : + 44 171 323 2191
Many of you have been kind enough to send in your latest sound-related discoveries on the Internet. At some stage I imagine that someone (not me, I suspect) will suggest a publication to include all web sites of interest to IASA. Meanwhile the Information Bulletin can usefully act as an expanding pool of such sites.
Numerous sites have emerged which deal with the early years of sound recording. In Information Bulletin 21 I included the url of the Edison National Historic Site http://www.nps.gov/edis/ed500000.htm [19] which contains a wealth of photographic images of early phonography and Edisonia. This is now complemented by Edison papers online at http://www.edison.rutgers.edu [31]. Described as "work in progress" it contains editorial material from the microfilm and book editions, including some images and maps, a chronology of Edison's life, lists of Edison's patents, and an annotated list of the companies he founded or with which he was associated. It also contains a searchable version of the Rutgers database of 80,000 documents and 14,000 names covering Edison's life up to 1898 (with a scattering of later documents).
An index to issues of Antique Phonograph News from 1992 is available at http://www.rose.com/~caps/apnindex.htm [32]. The focus is on the featured articles, commentaries, reports, etc, and related letters to the Editor. There are also links within the site to feature cover articles which give brief summaries of the content and an illustration.
Moving on just a few years, the Wolverine Antique Music Society, mostly tuned in a deliberately confrontational manner to early jazz of the white Chicago variety, at http://192.108.254.18/~rfrederi/index.shtml [33] contains a number of useful lists and pointers though these may be more relevant to record collectors than to sound archivists.
Helmut Weber's Gramophone Hobby Page covers similar ground but is more thorough and general in its outlook: http://wap03.informatik.fh-wiesbaden.de/weber1/grammo/links.htm [34]. A very useful component of this site is the information for dating 78 rpm records:
http://wap03.informatik.fh-wiesbaden.de/weber1/grammo/numbers.htm [35].
For recording on tape, the Analog tape recorders site may be useful in technical training. It includes brief explanations, some illustrated, of the basics of analogue recording, generic tape and cassette decks, cleaning heads, tips on recording, mastering and editing. Find this information at http://arts.ucsc.edu/ems/music/equipment/analog_recorders/Analog_Recorders.html [36].
If you have time to spare, The Most Beautiful 78 Ever Made, (according to Tim Gracyk this is The story of Little Red Riding Hood on Emerson Picture Records A109) can be viewed at http://www.garlic.com/~tgracyk/beautiful.htm [37].
Please note: internet addresses are always tested by the Editor before appearing in the Bulletin but such is the nature of the Internet that often, like sound recordings, they get deleted or the numbers change without warning. You can help keep IASA information up-to-date by letting me know of any address changes you encounter when following up references included in this Bulletin.
Joie Springer of UNESCO has written to say that Audiovisual Archives: A Practical Reader is now on-line at: http://www.unesco.org/webworld/audiovis/av_reader_web.htm#1.8 [38].
The AV Reader was compiled and edited by Helen Harrison "with a view to meeting an acknowledged need for practical information to enable audiovisual archivists in all countries and in developing countries in particular, to function efficiently. The aim was to collate information already published to provide a handy reference tool for personnel working in an audiovisual archive".
The on-line edition has been selected to give an overview of the Reader and the list of papers. It features some of the articles containing basic information on archival practices, from selection through cataloguing to storage and preservation, management, legal and ethical issues, etc. Hard copies of the full document should be available shortly and will be obtainable from the Division of Information and Informatics (CII/INF) at UNESCO.
It is hoped to make electronic versions available in due course of some of UNESCO's other publications in the field of audiovisual archiving.
The paper by IFPI's Director of Legal Affairs, Lewis Flacks, which was read at last year's annual conference in Perugia and which subsequently appeared in IASA Journal 8, ended with an invitation to IASA to form a joint working group to examine implications of new technology for the relationship between the recording industry and sound archives with regard to copyright.
An exploratory meeting was held in May and the main recommendation to emerge was that IASA consider representation at IFLA's International Conference On Rights And Exceptions to be held in Budapest, 30th-31st October this year. This option would enable the discussions to take place in the broader context of libraries and publishing and is now referred to the IASA Board.
There are, not surprisingly, a number of much higher-level initiatives in progress. In the United States, NINCH announced in April a document Basic principles for managing intellectual property in the digital environment. http://www-inch.cni.org/ISSUES/COPYRIGHT/PRINCIPLES/NHA_Complete.html [39]
"In an effort to build consensus within the educational community on the uses of copyrighted works in the digital environment, the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) has prepared a document of basic principles it believes can be used as an effective guide for the community for at least the immediate future. The document was created by the NHA's Committee on Libraries and Intellectual Property".
In Europe an International Electronic Copyright Management Systems Conference ECMS: the way forward has been announced and will take place at the City Conference Centre, London, 13th-14th November 1997. The Conference is being organised by the COPEARMS (Coordinating Project for Electronic Authors' Rights Management Systems) Consortium and will examine different issues surrounding the adoption of ECMS Systems. These include notions of trust and privacy, user requirements, different methods of protection and ECMS adoption patterns. The concept of interoperability will be a theme throughout the conference. Discussions will examine why interoperability is desirable and try to determine the required level of interoperability and how this can be achieved without compromising security.
The provisional programme comprises: Keynote Speaker - Dominique Gonthier, DG XIII COPEARMS Project; Dominique Spaey, Bureau Van Dijk; ECMS Interoperability, the Political Approach - Chris Barlas, ALCS; ECMS Interoperability Requirements- Richard Carr; Level-7 Trust and the Trusted Third Party in ECMS -Charles Oppenheim, De Montfort University; ECMS Initiatives outside Europe - Daniel Gervaise, Prof. Kitagawa (Japan), Michael J. Perkins (Australia); ECMS Security - Gerard Eizenberg, CERT; Deploying CITED Technology - Jean-Francois Boisson; EURITIS Panel Discussion. Workshop topics include: user group requirements; the role of standards in ECMS technology; trusting the content; technical system for IPR management on the Web.
The two days, including lunch and refreshments, costs £250 sterling for commercial organisations and £125 sterling for academic institutions. For further details please contact Judy Watkins, IFLA Office, c/o The British Library, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West Yorkshire, LS23 7BQ UK. Fax +44 1937 546478, email judy.watkins@bl.uk [40]
Gerry Gibson at Library of Congress has been following up an Internet posting about the bronze discolouration affecting the playability of CD's issued on certain labels. Members of the IASA Technical Committee will no doubt be aware of this phenomenon but the information obtained by Gerry may be news to other members.
Gerry checked out the record company Hyperion's Website:
"Any compact discs on the Hyperion, ASV, Unicorn-Kanchana, or Pearl labels made in UK by Philips Dupont Optical UK (PDO) from 1988 to 1993 may already be unplayable. The symptoms appear as a bronze discolouration toward the outer edge of the label side and a clicking noise like surface noise toward the end of the disk. Disks made by PDO will have an identifying stamp near the center of the disk stating "made in UK" or "made in UK by PDO". PDO will replace these corroded disks. All they need is a list of catalogue numbers, you need not, at the moment, return the disks. For more information, including address and phone numbers for PDO, go to the Hyperion web site
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk [41]/, and click on the Hyperion News link, where you will find:
"A note about corroding CDs manufactured by Philips & Du Pont Optical UK Ltd (PDO).
The pressing factory PDO has acknowledged responsibility for producing some CD's between 1988 and 1993 using a lacquer which was not suitable to withstand the corrosive effect of the sulphur content of paper used in the printing of CD booklets and other paper parts. The problem has been extremely disruptive to us and has caused much embarrassment. We can only apologise for any alarm and inconvenience caused and assure you of our commitment to your satisfaction.
The symptoms of the corrosion are obvious. Audibly it manifests first towards the end of the disc (i.e. the outer edge) and sounds not unlike rhythmic LP surface noise. Visibly it manifests as a coppery-bronze discoloration, usually on the edge of the label side of the disc. (n.b. it is NOT the overall yellow tint which is common to all PDO pressings. This is due to the addition of a tiny amount of yellow dye which PDO adds to the polycarbonate for cosmetic purposes).
At the time that PDO were manufacturing the affected CDs for us, they were also pressing for other classical labels and we suggest that you check any discs you have from ASV, Unicorn-Kanchana and Pearl. Given the nature of the problem of corrosion, in that it progresses over time, we recommend that you check any suspect discs on, say, a six-monthly basis. The name of the disc manufacturer is usually (but not always) engraved around the centre hole of the disc in the transparent area. If there is no manufacturer's name shown at all then it would be worth checking with PDO. They have agreed to replace any CDs which are corroding as a result of the defect and have set up a United Kingdom freephone helpline to deal with complaints and enquiries about it. The number is 0800 387063. If you live in the United Kingdom we suggest that you call them directly if you have reason to believe that there are discs in your collection made by PDO which are showing signs of corrosion.
Overseas customers will not be able to use the freephone line. They can, if they wish, communicate directly with PDO at the address below and perhaps ask for a refund of the cost of the telephone call, fax or letter. In any case they should NOT return faulty discs to either dealer or distributor, or to Hyperion. They can, if they wish, return the disc to PDO but it is not necessary. Initially at least, just a letter will do. If they do return any CDs they should send JUST THE DISC, NOT THE JEWEL CASE OR PRINTED MATTER, because PDO will replace only the disc.
Here is PDO's address:
Philips & Du Pont Optical UK Ltd, Philips Road, Blackburn, Lancashire BB1 5RZ England. Fax: [44] [0]1254 54729 (dial 44 1254 54729 from outside U.K.), Telephone: [44] [0]1254 52448 (dial 44 1254 52448 from outside U.K.) Freephone: 0800 387063 (U.K. only)
Hyperion Records Ltd now uses PDO only for pressing replacement discs for earlier numbers. We are assured that the problem has been solved and see no reason to remove master tapes from them. We did retrieve a number of masters when the problem first came to light, and redirected them to another factory. Therefore, a small number of titles cannot be replaced by PDO and would have to be supplied by ourselves. All new titles are pressed elsewhere.
Although PDO have agreed to replace corroded CDs on our behalf, we are aware of our responsibilities to our customers and wish to reassure them that we are committed to seeing that they are ultimately satisfied with our products. Should you feel that you are not being treated efficiently by PDO, then please do not hesitate to get in touch with us directly: Richard Howard, Production Manager, Hyperion Records Limited, London, info@hyperion-records.co.uk [42]
Peter Copeland (Conservation Manager at the British Library National Sound Archive) adds:
"Barry Fox [renowned British commentator on audiovisual technology] has an alternative explanation which seems rather more likely than Hyperion's. It is that PDO were understandably using silver in preference to aluminium for the reflective layer of CDs, because they thought a precious metal would be more stable. When the discs were packed in sulpheriferous sleeves, silver sulphate formed, and it is this which is "bronze." NSA's experience with Philips confirms the Hyperion information: they have been extremely helpful, offering to re-master any discs (even deleted ones), because where there is one defective disc there are likely to be others.
Note that the problem was first noticed with CD singles (packed in paper sleeves rather than jewel cases), but now regular CDs are becoming affected as well. As a conservation issue, the recording is in the polycarbonate, not the reflective layer; so in principle it would be possible to split the sandwich and re-coat the polycarbonate with aluminium as a last-ditch conservation measure.
Gerry Gibson writes: "The Library of Congress has contracted with William Storm to advise it on the development of an unified strategy and a working model for the preservation and access of its audio, video, and related materials. The report is to include a full review of the options and a recommended design to effectively accommodate access needs while assuring continued preservation. The strategy is to take into consideration, but shall not be limited to, such issues as:
1. reformatting and data migration, including media and data preparation, restoration, selection, access and dissemination, quality control, documentation of the reformatting effort, and security;
2. which parts of the strategy can be implemented immediately and which will require further research and development.
Mr. Storm's report will be mounted on the Library's Web Page, http://www.loc.gov [43] as well as being presented to a special panel of experts for review and recommendation on actions".
Elsebeth Kirring (Statsbiblioteket, Aarhus) reports: "On June 5th-6th, The Finnish Radio (YLE) hosted the meeting which is held by the IASA Nordic Branch every third year in one of the Nordic countries. Besides members from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, two members from Eesti Raadio participated. The meeting was chaired by Lasse Vihonen, chairman of the Nordic Branch.
The new YLE Headquarters is an impressive building in green glass and Finnish granite. The architect, Professor Ilmo Valjakka, intended to create this building as a landmark for Helsinki and one must say he has succeeded. Besides the administrative offices the new building also houses the local and regional radio studies which have glass walls so that visitors can see for themselves what really goes on inside a radio studio.
In the same way the exterior was worth studying, the interior - the agenda - was worth the travel. In two days we covered many of those topics dealt with today in audiovisual archives: cataloguing, preservation and digitizing.
The Radio Director, Tapio Siikala, welcomed us all and stated that new digital methods are going to change broadcasting. He demonstrated this by showing a video produced by NRK. It was very amusing - made as a pastiche of Star Wars with the main characters Foreman and Backman - and it showed, better than words can express, the advantages of digital techniques.
Digitizing was the overall topic of the conference, as it is generally today. The lecturers were partly producers, partly users. Stig Hedlund from HF Media-Solutions Ab spoke about Digital multi-workstations for sound and document handling and archiving for radio producers and sound archives. His main point was that we have for so long been absorbed in digital possibilities that we have forgotten to think about quality. He stated that you should always use linear systems and as good a quality of sound as possible when you store your material in an archive system.
The composer Otto Donner recommended Sonic Solutions as the best technical solution for sound restoration and he considered it a philosophical question if you should restore the sound completely, let it be as it is, or restore it but leave some "patina". After the lecture we got a demonstration of how YLE is restoring sound with Sonic Solutions - very impressive.
The lifetime of CDR by Caj Södergaard, The Audiofile Standard of EBU by Lasse Vihonen, YLE's first CAR-System by Sirkka Lähteenmäki, YLE's Digi-Archive Project by Pekka Gronow and Audio archiving: the IBM solution for YLE's News by Kari Kari Sirelius, were all very interesting lectures and there was much useful information also for smaller audiovisual archives.
The Finnish National Fonoteque Project was a lecture by Raija Majamaa from the University Library of Helsinki. It is a project which among other things is going to result in a copy of all grammophone records from 1950-1965 held in YLE's archive.
And last but not least we heard about cataloguing; here it was the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and the advantages of embedding metadata in the document.
As Juha Hakala, Network Specialist at the National Library of Finland, said: Any metadata is better than none - well almost...
Before we finally visited the beautiful old University Library of Helsinki, the new chairman of the IASA Nordic Branch, Olle Johansson (Sweden) was elected; new contacts for the other Nordic countries are: Raija Majamaa (Finland), Trond Valberg (Norway) and Per Holst (Denmark).
The SEAPAVAA listserve is now operational. Subscribe by sending an e-mail message to seapavaa-request@syd.dit.csiro.au [44] with the single word "subscribe" in the mail area (i.e. don't use a signature). The header is ignored. The reply will tell you how to unsubscribe should you want to leave the list.
Back issues of IASA publications are being transferred gradually from Budapest to the Editor's office in London. Because of space limitations only twenty copies of each back issue of the Journal and the Bulletin will be stored. The remainder will be destroyed. Copies of all IASA publications continue to be archived by Ulf Scharlau.
| Date | Event | Location |
| Jul 23 - 26 | Second ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~diglib97/ [13] | Philadelphia |
| Aug 16 - 19 | Sound & Imaging Technology '97 | Hong Kong |
| Aug 24 - 29 | IFLA/Statsbiblioteket: 5th international conference on interlending & document supply "Resource sharing possiblilities & barriers" | Aarhus, Denmark |
| Aug 31 - Sep 5 | IAML Annual Conference | Geneva |
| Aug 31 - Sep 5 | IFLA Council and General Congress | Copenhagen |
| Sep 1 - 3 | 1st European Conference on Research & Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries | Pisa |
| Sep 6 - 11 | FIAT/IFTA Conference | Budapest |
| Oct 4-9 | IASA Annual Conference | Oman, Muscat |
| Oct | SEAPAVAA Executive Council meeting | Hanoi |
| Oct 30-31 | IFLA International Conference on Rights and Exceptions | Budapest |
| Nov 17-22 | AMIA conference | Washington DC |
| Nov | UNESCO General Conference | Paris |
| 1998 | ||
| 1998 March | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Hanoi |
| May | ARSC General Conference | Syracuse, NY |
| June 14-18 | X International Oral History Conference http://www.filo.uba.ar/ravignani/historal/ [45] | Rio De Janeiro |
| Jul 20-24 | Conservation conference: Care of photographic, moving image and sound collections | York, UK |
| Aug - Sept | IASA Annual Conference | Paris |
| Aug | IFLA Council and General Conference | Amsterdam |
| 1999 | ||
| March | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Kuala Lumpur |
| May? | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| 2000 | ||
| 2000 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jersusalem |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 29 Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AS, UK,
tel. 44 171 412 7411, fax 44 171 412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14],
and
Elsebeth Kirring, Statsbiblioteket, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark,
tel. 45 86 12 20 22, fax 45 86 20 26 36, e-mail ek@statsbib.aau.dk [28].
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 23 BY 15 SEPTEMBER 1997
IASA received this report in August from the Cinémateque française in Paris:
"Un incendie a ravagé la toiture du Palais de chaillot ou se trouve la Cinématheque française dans la nuit du 23 juillet. Plus de 200 pompiers ont été mobilisé pour venir a bout du sinistre. Des litres d'eau ont rapidement envahi tout le Musée du Cinéma et la Salle de projection. Les collections (affiches, decors, maquettes...) ont heureusement pu etre evacuées a temps, et les quelques objets touchés pourront etre restaurés. Mais le musée a du etre entierement demonté et mis en caisse. La salle de projection entierement innondée sera inutilisable pendant plusieurs mois, les appareils de projection étant detruit. Les quelques films entreposés à Chaillot n'ont pas été endommagé. Nous sommes donc a la recherche d'une nouvelle salle de projection".
[During the night of the 23rd July a fire broke out on the roof of the Palais de Chaillot where the French film institute is based. More than two hundred firemen attended the blaze. Due to the amount of water used the film museum and projection room were badly flooded. Most of the collection items (posters, scenery, models) were fortunately removed to safety before it could be damaged and those items which were damaged are repairable. However, all the museum displays have had to be taken down and the items put into boxes and it will not be possible to make use of the projection room again for several months since all the projection equipment was destroyed. Fortunately there was no damage done to the few films kept at Chaillot. We are therefore looking for a new projection room].
Following the departure of Gerald Grunberg to Alexandria last spring, the Département de la Phonotèque et de l'Audiovisuel of the Bibliothèque National de France will be nominating a new director in December. Until then, Isabelle Giannattasio is the Acting Director.
Sweden has a long tradition of legal deposit. The Statutory Deposit Act dates from 1661 and since 1979 has covered audio-visual as well as printed material. One copy of every printed publication must be delivered to the Royal Library and one copy of every broadcast programme (radio and television), film, videogram and phonogram must be delivered to the National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images (ALB). The law also includes certain electronic documents like CD-ROMs and floppy discs.
Now the Swedish Government has appointed Sven Allerstrand (President of IASA and Director of the ALB) to chair a committee with the task to investigate whether it is desirable and possible to amend the law in order to include such electronic documents that fall outside the scope of the present legal deposit legislation: documents on the Internet, databases that are publicly available, etc. The committee will study selection criteria, the technological aspects of acquisition and storage, access and copyright and also the costs associated with the extension of legal deposit. A group of experts had been appointed and a report is due to be delivered to the Government not later than September 1st, 1998.
An international overview of legal deposit will certainly form part of the final report and Sven is interested to get into contact with people who are doing similar work in other countries. If you have any information that you would like to share with his committee, please send an e-mail to Sven [46]. The committee has set up its own website, http://www.kb.se/bibsam/eplikt/eplikt.htm [47], but unfortunately it is only in Swedish for the moment. Sven promises to keep the IASA membership informed about the work and will present a full report at the 1998 Annual Conference in Paris.
Olle Johansson writes: "Arkivet för ljud och bild (ALB) - the Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images - has developed a digital jukebox together with the Swedish Rock Archives.
The jukebox contains two hundred Swedish rock and pop songs from the 1950's and later, stored in digital form together with the sleeves, catalogue information and factual material on the groups and artists. The jukebox is accessible only at ALB (for copyright reasons, it will not be available over the Internet), but it is available to all visitors, not just to researchers, until the 25th of August 1998.
This is a way of testing the new digital technology. In the future, jukeboxes of this kind will probably be in use in most sound and moving image archives. Instead of the time-consuming procedures of today, the researcher will simply go to a PC, look in the databases, find an interesting recording, push a few buttons and will be able to listen or watch instantly.
It will, naturally, take some time and effort to digitise the material in the archives - the ALB has approximately three million hours of recorded sound in its vaults - but it is possible to start with the most frequently demanded material, and then move on. This is at least a start for ALB".
The National Sound Archive will be transferring the bulk of its services to the new British Library building at St Pancras on 29th October and will re-open to the public from November 24th.
The postal address for NSA from October 29th will be:
96 Euston Road
St Pancras
London
NWI 2DB
Tel. + 44 (0)171 412 7440
Fax. + 44 (0)171 412 7441
E-mail: nsa@bl.uk [48]
Individuals' phone and fax numbers remain as they are, i.e. Chris Clark ext. 7411, fax 7413.
The British Library has also used this opportunity to change its website, doing away with the "portico" label altogether and obliging all callers to enter via the "main gate" rather than slipping in to the part they most need to consult! Therefore to access the National Sound Archive you now have to write http://www.bl.uk/ [49], select from the first page "Collections" and then select "Sound archive".
George Boston, Chairman of the Technical Co-ordinating Committee (TCC) writes:
"It was with a feeling of regret that I received the news that FIAT had decided to withdraw from the TCC. FIAF, IASA and ICA retain for the moment their representation on the Committee.
The world of archives is undergoing major technical changes. The introduction of storage systems able to hold many types of information - sounds, images, texts, data etc - and provide much improved access to the material will radically change the way that we work. It would be far better for the archive NGOs to co-operate to ensure that these changes are to the benefit of the materials that are entrusted to our safe-keeping.
The role of the TCC is not to replace the existing technical bodies in the NGOs. It is to help prevent the duplication of work by each NGO and, thus, make better use of scarce resources. The TCC has provided a channel for the exchange of information and a means of organising co-operative projects for the benefit of all three NGOs.
The future of the TCC will now have to be examined to see if it is possible for it to continue to work effectively without representation from one important area of interest".
Harriett Harrison reports: "The Library of Congress announces plans to revise its AACR2-based cataloging manual, Archival Moving Image materials (AMIM). First published in 1984, the manual was designed to provide instructions for the bibliographic description of moving image materials held by film and television archives. The manual was the result of the joint efforts of moving image cataloging experts from archives throughout the United States and was funded in part with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Work was carried out under the auspices of the Library and the joint Committee on Specialized Cataloging of the Council of National Library and Information Associations (CNLIA).
The aim of the AMIM manual was to adapt existing library standards for cataloging audiovisual materials to the special requirements of moving image archives. Among the most ground-breaking of the special provisions of the manual was the recording of sets of multiple details within a single record. The concept took into account the reality that for moving image archives there was little of the "normal" situation underlying library cataloging standards: the existence of single, ideally complete, physical units in multiple copies bearing identical bibliographic indicia. The AMIM manual enabled archives to describe various print, pre-print, and viewing copy generations -- both in film and video -- within a single record. As the introduction to the 1984 edition stated:
"A moving image archive considers that these sets of multiple details need to be given in one catalog record: a complete "item" may be the sum of these parts."
Rapid advances in moving image technology, coupled with the expansion of television and video archives since the early 1980s, have combined with the increased application of automated technologies for cataloging in moving image archives to invite a review of the provisions of the manual, and to incorporate the content designation of USMARC within its examples. This perceived need has been paralleled in the library community where a major study of cataloging principles is underway. This study will reach its first concerted expression in an upcoming International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR. The conference is sponsored by the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR (JSCAACR) and will be held on October 23-25, 1997 in Toronto, Canada. Attendance at the conference will be by invitation only.
These forces have led the Library of Congress Cataloging Policy and Support Office to undertake the AMIM review. For the purposes of the review, we are seeking advice and suggestions from as broad a range of specialists and interested professionals as possible. Already the Cataloging and Documentation Committee of AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists), is working on contributions, and we encourage additional suggestions and comments from the IASA members. Comments and suggestions will be accepted until January 15, 1998 at:
Cataloging Policy and Support Office
Library of Congress
10 First Street, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20054-4305
Tel: (202)707-4380
FAX: (202)707-6629
Email: harrison@mail.loc.gov [50]
Continuing our quarterly round-up of websites of interest to IASA, here is a trio which may be of use in documentation and rights clearance:
ASCAP Clearance Express (ACE) http://www.ascap.com/ace/disclaim.html [51] contains a database providing information on all compositions in the ASCAP repertory which have appeared in any of ASCAP's surveys, including foreign compositions licensed by ASCAP in the United States.
Likewise, BMI [Broadcast Music Incorporated] Repertoire [52] provides details about millions of songs, while SESAC Repertory On-Line [53], another major licensing organisation, prefaced with dire warnings in red on black, offers its own fascinating resource for consultation and perusal.
In less commercial vein, the IAT Music Link Library [54] , which replaces Online Music Scholarship Resources from the Institute for Academic Technology at the University of North Carolina, is described as "an evolving resource meant to serve those interested in the move of music in higher education into the information age. It was compiled initially as part of a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The kinds of resources we are collecting reflect our research interests. These include music in particular, but also resources which help us understand Internet issues germane to research and education in the humanities and to the information age in general. Our goal is to provide a representative, annotated guide, not an exhaustive compilation.
For applications of IT in higher education see Computers and Texts (online from vol.11) at http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/comtxt/ [55]. Although primarily concerned with textual studies, topics relevant to IASA work are occasionally featured, such as David Silver's Multimedia, Multilinearity, and Multivocality in the Hypermedia Classroom, vol.14 (April 1997) which examines the chief characteristic of multimedia, namely the simultaneous presentation of a multiplicity of meanings and messages, thereby providing the opportunity for new modes of interpretation and learning. In the latest issue, vol.15 (August 1997) Murray Weston of the British Universities Film & Video Council clarifies some misunderstandings which had followed his institution's earlier response (also included here) to the U.K. Government consultation paper Legal Deposit of Publications. This material may be of wider interest to IASA members concerned with the archiving of broadcast material. The article also includes links to the British Library's proposal for extending legal deposit to non-print publications in the U.K.
Mary Miliano reports on a busy session of the IASA Editorial Group to develop the Cataloguing Rules for Audiovisual Media With Emphasis on Sound Recordings:
Our thanks and appreciation to the National Sound Archive in London for hosting our meeting on 10-11 April 1997. Most of those attending were also available to participate in an extension of the meeting on the Saturday morning (12 April) at another venue. Those who attended were Daniele Branger, Chris Clark, Elsebeth Kirring, Maria Gallego, Olle Johansson (minutes secretary) and Mary Miliano (convenor). Apologies were received from Frank Huck and Lasse Vihonen, and from Harriet Harrison, who for private reasons, has retired from the project.
Prior to the meeting, drafts (some running to twenty pages or more) were circulated for Area 0 (Preliminary notes), Area 1 (Title and statement of responsibility), Area 2 (Edition), Area 3 (Publication, production, broadcasting, distribution, etc and date(s) of creation), Area 4 (Copyright), Area 5 (Physical description), Area 6 (Series), Area 7 (Notes - 2 drafts), Area 8 (Standard numbers) and Area 9 (Analytics/Multilevel description). In addition some written comments on these were circulated prior to the meeting.
Fruitful discussion on the finer points of the drafts generated a necessary reschedule for this year's work. The 1997 schedule is now: 1. Circulate revised drafts in June; 2. Circulate written comments in September; 3. Discussion to finalise revisions in October (at 3 day pre-conference meeting in Oman); 4. Prepare and circulate/mount on the IASA home page of the Internet the final version for international comment in/before December.
Two additional meetings following this are anticipated: a mid-year meeting in London early in 1998, and a pre- conference meeting in Paris. The deadline for camera-ready copy remains at end 1998.
Comment: The opportunity for the Editorial Group to hold the mid-year, face-to-face discussion in London was truly invaluable for progressing our work and its quality. Without the London meeting, we would have had to postpone the work until the Oman conference in October."
It is only a matter of time (and perhaps money) before all the catalogues of IASA member archives are available over the Internet. Latest to appear is the Catalogue of Finnish Records 1901-1945 elegantly compiled by the Finnish Institute of Recorded Sound [56]. The main access is by record label. By selecting a particular label you then get brief entries in prefix/serial number order describing the contents: e.g. select "Tri-Ergon", the second recording in the sequence for this label is displayed:
TE 5585 EMIL SVARTSTRÖM, tenori, orkesterin säestyksellä (1929)
02548-1 Hyv'yötä vaan (The sunshine of your smile) (3:43), (Lilian Ray)
02549-1 Soi vienosti murheeni soitto (2:42), (Oskar Merikanto, san. Heikki Ansa)
More details about the Catalogue can be obtained from Pekka Gronow [57].
The report Digitisation as a method of preservation? is now available free of charge from the European Commission for Preservation and Access in Amsterdam. Tel: +31 20 5510 839; FAX: +31 20 620 4941; E-Mail: ecpa@bureau.knaw.nl [58].
This is a translation of a report written in German for ICA by Hartmut Weber and others of the Bundesarchiv. It concerns the problems of digitising texts and the comparative advantages of microfilming, taking the view that carriers used for digitisation are "notoriously unstable", a view which is shared by the computing world in that it recommends that magnetic tapes containing data should be renewed regularly with safe Life Expectancies of five years being commonly quoted, and even of one year according to some commentators.
ADAM, the Art, Design, Architecture & Media Information Gateway, is a service being developed to help people find useful, quality-assured information on the Internet including IASA-related concerns such as:
contemporary media, including those using technology
film, television, broadcasting, photography and animation
theory; relevant historical, philosophical and contextual studies
museum studies and conservation
professional practice related to any of the above
ADAM helps locate the relevant information by providing a searchable on-line catalogue describing Internet resources such as web sites or electronic mailing lists, in much the same way as a library catalogue describes bibliographic resources such as books and journals.
Take a look at http://adam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/browse.pl [59]. At the time of writing, a search for "sound" under the "conservation" category only yielded seven sites, mostly connected with film. The same seven appeared when searching the same term under "media", but it's a start.
IFLA Journal (vol.23 nol.4), 1997 was a special issue devoted to Copyright, presumably aimed at priming their International Conference on Rights and Exceptions to be held in Amsterdam at the end of October (see Events page). Contents include:
Ethics and Copyright: A Developing Country Perspective
Copyright in Mexico: An Overview
Libraries and Publishers in the Digital Environment
Availability and Copyright
Royalties and Payments: Why Pay for Copyright? What Are Words Worth?
Copyright, Library Provision and the Visually Handicapped Reader
Copyright, Libraries, and the Electronic Information Environment: Discussions and Developments in the United States
Electronic Copyright Management Systems: Dream, Nightmare or Reality?
European Copyright User Platform
Copyright Legislation, Fair Use and the Efficient Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge
Copyright and Fair Use in the Electronic Information Age
PLR in a Copyright Context
The consideration given to exceptions, notably the Anglo-American concept of "fair use" or "fair dealing" is very timely in view of the present call from certain copyright owners (mainly publishers) to curtail or even abolish fair dealing in the electronic environment (see message posted to ecup-list@kaapeli.fi [60] from Sandy Norman (UK Library Association) NormanS@la-hq.org.uk [61], 17 September 1997. Abstracts of these articles can be found at http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/V/iflaj/ilj2304.htm [62]
Meanwhile, a concise explanation of "fair use" Fair Use: Overview and Meaning for Higher Education by Kenneth D. Crewscan be found at http://www.iupui.edu/it/copyinfo/highered.html [63].
The following personnel advertisement for the position of Co-ordinator of Professional Activities has been received from IFLA. The deadline for nominations may well have passed by the time you read this but there will still be time to put in an application:
"IFLA seeks a recognized professional in the library/information field with a demonstrated record of increasing professional and managerial responsibilities for the position of Coordinator of Professional Activities. She/he will coordinate IFLA's professional programmes, through which IFLA contributes to the development of the library and information profession worldwide. IFLA is a non-governmental organisation (grouping together more than 1600 members in over 140 countries) with its headquarters (10 persons) located in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Co-ordinator of Professional Activities serves as executive secretary to the Professional Board (PB), ensuring that PB decisions are carried out. The work of the PB involves identifying, developing and evaluating projects, seminars, etc. With the PB, the Coordinator encourages, supports and monitors the work of IFLA's five permanent Core Programmes and IFLA's 45 professional volunteer groups (Divisions, Sections, Round Tables). Further responsibilities involve financial management, fundraising and international representation. Candidates should be prepared to engage in an international travel schedule.
The position requires both professional and managerial expertise, preferably in international (library) work; strong language abilities: IFLA operates with English, French, Spanish, German and Russian as official languages - strong command of two of them preferred; leadership and communication skills. Library and/or Information Science education and work experience would be an advantage.
The fulltime position will become available from April 1998 and will be based in The Hague, Netherlands. Salary commensurate with the responsibilities of the position. Send full CV and names of 3 references to Leo Voogt, Secretary General, PO Box 95312, 2509 CH, The Hague, Netherlands in an envelope marked "Personal" or by fax to 31 70 3834827. Applications will be treated in confidence and must be received by November 30, 1997. (Nominations welcome - deadline October 15).
For information on IFLA check http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/ [64]. A more extensive profile of the position is available on request."
Further to the report in IASA Journal No.9 by Albrecht Haefner, details of a survey of existing music projects under the European Commission's aegis can be found at http://www.svb.nl/project/harmonica/harm_survey.htm [65]. This includes a new project relating to copyright, Copymus.dk, [66] concerned with agreements for libraries in the music area.
The NSA has in its collection of artefacts a Stollwerke machine designed to play the company's own brand of hillandale sound recordings which were made of chocolate. To the NSA's knowledge, no chocolate discs have survived (would they still be playable, let alone edible?). Latterly, no less a company than Microsoft has emulated the Stollwerke example by providing compact discs made of chocolate in lunch boxes given to software developers and programmers at company functions. According to the report which appeared in New Scientist (9 August 1997), each disc is accompanied by a piece of paper which states: "Warning: Do not place chocolate in any CD drive or device; for human consumption only".
As you can see, the volume of material arriving at the IASA news desk has been rather less than usual during this period and preparations for the IASA Conference in Oman during the first two weeks of October have meant that this issue has had to be produced to a deadline which is tighter than normal.
| Date | Event | Location |
| Oct 4-9 | IASA Annual Conference | Muscat, Oman |
| Oct | SEAPAVAA Executive Council meeting | Hanoi |
| Oct 21 - Nov 12 | UNESCO General Conference | Paris |
| Oct 27-29 | FIAF Executive Committee | Beijing |
| Oct 30-31 | IFLA International Conference on Rights and Exceptions | Amsterdam (changed from Budapest) |
| Nov 17-22 | AMIA conference | Washington DC |
| 1998 | ||
| 1998 March | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Hanoi |
| Mar 13-14 | FIAT Executive Council Meeting | Lisbon |
| Apr 21-26 | FIAF Annual Congress | Prague |
| May | ARSC General Conference | Syracuse, NY |
| June 14-18 | X International Oral History Conference http://www.filo.uba.ar/ravignani/historal/ [45] | Rio De Janeiro |
| Jul 20-24 | Conservation conference: Care of photographic, moving image and sound collections | York, UK |
| Aug | IFLA Council and General Conference | Amsterdam |
| Aug - Sept | IASA Annual Conference | Paris |
| Sep 27 - Oct 1 | FIAT Conference & General Assembly | Florence |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | San Juan, Puerto Rico |
| 1999 | ||
| March | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Kuala Lumpur |
| April | FIAF Annual Congress | Madrid |
| May | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | Toulouse |
| 2000 | ||
| April | FIAF Annual Conference | London |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jersusalem |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 29 Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AS, UK,
tel. 44 171 412 7411, fax 44 171 412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14],
and
Elsebeth Kirring, Statsbiblioteket, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark,
tel. 45 8946 2055, fax 45 8946 2050, e-mail ek@kumsb.dk [67].
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 24 BY 15 DECEMBER 1997.
In particular, you are urged to notify IASA (via this Bulletin, or via the Secretary General) of any changes to the contact details printed in the current IASA Directory.
Safeguarding archival collections is usually discussed in terms of atmospheric or chemical afflictions but security must also be a prime concern, particularly when users are permitted privileged access. Inger Kielland from Norsk Rikskringkasting (NRK = Norwegian Broadcasting Company) has sent in this story, backed by the official judgement of the Oslo Court, of a recent incident which may cause many of our members to bring forward their routine stock checks and re-examine their policies for access. Inger writes:
"On 13th October, 1997, Mr Barry Anthony Sharp was convicted for violation of the Norwegian Penal Code, Section 317, paragraphs 1 & 3, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment.
In early August, 1997, Mr. Sharp phoned me from England telling me that he would like to visit the NRK Record Library, and that he intended to visit also the record libraries of Danish and Swedish Radio. He sent me a letter from a well-known BBC producer recommending Mr. Sharp as a reliable expert journalist and wishing him every success with his research project.
Mr. Sharp arrived at the NRK in the morning of 25th August and was given access to our Record Library for a five-day period. But on the 28th August, at noon, he suddenly left. We immediately discovered that along with the visitor a large number of records had disappeared, their brown envelopes having been left empty on the shelves.
We alerted the police in Oslo as well as the Danish and Swedish police, and also the Danish and Swedish broadcasting companies. Next morning, Mr. Sharp was apprehended in the Swedish Radio Record Library where he had gained access in the same way as with us. He had already made a selection of records that he had hidden on the top of shelves but had not yet brought anything out of the archive. On the following day he was transported back to Norway by the Norwegian police.
All the records missing from the NRK Record Library were found in his car in Stockholm. They have been valued as collectors' items at NOK 350,000-400,000 (corresponding to GBP 29,000-33,000).
During the Court hearing in Oslo, Mr. Sharp explained that the collection had been offered to him in early August by an unknown man in Oslo, that he had bought the records in spite of realising that they had been stolen from the Norwegian Broadcasting Company. He had contacted two Oslo shops but had not sold any of the records. (We found out from the shop owners that the prices asked were very high).
Mr. Sharp has been conducting 'research' in many countries and in many archives, not least due to his reputation as a well-known authority through the network of collectors and dealers of which the magazine Record Collector [London: Diamond] is an important part. His behaviour is convincing, even impressive. Nobody would suspect such an expert and well-known music journalist. We know that he was in Germany in the early 1990s and in Africa in May 1997. The police told us that he is suspected of theft in Dublin, but that the archive concerned had been unable to prove him guilty and had refrained from reporting him officially to the police. I am sure that we would have had the same problem if our records had not been found in his car.
We suppose that Mr. Sharp's strategy all along has been to convey the impression that somebody else is involved in the thefts from the archives he visits. But we know positively that the records were stolen during the time he spent in the NRK archives, and that no member of our staff was involved. Unlike many other archives, the NRK Record Library has strict routines for regular control of the shelves. These routines made it possible to discover immediately what had happened. Of course, we are sorry that our control routines did not then (they do now!) include the passing in and out of visitors (that we had every reason to trust).
The public prosecutor at the City of Oslo Court decided to accuse Mr. Sharp of what he had pleaded guilty of. The penalty for severe violation of Section 317 of the Penal Code is comparable but not commensurate with the penalty for theft. The police did not want to spend more time on his case, thus he was sentenced as a receiver of stolen goods instead of as a professional thief as we suspect him of being. We regret the Court's decision.
As we know that Mr. Sharp has contributed to the Record Collector and was also acknowledged by one of the readers in the September 1997 issue (p. 156) under the heading "Diggin' For Gold", I have sent a copy of the judgement to the editor Peter Dogget asking him to print, in the next issue, the story of Barry Anthony Sharp's gold digging in radio archives. I think that the record collectors throughout the world need a warning too."
Dr Joachim-Felix Leonhard, chair and managing director of the foundation Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Frankfurt am Main - Berlin, an institution of the Federal German Broadcasting Stations (ARD), has been appointed Honorary Professor by the President of Humboldt-University in Berlin. Dr Leonhard has for some time been a lecturer at Humboldt-University on modern history and complementary science. Originally he specialised in Italian history, specifically the history of the Italian seaport Ancona and the Marche region during the Middle Ages. This was the reason why he was given Freedom of the City of Ancona in 1992 and received the city's Golden Order of Merit. His main focus at Humboldt-University is the history of audiovisual media and communications in the 20th century and their relationships with historical-political developments and events.
Members are invited to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the Paris Conference in November.
The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation at the IASA annual conferences by those who have no alternative funding and to encourage continuing participation in the work of IASA.
Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.
IASA Committees may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences.
Funding for grants is limited and they will only cover a proportion of the costs involved.
Proposals for travel grants to attend the Paris conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of March 1998 in order to be considered at the mid-year Board meeting to be held in the following April or May. Please send your application to: IASA Secretary General, Albrecht Häfner, Südwestfunk, Sound Archives, D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany. Fax 49 7221 92 20 94.
Research grants are also available to assist in carrying out specific projects and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project which concerns the interests of IASA and which requires start-up funding or which requires financial support for work already underway is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (see address on page 3). Applications will be considered as and when the Board of IASA meets, so the next chance will be at its mid-year meeting in April or May and then at Annual Conference in November.
The IASA Cataloguing Rules (for Audiovisual Media With Emphasis on Sound Recordings) is in preparation and due for release at the end of 1998.
This work is designed to be compatible with the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (2nd ed.), and the International Standard Bibliographic Description (Non-Book Materials) and to be able to be used in MARC or other cataloguing systems.
It aims to address cataloguing problems, solutions and concepts in particular for content and physical description of:
a) audio formats (published, unpublished and broadcast);
b) multimedia formats (including interactive CD-Roms with audio content);
c) jukeboxes or mass storage systems; and
d) moving image formats where these are a natural extension of audio formats (e.g. music videos, musical performances on laser disc), or related to audio (e.g. FM simulcasts).
Cataloguing of a wide variety of content will be addressed, including music and literary recordings in all genres, oral histories, interviews, radio programmes, wildlife and environmental sounds, ethnographic recordings and actuality.
Emphasis on appropriate information to include for different types of content will be highlighted. In addition, options and alternatives will be presented to help archives and libraries decide on the most suitable way to match their cataloguing with the needs of their users and institutional responsibilities.
It is intended that this work will not duplicate existing standards such as the FIAF Cataloguing Rules for Film Archives (1991), or the Rules for Archival Description (Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Ottawa, Canada, 1990) but, again, will be compatible with these and will focus freshly on matters pertinent to audio visual archives and in particular sound archives.
For instance, special attention will be given to demonstrating analytic or multilevel cataloguing of individual items on published, unpublished and broadcast carriers.
A pre-publication draft will be available for comment by interested persons and organisations from January 1998. The draft will be available electronically through the IASA web site [68] or as hard copy by request from Olle Johansson (within Europe) or Mary Miliano (outside Europe). All comments must be forwarded to Mary Miliano, e-mail mary_miliano@nfsa.gov.au [69].
Members of the IASA Cataloguing and Documentation Committee who are on the Editorial Group to prepare this work are: Mary Miliano, National Film and Sound Archive, Australia; Elsebeth Kirring, State Media Archive, Aarhus; Daniele Branger, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris; Olle Johansson, Arkivet for Ljud och Bild, Stockholm; Chris Clark, The British Library National Sound Archive, London; Lasse Vihonen, Yleisradio Oy, Finland; Maria Pilar Gallego, Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid; Frank Rainer Huck, Saarlaendischer Rundfunk, Saarbruecken.
The European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA) has opened a virtual exhibition on the web: A Virtual Exhibition of the Ravages of Dust, Water, Moulds, Fungi, Bookworms and other Pests.
One of the main tasks of the ECPA is to increase awareness of the need for preservation and conservation of large collections of older material. Most people, even scholars and scientists who depend on old and rare documents for their research, are not aware that a considerable part of comparatively recent documents is being threatened with irreversible decay. For them this exhibition has been made.
ECPA is asking us, as preservation experts, to look at it with a critical eye and to send them our comments and suggestions.
There are plans to expand the exhibition to include chapters on photographs and audiovisual material.
If anyone has any ideas or would like to contribute a chapter, please let ECPA know. Alternatively they could also make links to other websites.
You can visit the Virtual Exhibition at http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/expo.htm [70]
British Library NSA Director Crispin Jewitt reports from the Conference held 30th-31st October, 1997 in Amsterdam entitled Rights, limitations and exceptions: striking a proper balance.
The conference was jointly organised by Imprimatur and IFLA. Imprimatur is a project sponsored by the European Commission. It is looking at the copyright environment appropriate to the electronic information age. The British Library is a partner, and so is the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, as well as a number of collection societies and library bodies such as EBLIDA.
This was the third of four meetings forming part of the Project, seeking to work towards a consensus on the balance of owner's rights and user's exceptions in any new legislation that comes forward to regulate intellectual property transactions in the electronic environment. A particular context was provided by the WIPO treaties of December 1996 and the forthcoming EC Draft Directive on the harmonisation of ... copyright ... in the information society.
The participants divided into four groups: publishers and collection societies were the largest, then there were libraries and end users, and computer scientists (both small groups), while the second largest group was made up of lawyers, who provided the Chairmen of the seven working groups whose aim was to reach a consensus view on a number of specific issues.
There was a witty, but not ultimately helpful, keynote address which likened the present range of exceptions to animals in a zoo (some of them bite). Then for the rest of the first day we split up into the seven working groups, each of which had the same agenda which was to try for a consensus view on such arcana as transient copying; incidental copying; caching; and browsing. We also addressed more familiar issues such as library, archive, and educational needs; and also public interest concerns and technical solutions to rights management in the digital domain.
Much of our discussion was about definitions (what does browsing actually mean?) and we didn't get very much further than statements of the differing positions on the various issues in general terms. The discussion was helped by one or two people illustrating the general points with examples and when the time seemed opportune I offered a specific exception which I said ought have general approval. This was that the needs of a national library or archive should be recognised by the exceptional right to make copies for on-site access and preservation of all published digital material in its collection (there is no such exception in UK law relating to sound recordings). Some of the other groups were more successful in reaching consensus than ours. One group drew a distinction between the needs of commercial and academic libraries on the one hand, and public libraries on the other (the former should be licensed to distribute electronic material - on unspecified terms, while it was thought that exceptions should be provided in the case of the latter - but that the results should be carefully monitored). Another group had struggled with the definition of a library - is it a place or a web site?
There next followed short addresses by representatives of WIPO, EC (DGXV), and the US Copyright Office. These were basically position papers which contributed little to the otherwise lively discussions.The last session was an open forum led by a panel of experts. There was a fair amount of discussion of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and of Articles 9-1 and 9-2 of the Berne Convention. A question was asked about moral rights on the Internet and as to whether existing exceptions should transfer to the digital environment.
Was it worth the effort and expense of attending? Yes, on balance. I didn't bring much away from it (apart from a wider understanding of some of the issues) but I feel that I made a fair contribution to the overall process, and I was glad of the opportunity to indicate that the British Library takes a measured view of the issues, unlike colleagues who sometimes seemed motivated by a hard-line freedom of information agenda.
IASA Bulletin was sad to learn of the death on December 12th last year of Barry S. Brook, eminent scholar of French music, Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York, leader in the international musicological community, tireless organizer and a familiar and friendly face to those of us who attended joint IAML-IASA conferences.
Eva Fonss-Jorgensen (State Media Archive, Aarhus) reports on three recent developments in Denmark.
Copymus.dk - a project about copyright agreements in the music area for libraries. During the recent years, the State and University Library has carried out different IT projects such as JUKEBOX and Danish Audio History. Both projects have dealt with digitization and provision of network access to music and other sound recordings. The copyright aspects have been complex and comprehensive, but we have always managed to negotiate agreements so that we could carry through the projects as planned. However, all agreements have been temporary, i.e. they have only covered the project period. After each project we have had to start all over again, and the recordings digitized for the project would no longer be accessible. In the long run this is absolutely unacceptable seen from a resource point of view. Also, other aspects of music library activities have become more difficult in Denmark after the revision of the Copyright Act in 1995. The protection period for composers was prolonged to 70 years, and at the same time it was prohibited to deliver paper copies of protected scores to library users.
All these problems have united four major Danish institutions in a common project called Copymus.dk. The aim is to "achieve agreements for the use of protected works as copies (electronic and physical) in the field of music within libraries - typically sound recordings and scores". The State and University Library is coordinating the project and has made a contract with Hein Information Tools for project support. The other participants are The Royal Library in Copenhagen, Odense University Library and Danish Music Information Center (MIC). The project has its own homepage (also in English), <http://www.copymus.dk [66]>.
Danish Audio History: new version. The State and University Library has opened a second version of the web project Danish Audio History which is run in collaboration with other Danish institutions. Financial support is provided by the Danish Ministry of Culture in the so-called CultureNet Denmark. Using the RealAudio format we presented last year different subjects, e.g. historical speeches by famous Danish men and women (actors and politicians), Danish dialects, and music hall recordings from 1935. Now we add other items such as music-ethnological recordings from Mongolia, Danish folk songs recorded on phonograph in 1907, songs by the famous singer Lauritz Melchior, and interviews with women from two women's liberation movements: Danish Women's Association and The Red Socks from the 1970s. See <http://www.sb.aau.dk/dlh/ [71]>
New Danish Legal Deposit Act. For the first time in 70 years there has been a radical change in the Danish Legal Deposit Act. From January 1998 two copies of all published works will have to be deposited regardless of the medium or carrier. One copy will go to the State and University Library, and the other will go to the Royal Library in Copenhagen. This means that also audio-visual media are covered by the new law. In the State Media Archive we will be responsible for the collection and administration of the av-media, whereas the Royal Library will be responsible for the collection and administration of the text based media. Seen from the State Media Archive's point of view, an important effect of the definition of 'published work' is that broadcast material is NOT covered by the law.
The third annual SEAPAVAA conference will be held in Hanoi, Vietnam from the 23rd to 28th March, 1998. The Conference theme is Emerging Audiovisual Heritage: accessing the voice and vision of S. E. Asia-Pacific.
The conference programme will be diverse, with papers and presentations covering Information Technology, Cataloguing, Delivery, Preservation, Legal, Promotional, Cooperative and other aspects of this theme. Full details will be available soon on the SEAPAVAA (interim) website [72]
Accommodation will be provided in hotels close to the conference venue, which is near the picturesque 'old quarter' of Hanoi. Depending on choice, expected cost will be in the range US$35 - 45 per night. Within easy reach are numerous restaurants (to suit any budget), historic temples, attractions like the National Museum and National Theatre, and the famous shopping streets of the old quarter. We are looking into possibilities of discount airfares to help with travel costs.
The Vietnam Film Institute, an agency of the Vietnam Ministry of Culture and Information, will host the conference and their generous provision will include:
a performance of the Vietnamese Water Puppets, a unique traditional art form
an overnight excursion by coach and boat to beautiful Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
If you wish to attend, e-mail the SEAPAVAA secretariat - bsbc-pia@mailsation.net [73]- to register your interest in attending. If you wish to deliver a paper or otherwise participate in the conference presentations, contact the SEAPAVAA secretariat as above (or alternatively e-mail Ray_Edmondson@nfsa.gov.au [74] ).
If you have not yet visited Hanoi, let me recommend what may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Hanoi is an ancient, beautiful and friendly city, with its tree-lined streets and lakes, and its relaxed lifestyle - a striking blend of age-old ways and modernity. It is relatively small (population of 1 million) and retains a character which is still unspoiled either by tourism or rampant development. For visitors - and especially we impoverished AV archivists - it is also quite affordable. Vietnamese culture is rich and its people hospitable. In short, I am confident that Hanoi will surprise and delight you.
Ray Edmondson
President, SEAPAVAA
From the University at Albany, New York, comes the announcement of a new journal, The Journal of Multimedia History which will "present professional scholarship that incorporates video, audio, and computer technologies. It will be published on the World Wide Web. To build on the enormous popularity of webzines such as SLATE and SALON, The Journal of Multimedia History aims to wed academic scholarship with the opportunities of the Internet in order to enliven our discipline, improve pedagogy, and expand interest in history among the general public. Scholars working in any field of history can submit 'multimedia texts' (texts that incorporate pictures, audio, and/or relevant hyperlinks). We also seek interpretive articles about historical web sites and undergraduate or graduate courses that use innovative web sites; instructors should provide commentary about their experiences with the course. Every issue will include reviews of new multimedia products, ranging from CD-ROM software to radio shows. Finally, since this is a new project, the Editorial Board encourages other types of research that might be appropriate for this new journal."
The editors are soliciting submissions for the first edition of the journal before the deadline of March 1,1998. Articles and queries should be sent via the internet, to Gerald Zahavi at gz580@csc.albany.edu [75] or Julian Zelizer at zelizer@csc.albany.edu [76] or by mail to Editorial Board, The Journal of Multimedia, Department of History, University at Albany, Albany, New York, 12222.
Cruise the cultural cyberspaces of UNESCO's Memory of the World [77] web site which at present include Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean area. No 'audio' as yet, but plenty of 'visual'. The site also offers Cyberwatch which will cover latest cyberspatial developments, currently restricted to a service provided in French by Radio France Internationale.
The Program for Art on Film, Inc. recently announced the launch of its newly expanded Web site, Art On Film Online [78].
Art on Film Online features a fully searchable version of the Program's renowned Art on Screen Database an annotated research index to more than 25,000 films, videos, and new media on the visual arts. Subjects covered in the Database include painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, archaeology, photography, decorative arts, design, costume, and more. Access to the Database will be free during an initial introductory period. Other new Web site features include:
* Art on Screen E-News, an electronic version of the Program's Art on Screen newsletter, featuring up-to-the-minute information on international festivals and film programs, news of colleagues in the field, and reviews of new films, videos, CD-ROMs, and books.
* Web Citings, an extensive listing of Internet sites of interest to arts and media professionals, covering: film/video/media sites, art sites, artists' film/video sites, library resources, education sites, and professional societies and membership organizations.
* Other Resources, including Program for Art on Film research reports, guidelines, and articles.
Contacts: Nadine Covert, Janet Fisher, Pratt Institute Program for Art on Film Office of Public Relations
(718) 399-4206, (718) 636-3471
artfilm@sils.pratt.edu [79], jfisher@pratt.edu [80]
Sound and film were included in the MUSEA project which has now produced its final report and added a questionnaire to its web-site [81]. More substance is to be found in Cultural Heritage Information On-line the interim report of the project which was commissioned by the European Commission "study and investigate the standardisation issues corresponding to requirements emerging from the activities related to the storage and on-line access of the Cultural Heritage (ref. SOGITS N884)". The report has been compiled by four consultants based in the UK, Netherlands and Denmark. The purpose of the report is to look at the technical and documentation standards needed for networked cultural heritage in the EU (and internationally) to achieve inter-operability.
VideoTalk is a new web site that has been set up as a resource directory for Australian Digital Media Libraries technology. VideoTalk consists of two parts:
(i) a web-based resource directory
(ii) an internet-based discussion forum.
The compilers see the resource directory as "a dynamic growing resource which will provide technical content on a number of issues such as video standards and formats, storage technology, media servers, communication bandwidth, links to Australian Video Libraries and Archives, Australian research centres, etc. The discussion forum will provide a platform for different user groups (end users as well as R&D groups) to share common issues and research directions in the area of digital video libraries".
The VideoTalk [82] site is now available for viewing.
You may have to alter the colours on your PC to see all of it but Rockmine [83] will provide hours of nostalgia and fun (prizes to be won) and a considerable amount of solid information as well. Its 'Ultimate rock cyclopedia' contains 526 entries, some extensive with graphics, others minimal (e.g. "Sandy Nelson. Drums").
The American Council on Learned Societies has just announced that its recently published Occasional Paper No. 37, Information Technology in Humanities Scholarship: Achievements, Prospects, and Challenges--The United States Focus by Pamela Pavliscak, Seamus Ross, and Charles Henry is now available on-line in a hypertext version [84].
In the report's Preface it says that it "surveys the various applications of information technology to research in the humanities. In the course of our investigations we came across a variety of innovative research that could have a profound impact on the humanities. However, the incidence of such work is uneven, and the widespread adoption of information technology in the humanities is being hindered by a number of significant obstacles. We also examine the challenges that must be overcome if such applications are to become the norm among scholars." The report concludes with a useful list of links to exemplary projects and services http://www.acls.org/op37-app.htm [85]. An expanded version of this report will be available later this year on the American Arts & Letters Network [86].
The IASA Directory 1998 is in preparation and is expected to be ready to send to members (free of charge) along with the April issue of the IASA Bulletin.
I will also be receiving very soon from printers in London copies of the new, re-designed, tri-lingual IASA promotional leaflet. These will be held and distributed centrally by Magdalene Cséve, Hungarian Radio, Documentation, Bródy Sandor u.5-7, H-1800 Budapest, Hungary, Fax 36 1 328 8310. Please contact Magdalene if you would like a small supply for your institution.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 1998 | ||
| Mar 13-14 | FIAT Executive Council Meeting | Lisbon |
| Mar "late" | Round Table of Audiovisual Records (FIAF, FIAT, IASA, ICA and IFLA) |
London |
| Mar 23-28 | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Hanoi |
| Apr 21-26 | FIAF Annual Congress | Prague |
| Apr/May | IASA mid-year Board meeting | London |
| May | ARSC General Conference | Syracuse, NY |
| May 16 - 19 | AES Convention | Amsterdam |
| June 14-18 | X International Oral History Conference http://www.filo.uba.ar/ravignani/historal/ [45] | Rio De Janeiro |
| Jul 20-24 | Institute of Paper Conservation & Society of Archivists conference: Care of photographic, moving image and sound collections | York, UK |
| Aug | IFLA Council and General Conference | Amsterdam |
| Aug 31 - Sep 4 | "KnowRight 98": XV IFIP World Computer Conference/ 2nd International Conference on intellectual property rights & free flow of information | Budapest |
| Sep 26 - 29 | AES Convention | San Francisco |
| Sep 27 - Oct 1 | FIAT Conference & General Assembly | Florence |
| November 15 - 20 | IASA Annual Conference | Paris |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | San Juan, Puerto Rico |
| 1999 | ||
| March | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Kuala Lumpur |
| April | FIAF Annual Congress | Madrid |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| September | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | Toulouse |
| 2000 | ||
| April | FIAF Annual Conference | London |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jersusalem |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 171 412 7411, fax 44 171 412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14],
and
Elsebeth Kirring, Statsbiblioteket, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark,
tel. 45 8946 2055, fax 45 8946 2050, e-mail ek@kumsb.dk [67].
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 25 BY 15 MARCH 1998
In particular, you are urged to notify IASA (via this Bulletin, or via the Secretary General) of any changes to the contact details printed in the current IASA Directory.
This quarter we welcome two new full institutional members from Poland:
Archivum Polskiego Radio: Polskie Radio S.A. , Al. Niepodleglosci 77/85, 00-977 Warsaw, Poland
Biblioteka Narodowa: Al. Niepodleglosci 213, 00-973 Warsaw, Poland
Biblioteka Narodowa claims the "greatest collection of musical recordings in Poland, with more than 45,000 documents being the main strength of the collection which concentrates on recordings produced in Poland, Polish composers and performers plus a selection of recordings of classical music from other countries".
Also several new full individual members, some of whom will already be familiar faces: Anthony Seeger, Daniele Branger, Olle Johansson, Cheryl Mollicone (NARAS), Steve Johnson, and from Oman, Amer Al-Rawas and Rashid Haroon al-Jabry. Contact details can be found in the new IASA Directory 1998.
The many friends and colleagues of Derek Lewis will be saddened to hear of his death on March 6th in a London hospital. Derek had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease for some time, a debilitating illness which he had borne with great dignity.
Although Derek began his career in the theatre his love of music led him to Decca and, from there, to the BBC in 1963 when he became Gramophone Librarian, a post he held for the next 29 years until his retirement. Although originally a IAML member, Derek was heavily involved in the early days of IASA. He attended virtually all of the annual conferences and for many years chaired the joint IAML/IASA committee, contributing greatly to the common agenda of both organisations.
Derek carried his encyclopaedic knowledge of recorded music very lightly and was always unfailingly good company. His distinctive mixture of reticence, combined with great kindness and courtesy, will be much missed by friends and colleagues in IASA.
Kurt Deggeller, Director of Swiss National Sound Archive, has been appointed Director of Memoriav, Association for the preservation of the audio-visual heritage of Switzerland. He will leave the Fonoteca Nazionale during the first half of this year but he will maintain his mandates in IASA.
IASA Secretary-General Albrecht Häfner urges you to consider adding your voice to this year's conference proceedings:
"the annual IASA conference, to be held in Paris 15-20 November, is still far away but preparations have started and the preliminary programme will be sent out not later than end of May. Anybody who wishes to give a paper addressing the general theme for this year - Improving Access to Sound and Audiovisual Archives: How to Respond to the Challenges of New Media Technology should send their submission including a brief abstract to the Secretary-General by end of April".
Colleagues in SEAPAVAA have recently taken access as their conference theme also. You can see what topics they discussed in Hanoi during March on the SEAPAVAA website [72] . For those without Internet access, these were the main sub-themes:
standardisation of av catalogues and information exchange
promoting the collections: marketing, fund-raising, resource sharing
copyright, use of collections (screening rights and exchange)
technical issues: access delivery and infrastructure
managing the delivery: access policy, practice and service delivery
a regional strategy for providing access to the av heritage of the South East Asia-Pacific region
Neither should we overlook the implications for the profession of a more customer-led emphasis on access, maybe at some cost to the traditional collection-based concerns. These implications are already being examined at the British Library as a necessary response, not so much to new technology (which promises to make those traditional jobs more alluring) but to reductions in state funding.
With Inger Kielland's account of grand archival larceny still fresh in our memories (see Bulletin 24 [87]) we might well consider devoting a session at this year's Conference to the theme of 'safeguarding collections and staff from criminal or unreasonable behaviour by the public'. I am sure we all have tales of unacceptable user behaviour to enliven a dull moment in the canteen: here's one which recently involved Sweden's ALB. Olle Johansson takes up the story:
"A woman called the ALB recently, just before lunchtime, claiming that she was standing in a telephone booth and was being threatened by a man with a gun. He was pointing the gun at her head and was demanding through her that ALB change the information in the catalogue about a television programme in which he had participated. She did not actually say that he was going to shoot her if we didn't, but we drew our own conclusions...
She demanded that we should change information in our catalogue and that we had until 14.00 hours to comply. We phoned the police who arrived for a report and left. The next time she phoned they tried to trace the call, without success. She again demanded the same thing. Our staff tried to tell her that there was no information about any names in the catalogue, and that the catalogue was an on-line catalogue located at the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation over which we had no control. But she would not listen.
When she called the third time around 14.00 the police were present. One of the policemen pretended to be the director of ALB and told the woman that we could not help her, and, judging her to be of unsound mind, refused to take her threat seriously. Since then we haven't heard anything more."
Albrecht Häfner reports: "ORF, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, with its bustling director of TV archives, Peter Dusek, invited to Vienna on February 13-14 members of FIAT and the IASA Radio Sound Archives Committee to a seminar on the subject of "Digitisation in Radio Archives". The main purpose of the meeting was to give a rough indication of developments to those within FIAT who deal with sound in their archives.
There were 41 delegates from 14 European countries. They exchanged the latest information on current developments, projects, ideas and plans. As an appetiser and to provide the participants with the necessary theory, Dietrich Schüller introduced the IASA strategy paper The Safeguarding of the Audio Heritage: Ethics, Principles and Preservation Strategy. Albrecht Häfner then offered some practical experiences from his pilot project at Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden.
The first day ended with the demonstration of a system for Digital Media Archives, designed and offered by Siemens Austria. Brief reports on digitisation projects or plans in the archives of the participants, accompanied by vital discussions, made up the second day which was closed by a guided tour through the ORF's TV archives.
In his welcome speech, Albrecht expressed his firm belief that this seminar was a first step towards a "co-operation on a small scale" between FIAT and IASA, hopefully followed by more. In emphasising that, Dietrich invited FIAT for co-operation in a technical project that aims at observing and diagnosing the dwindling importance of magnetic tape for recording and storing purposes of audio-visual contents, and realising the consequences. The proposal to repeat this meeting in 1999 was met with unanimous approval by all attendants.
The 1997 meeting of the German/Swiss IASA branch was held October 31 to November 2, 1997, in Basel, kindly hosted by the Swiss Radio Company DRS. More than 40 attendants, with equal representation from Switzerland and Germany, had a varied meeting with interesting papers and a number of presentations of private and institutional sound recording collections, especially from the Swiss members.
The meeting focused on two main themes: "User-friendliness in institutional archives" and "The centenary of the shellac disc". Both enabled further consideration of modern digital techniques which are so useful for the safeguarding of historic recordings in the long term. In this context, the hundred years of the shellac disc illustrated the analogue sound carrier on its way to the digital medium, thus proving the paradigmatic change 'away from eternal carriers towards eternal information'.
Members had been invited to vote on a new executive board. Kurt Deggeller was elected new President - for one year only on his own request as he had been recently appointed Director of the Swiss Memoriav association which demands his full commitment. Kurt closed the meeting by saying: "Internet is really fantastic - but a chat during a coffee break gives sometimes better information!".
S.-G.
In response from an enquiry to Albrecht Häfner from Gretchen King, an undergraduate student of Ethnomusicology from Seattle, a large amount of information is being generated about wire recordings which may be useful to start assembling here to assist her project, which she describes as "the compilation of a manual for archiving magnetic wire recordings. Within this manual, I hope to provide information about transferring and storing wire recordings for librarians and archivist who may need "how to" instructions. So far, I have compiled a brief history of wire recordings, but the bulk of the information in the manual will address the various techniques used by different archives when transferring and wire recordings. For these sections, I would like to obtain step by step information about the processes involved in transferring these recordings. I am hoping to include techniques that have been devised by creative individuals who did not have access to a magnetic wire recorder. Information describing these processes should address all steps involved; such as, machinery used, length of time involved in transfer, medium transferred to, complications and their solutions, and quality of copy. Any information is pertinent and should not be left out. Describing the storing of the wire spools should be as detailed as the processes involved in transferring and any problems should be addressed. I am also interested in the condition of the wire spools when received for transferring and whether anything can be done to rescue spools that are in poor condition (i.e. rusted). This manual is designed to provide information regarding every aspect involved in preserving magnetic wire recordings. Although steel wire was never as widely used as tape, the knowledge and experience that this manual will provide will benefit anyone who desires preserve this dead medium".
A useful bibliography has already been compiled by Ms King:
Begun, S. J., L. C. Holmes and H. E. Roys. "Measuring Procedures for Magnetic Recording" Audio Engineering (April 1949) pp19+.
Haynes, N. M. "Bibliography of Magnetic Recording" Audio Engineering (October 1947) pp30-31.
Jorgensen, Finn. The Complete Handbook of Magnetic Recording.- Blue Ridge Summit: Tab Professional and Reference Books, 1988.
Read, Oliver. The Recording and Reproduction of Sound. Indianapolis: Howard Sam's & Co, 1952
Read, Oliver, and Walter Welch. From Tin Foil to Stereo: evolution of the phonograph. Indianapolis: Howard Sam's & Co., 1977
Storchheim, Samuel. "Magnetic Transfer of Stainless Steel Recording Wire". Audio Engineering. (December 1953) pp19+.
Stumpf, Carl. "Tonsystem und Musik der Siamesen". Beitrage zur Akustik und Musikw 3 pp 69-138.
Tuttle, Pauline. "To Hear With Your Own Ears: The Introduction of the Phonograph to the Musical Landscape and its Impact on the Field of Ethnomusicology to 1910".- Unpublished paper, 1996
Wilson, Carmen. Magnetic Recording:1900-1949.- Chicago: John Crerar Library, 1950.
There are also various web sites including or devoted to wire:
Audio-Restoration by Graham Newton: http://www.audio-restoration.com/menu.htm#info [88],
http://www.audio-restoration.com/gilles.htm#degrade [89]
David Morton's Home Page and Other Sites: http://www-rci.rutgers.edu/~dmorton/index.html [90],
http://www-rci.rutgers.edu/~dmorton/dead.html [91], http://www-rci.rutgers.edu/~dmorton/magnetic.html [92], http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~dmorton/wire.html [93].
Dead Media Project: http://www.islandnet.com/~ianc/dm/dm.html#1 [94]
Playback of wire recordings: http://comp.music.lsu.edu/forums/SEAMUSforum/messages/10.html [95]
Recording wire: http://www.mediahistory.com/wires/messages/184.html [96]
Yesterday's Office: http://webserver.asaypub.com/yestoffice/ [97], http://webserver.asaypub.com/yestoffice/archives/v10n02/p22off.cfm [98]
One of the fullest responses was from Jim Lindner, VidiPax:
"We have a very large collection of wire recorders here at VidiPax. The collection is very varied and includes wire recorders that were designed for many different application areas including those designed for dictation as well as telephone answering machines and even the prototype for the Magnecord wire recorder, hand held units and many more. We have many of the manuals here, and you are welcome to research them here. As far as a specific playback manual and techniques I am afraid that we do not have the time to go into it in depth... I can say that I have been very dissatisfied with playing the wires back on the machines that created them. We are a quality restoration company and I do not feel that this approach is a 'quality' approach for many reasons. There's also the problem with parts: the technology was just so bad that direct connection causes all sorts of problems and as a result I feel that playback this way is decidedly sub-standard and unacceptable for archival purposes - so we have started to build our own modern wire playback machine. We are not done yet, and I suspect 6 months more will be the additional time that we will need, but when it is done we will have by far the best way of playing wire in the world. We do not intend to market this machine, but use if for the transfer of wire on a service basis. The machine will be 'interformat' capable of playing back all flavours of wire."
Jim Lindner can be contacted at VidiPax, The Magnetic Media Restoration Company vidipax@panix.com [99], http://www.vidipax.com [100], 450 West 31 Street - 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10001, tel. 00 1 212-563-1999, fax 00 1 212-563-1994.
Gretchen King can be contacted at 5026 12th Avenue NE, Apartment 3, Seattle, WA 98105-4307,
e-mail bolete@u.washington.edu [101].
Joel Bresler asks: "for research into a comprehensive discography of the Sephardim (the Jews exiled from Spain), I would appreciate learning of institutions, dealers and individuals with copies of 78 rpm and early field recordings. Record company catalogs would also be invaluable. Please contact:
Joel Bresler, 250 E. Emerson Rd., Lexington, MA 02173 USA. Tel. 00 1 781-862-2432, FAX: 00 1 781-862-0498, e-mail jbresler@ultra.net [102]
Artists known to have recorded Sephardic repertoire include: Algava, Rabbi Isaac Algazi, Isaac Angel, Albert Beressi, Effendi Çakum, Dr David de Sola Pool, Haim Effendi, Isac Haïm, Victoria Hazan, Mlle. Marlette, Jack Mayesh, Mlle. Rosa, The Stamboul Quartet.
Labels known to have published Sephardic recordings include: Columbia (US), Columbia (Turkey?), Favorite, Gennett, Mayesh Phonograph Records, Mere, Metropolitan, Odeon, Orfeon/Orfeos, Polyphon
Which of these statements do you believe to be true?
The publisher owns the copyright when you write an article for publication.
A published work is in the public domain if it has no copyright notice.
If you write a report for someone, that person owns the copyright.
If you are using materials for educational purposes on your website, it is fair use.
The amount of photocopying that you can do for your class is set by guidelines.
Are you sure? The answers provided by Indiana University's Online Copyright Tutorial may surprise you and will not necessarily disappoint you (though you may need to be aware of territorial differences if you're approaching this from outside of the United States).
The Indiana University Online Copyright Tutorial consists of a "series of short, readable, and helpful electronic messages provided via listserv from February 9 through the end of Spring Semester 1998. To subscribe, simply send e-mail to listserv@iupui.edu [103]. Put nothing in the subject line. In the message body type: "sub Copyright-Online-L yourname". Do not use a signature block.
For additional details, visit http://www.iupui.edu/it/copyinfo/Online_Tutorial.html [104].
Although the deadline for proposals has passed, members may be interested to learn about the next workshop on digital preservation (the sixth) to be co-organised by the DELOS Working Group and the NEDLIB Project. It will take place June 17-19, 1998 in Tomar, Portugal and will examine issues related to the preservation of digital information. Apart from the presentations of proposed papers, there also be a number of invited guest speakers who will present details of relevant technical and research issues.
The main objective of DELOS is "to contribute to the advancement of digital library construction by identifying and promoting the discussion of research issues". The members of the DELOS group are the twelve ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) research institutes, plus the University of Michigan (USA) and Elsevier Science.
NEDLIB is a project promoted by the CoBRA+ group and supported by the Telematics for Libraries Programme of the European Commission. The project consortium includes nine European national libraries, a national archive and three main publishers. The objective of NEDLIB is to ensure that digital publications of the present can be used now and in the future.
The NEDLIB project is scheduled to start in January 1998. The project will define an architecture for capturing, preserving and accessing digital publications. It will develop tools and define standards and procedures required to implement this architecture in a deposit system of digital publications. NEDLIB will take account of the requirement of long term storage and retrieval as well as the terms and conditions applying to the access of those publications. As a result, the project will define the technical environment and develop test implementations. The local organisation of the workshop will be a joint initiative of INESC (both a DELOS and NEDLIB partner), and the Portuguese National Library (a NEDLIB partner).
Please look for more details at: http://www.inesc.pt/events/ercim/delos6 [105].
Grace Koch reports: "the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies recently commissioned a study on the legal status of Indigenous ownership of cultural property. The document, entitled Our Culture; Our Future: Proposals for Recognition and Protection of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property has several sections on media archives, providing a number of often provocative suggestions for the handling and dissemination of such media. Although this document is targeted at Australia, the viewpoints offered are most thought-provoking for any archivists who handle Indigenous media. See the document on the Web [106].
Trond Valberg writes: "For a long time in Norway it has been felt that there is a need for a national strategic plan for the care of out national heritage in the form of sound recordings. Some of the oldest materials, phonographic rolls and the first gramophone recordings, are already lost. Luckily we still keep one of the first sound recordings ever made, a tin-foil piece recorded in Kristiania (Oslo) in 1879. But we regard new releases, nowadays mainly on compact disc, to be equally worthy of preservation.
At a national conference for Norwegian sound archives held in Oslo 24th of October 1997 the plan was presented to the Norwegian Council of Cultural Affairs. As far as we know, this national plan for the preservation of sound recordings is the first ever to be published anywhere. The working group has consisted of four members from Stavanger College, the Norwegian Broadcast Corporation and the National Library of Norway (the Oslo Branch and the Rana Branch). Early in December 1997 the plan was presented on the Internet - the complete version in Norwegian version and an abbreviated version in English. Take a look at http://www.nbr.no/verneplan/lyd/index.html [107] [in Norwegian]; http://www.nbr.no/verneplan/lyd/english/e_index.html [108] [in English]
The preservation plan is divided into three main parts. The first part is more like an historic survey from the early sound carriers and equipment up till today's digital domain. The Norwegian distribution of early sound recordings is important and includes large number of releases compared to our population. You will find information about e.g. wax cylinders, shellac discs, Pathé discs, wire recordings, analogue and digital magnetic tapes, and optical sound carriers. Some of the technical principles are presented as well.
In part two you can briefly read about governmental levels of responsibility for safeguarding sound collections, besides the private efforts. One of the main tasks of this project was to make overview reports of both official and private sound collections in Norway. Concerning legislation the act relating to The Legal Deposit of Generally Available Documents of 1990 is the most important tool for collecting and preserving new record releases. Today we are discussing new strategies to try to make this act work better, since a lot of Norwegian record releases never have been delivered to the national archives for preservation (see part three).
In a way part three is the main part presenting objectives, conditions, criteria, collecting, preservation, access, distribution and, last but not least, recommended actions. Probably most of these subjects are relevant to any sound or audio-visual archive, and of course you need money to preserve sound carriers. To fulfil the intentions of the plan, it is necessary for our Ministry of Cultural Affairs to support this important work regularly on an annual basis by financing more extensive preservation projects.
We are happy to receive any comments! E-mail: trond.valberg@nbr.no [109]
The Library Association (UK) has just published a three-page summary of the main provisions affecting libraries and archives following the publication of SI 3032 Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997. The summary can be accessed via the Library Association's Home Page [110] and clicking on "What's New".
The American Folklife Center and the National Digital Library Program at the Library of Congress announce the release of the online presentation: Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, a multi-format ethnographic field collection from the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture, has just been made available through the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress [111]. This collection documents the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941 and consists of audio recordings, photographs, manuscript materials, publications, and ephemera generated during two separate documentation trips undertaken by Todd and Sonkin.
In addition, beginning at noon on January 8th , viewers may enjoy Today in History, accessible through the Library of Congress's main homepage [112].
The following materials on the Library of Congress website may also be of interest: California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the '30s, another ethnographic field collection from the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture [113] continues to be available online. This elaborate online collection includes sound recordings, still photographs, drawings, and manuscripts documenting the musical traditions of a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in California. It comprises 35 hours of folk music recorded in twelve languages representing 185 musicians.
Folklife Sourcebook: A Directory of Folklife Resources in the United States has been revised and expanded for 1997. Chapters include directories for graduate programs, public sector folklore organizations, archives, serial publications, and more. This edition will be available as an online resource only. Please send updates on information in the directory to Peter Bartis [114]. The URL for this publication is http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife/sourcebk.html [115].
In addition, the Folklife Center's web pages include many popular publications, guides to collections, information about projects to publish recordings from the collections on CD, and the Folkline information service. The URL for the Center's home page is http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife/. [116]
MiniDisc. You can find all you need on MiniDisc at the MiniDisc Community Page http://www.connact.com/~eaw/minidisc.html [117] including a bibliography of articles from the press and technical journals.
World War 1 Digital Archive taster. Part of the JTAP Virtual Seminars Project is involved in the creation of a freely available digital archive based around the First World War and in particular the experiences of Wilfred Owen. To look at a few samples of the types of material that will be available (as yet no sound recordings) point your browser to: http://info.ox.ac.uk/jtap/taste.html [118].
For auctions of 78 rpm and other vintage artefacts, visit Nauck's Vintage Records [119] .
| Date | Event | Location |
| 1998 | ||
| Apr 21-26 | FIAF Annual Congress | Prague |
| Apr/May | IASA mid-year Board meeting | London |
| May | ARSC General Conference | Syracuse, NY |
| May 16 - 19 | AES Convention | Amsterdam |
| June 14-18 | X International Oral History Conference http://www.filo.uba.ar/ravignani/historal/ [45] | Rio De Janeiro |
| June 17- 9 | European Commission DELOS workshop: "preservation of digital information" <http://www.inesc.pt/events/ercim/delos6> [120] | Lisbon |
| Jul 20-24 | Institute of Paper Conservation & Society of Archivists conference: Care of photographic, moving image and sound collections | York, UK |
| Aug | IFLA Council and General Conference | Amsterdam |
| Aug 31 - Sep 4 | "KnowRight 98": XV IFIP World Computer Conference/ 2nd International Conference on intellectual property rights & free flow of information | Budapest |
| Sep 26 - 29 | AES Convention | San Francisco |
| Sep 27 - Oct 1 | FIAT Conference & General Assembly | Florence |
| November 15 - 20 | IASA Annual Conference | Paris |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | San Juan, Puerto Rico |
| 1999 | ||
| March | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Kuala Lumpur |
| April | FIAF Annual Congress | Madrid |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| September | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | Toulouse |
| 2000 | ||
| April | FIAF Annual Conference | London |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jerusalem |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 171 412 7411, fax 44 171 412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14],
and
Elsebeth Kirring, Statsbiblioteket, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark,
tel. 45 8946 2055, fax 45 8946 2050, e-mail ek@kumsb.dk [67].
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 26 BY 15 JUNE 1998
In particular, you are urged to notify IASA (via this Bulletin, or via the Secretary-General) of any changes to the contact details printed in the current IASA Directory.
IASA is delighted to welcome this quarter one new institutional member and two individual members.
Radet for Folkemusikk og Folkedans, Dragvoll, Norway, is a substantial audio-visual archive supporting practical activities associated with Norwegian folk music and dance. It holds 50,000 tapes (including DAT), 5,000 films, 13,000 videos, 11,000 photographs and maintains a register of 7000 names.
Dr Craig Fees runs the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre at Toddington, near Cheltenham, U.K. The archive, currently described as "small", promotes research and understanding of open systems in therapeutic and other settings. The main subjects covered include therapeutic communities, milieu therapy and democratic/alternative education.
And Kurt Deggeller, formerly representing the Fonoteca Nazionale Svizzera, has now re-joined as an individual member.
Ulf Scharlau, Head of the Department of Documentation and Archives at Süddeutscher Rundfunk (South German Broadcasting), Stuttgart, Germany, has been appointed Honorary Professor by the Ministry of Sciences, Research and Arts. Since 1992 he has been giving lectures on Media Documentation in Broadcasting at the Hochschule für Bibliotheks- und Informationswesen Stuttgart (University of Library and Information Studies, Stuttgart). Ulf has been an active member of IASA since 1974, serving on the Executive Board from 1978 to 1990 during which time he was also President of IASA (1984-1987).
George Boston reports on the Consultation of Audio Archivists with Manufacturers of Analogue Audio Tape Machines on the Preservation of Access to the Audio Heritage of the World which took place on April 23rd, 1998 at the Headquarters of UNESCO in Paris.
Background
In the 1970s the future for audio collections felt very safe. Magnetic tape was a secure carrier. LP discs offered a good quality of reproduction. Then came news of the vinegar syndrome and binder degradation. The position of magnetic tape as a secure storage carrier became less secure. The 1980s witnessed increasing debates about carrier decay. This to some extent masked some of the implications of the arrival of digital formats. Although a number of writers considered machinery obsolescence as a factor in evaluating digital formats for archival purposes, the great improvement in audio quality offered by CD’s and DAT tape distracted us.
When the videotape world was hit by the sudden withdrawal of support for the 2-inch quadruplex format, audio archivists became much more aware of the danger that the obsolescence of equipment posed to their collections. There was suddenly a lot more uncertainty with regard to the security of the world’s audio heritage.
Organisation of the Consultation
At the 1997 IASA Annual Conference in Oman, the Technical Committee discussed the problem posed by the reduction in the number of manufacturers of analogue tape machines. After the Conference, I proposed to Dietrich Schüller that IASA should organise a consultation meeting with the remaining manufacturers. Dietrich agreed with the proposal and we approached the IASA Executive Board for their support. This was given and Dietrich and I then began to make the practical arrangements.
Initial contacts were made with every one of the known remaining manufacturers. The majority - five companies - responded favourably to the idea. A small number of archives were invited to send a representative to the consultation meeting (the numbers were restricted simply to prevent the manufacturers from feeling overwhelmed): Peter Copeland of the British Library National Sound Archive, Clifford Harkness of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Jean-Marc Fontaine and Joelle Garcia of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Dietrich Schüller and myself represented the archival case and were supported by Sven Allerstrand, Albrecht Häfner, Magdalena Cséve and Gerry Gibson of the IASA Executive Board. The industry was represented by Nagra Kudelski of Switzerland, Otari of Japan, STM Kft of Hungary, Studer of Switzerland and Tascam/TEAC of Japan.
The meeting was held in Paris on April 23rd at the same time as the IASA mid-year Board meeting. Joie Springer of the General Information Programme (PGI) was approached to see if UNESCO would support the IASA initiative and she kindly arranged for a meeting room to be made available at UNESCO Headquarters.
Aim of the Consultation
The aim of the Consultation was to examine and discuss ways in which those concerned with archiving the world’s audio heritage could work together with the remaining manufacturers of analogue magnetic tape machines to achieve an orderly withdrawal of support for the quarter-inch analogue magnetic tape format.
The archives wished to see an extended period of support for the format to enable them to migrate their collections of audio recordings to new formats. The manufacturers wanted to obtain a reasonable commercial return for their role in the task. By working together, it was hoped that an understanding that met the requirements of both parties could be achieved.
Questionnaire
To provide some background information to reinforce the argument that analogue tape machines had to be kept in working order for many years, a questionnaire was sent to a small sample of archive technicians around the world. The response was excellent. 25 questionnaires were sent out; 29 (!) replies were received. As a veteran of organising questionnaires, this was the best response I have ever had. I must thank those that participated for their replies.
While some of the questions were more suited to a fortune-teller with a crystal ball than an archivist, the questionnaire also sought practical answers such as information about the size of collections, the period of time that working analogue tape machines would be required, the types of machines owned and a statement of the range and likely requirements for spare parts to enable the machines to be kept running for this period of time. A summary of the replies was prepared for distribution at the meeting.
The size of collections responding to the questionnaire ranged from 500 hours to 350,000 hours. The collections totalled 2,112,133 hours of tape but, more interesting, the estimated machine time required to transfer the sounds and also to continue the normal working of the collections was estimated as a total of 3,811,500 machine hours. And remember that these totals are from only 29 collections. If an attempt is made to produce a full inventory of the audio tape holdings of the world, the resulting figures will be very much greater. This background information helped the manufacturers representatives to grasp the magnitude of the problems facing the audio archive community. It also made them aware of a potential market that they had not previously considered.
The desired future life of the quarter inch format ranged from a minimum of 2 years to a minimum of 100 years. To some extent this variation reflected the size of the collections - the larger ones wanted more time to transfer the recordings to a new format. The average period was about 30 years and the period that would satisfy 95 % of the respondents was 50 years. Another less obvious factor for the variation may be the progress made by the various institutions in preparing for the migration of the collections. One large collection said that it would want support for the format for a minimum of 50 years once a policy had been defined.
Information about the types of machines used was also sought. Twenty five different makes of tape machine were included in the replies with a total of over 55 different models of machines. Unlike the tape duration figures, these numbers will not greatly increase if a larger survey is made. They are, however, still remarkable figures. It means that only 20% of tape machine makers are still making analogue tape machines.
Manufacturers’ Future Plans
Each manufacturer gave an outline of its policy for the future. All the manufacturers have reduced the range of new machines. They also have limited support for models no longer in production. Each of the five, however, is keeping one or two models in production for the foreseeable future and has given assurances about the future support of these machines.
Nagra Kudelski - apart from the Nagra I and III, all Nagra models were to be kept in production. A simpler version of the Nagra T (the studio machine) was currently being developed and would be available later in 1998. As all mechanical parts were made by Nagra, the future supply of spares for these would not be a problem. Nagra would supply replacement circuit boards if obsolescence of electronic components forced a re-design.
Otari of Japan - Otari’s policy was that spare parts were guaranteed for five years after a machine was withdrawn from the product line. In practice, spares were available for much longer but the availability of a particular item could not be assured. Two machines are currently in production - the MP15 and the MX55 - and there were no plans to cease production at the moment.
STM Kft - STM was the major supplier of tape machines to Eastern Europe for many years. It is still producing a range of new machines and will maintain supplies of spare parts for older machines for several years.
Studer - Studer currently produces only one machine - the A807. The policy is to guarantee spare parts for 10 years after a models ceases production. This means that, for example, spares for the A80, which ceased production in 1989, will not be assured after this year. If electronic components become unavailable, Studer will re-design the circuit boards and will supply a replacement board that will fit the machine and do the job.
Tascam/TEAC - Tascam is the professional arm of TEAC. The company now produces one model - the BR20. This is, however, available in several versions. Spare parts are still being supplied for machines that ceased production 25 years ago. Each main dealer holds a supply of spares and has access to a company-wide network to help trace spares held by other dealers.
Understandings Reached
To assist the manufacturers, IASA will supply information about the membership of the association.
IASA will endeavour to obtain detailed information about the likely requirements for new analogue tape machines and for spare parts from its members. The results of the research will be made available to the manufacturers. This will require a more extensive survey of the members of IASA than was undertaken prior to the Consultation.
The manufacturers will keep IASA informed about the range of machines in production. In addition, information about the likely production life of the models will also be supplied. IASA will supply its members with this information in the Journal and other publications.
The manufacturers will provide IASA with an advance warning when a model is about to cease production. IASA will inform its members of such impending action to allow them to place last orders for any machines that may be required. The manufacturers will advise IASA of the period for which spare parts will be available for obsolete machines. IASA will publish the information for the benefit of its members.
Conclusion
The Technical Committee will maintain contact with the manufacturers and will advise the members of IASA of any changes in the supply of new machines or spare parts. It is clear, however, that the day of the quarter-inch analogue tape machine is drawing to a close. The end will not be sudden as happened with the two-inch videotape but it is still certain. This means that the Technical Committee will have to discuss what advice it can offer the members of IASA about future storage technologies.
It is clear that these future storage technologies will be digital - but in what form? The contenders fall into two groups - the discrete audio carrier that we are used to and the mass storage system. The first group includes the CD and R-DAT formats and does not greatly change the way that a collection is organised. The second means a complete re-evaluation of the way that an archive is organised and run.
Members are advised to start considering the future of their collections now while there is time. If the questions are left until later, it may be too late to make a considered choice and too late to successfully migrate the sounds to a new storage format.
At the mid-year meeting Paris, the IASA Executive Board received a review by Past President James McCarthy, Chair of the National Branches and Affiliated Organisations Committee (NAOC), entitled IASA’s affiliations and branch structures as the start of a dialogue between the NAOC and the Board which aims to clarify the relative standing of the various international and national/regional organisations with rich IASA regularly deals. It is clear that new measures need to be taken to harmonise the relationships with sister associations such as SEAPAVAA, AFAS and ARSC and to address the clear discrepancy that exists within almost all of the Branches between full and non-members of the international IASA body.
It can be argued that the health of a particular branch in terms of membership and activity has a direct impact on the health of the organisation as a whole but views in support of that argument vary from region to region. The degree to which Branch activity impacts on IASA at the moment is, for instance, largely dependent on its members are engaging with digitisation. If the interests of the Branch are largely discographical or become temporarily dominated by a particular subject matter, such a oral history (as happened briefly with the UK Branch BASC in the late 1980s and from which state it has yet to recover) then members will be less inclined to engage in the full international agenda. However, they will nevertheless remain active and their activities may change, in which case it may be advisable for IASA to relax its insistence on a high ratio of members to non-members.
There is plenty more to discuss and the Board expects to be further engaged with James’s paper in Paris this November. The Board intends o discuss the most urgent problems with the chairpersons of all branches and affiliations during the pre- or post-conference programme but should any of you, particularly those of you who are active in Branch business, have any views or ideas then I am sure James would be delighted to hear from you, either directly (e-mail mccarthy@zed.com.au [122]) or via this Bulletin.
At its mid-year meeting, the IASA Executive Board received the Cataloguing Rules Working Group’s recommendations for publication.
Following the success of the draft version which has been present on the IASA web site since January this year, it was decided that this would remain the chief means of publication, albeit in an enhanced html version, and that hard copies would be printed off at relatively low cost to the buyer on demand. The final recommendation for the Board’s consideration is now in hand and is expected to be approved this summer so that the Group can finalise the work of nearly five years at its pre-meeting in Paris this November.
The Editorial Group reports that 37 responses to the Cataloguing Rules draft were received from around the world in the commenting period between January and March this year. At its mid-year meeting held at The British Library’s new St Pancras premises the Editorial Group discussed these responses, planned revisions to the draft and finalised the work plan to complete the project.
The Editorial Group wishes to thank all those who took time and trouble to send in comments on the draft, the National Sound Archive for hosting the meeting and the IASA Executive Board for assistance with travel.
The Editor, who is also Head of Public Services for the National Sound Archive (NSA) reports:
On May 12th the National Sound Archive (NSA) re-opened its playback service (now named the Listening and Viewing Service) at the British Library’s new and widely-acclaimed St Pancras building in Euston Road. So, just over two and a half years after the British Library announced that it wished to move the National Sound Archive out of South Kensington and after a brief closure period of five weeks, the full range of NSA public services are again available but now on considerably better terms. Opening hours have been extended to all evenings, except Fridays, and we also stay open on Saturdays, a long-standing wish of our listeners which we were never able to fulfil at Exhibition Road.
Providing a centrally-controlled playback service to listeners and viewers in study carrels in a very complicated and highly specialised building which was never designed to accommodate audio-visual services has not been easy and I am hoping that my colleagues in NSA technical services, Peter Copeland and Hugh Mash can be persuaded to write up some of the solutions to the problems they tackled for the benefit of the IASA membership.
The last sound heard by the public at the old Exhibition Road site was a Columbia recording of the soprano Eileen Farrell. The first at St Pancras was a selection of traditional music from Central and Northern Italy, somewhat in keeping with the Italianate features of the interior of the new building.
James McCarthy sends this report from Australia:
"The annual conference of ASRA took place in Canberra at the National Library of Australia between the 16th and 19th of April. The theme was the sounds of Irish-Australian popular culture, under the romantic title of The Shamrock and the Wattle.
The conference was preceded by a one-day technical workshop, Sound Archiving: Described. This was organised by Kevin Bradley of the NLA, and drew on the skills of many professionals working in the sound collections of the library, the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), the Australian War Memorial and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. They were practically based sessions and drew about 70 delegates. This focus on the future of sound archiving has been encouraged by ASRA in recent years and is seen as a way forward in re-defining the work of the association. It was a very successful exercise and will form a major part of our future conferences.
Dr Jeff Brownrigg of the NFSA organised the more traditional part of the conference, which began on Friday the 17th. We were welcomed in the great foyer of the library (where many IASA members would recall the opening ceremony of the 1992 IASA/ASRA Conference) by the Director-General of the library Warren Horton. Pat Bourke represented the Irish Ambassador and we had a welcome in Gaelic as well as English. It was a very agreeable beginning to an excellent conference.
The keynote address was given by Brian Kennedy, an Irishman, and the newly appointed director of the National Gallery. His address was absorbing and thought provoking. Jeff Brownrigg then gave a paper, Irish Teaching Orders and Australian Divas: the Irish Australian Nightingales (and others) on disc and cylinder. Robyn Holmes from ANU Music spoke about Alfred O’Shea, Bruce Skilton from the NFSA dealt will pianist Eileen Joyce: Filmstar of the Soundtrack, and Ron White presented the recordings of Peter O’Shaugnessy. There were many more presentations along similar lines and at the conference dinner we celebrated the recipients of the 1988 ASRA Awards for Excellence.
Dr David Rentz, of the CSIRO Division of Entomology, for his contribution to nature sound recordings, and Cyrus Meher-Homji, for his contribution to classical music and recordings in Australia.
The old committee was re-elected with James McCarthy standing down as President and Dr Jeff Brownrigg the new incumbent. Jeff is encouraging us to look at least two years ahead in the planning of our conferences as a means of maximising publicity and enlarging our constituency."
The Pilot of Australia's Cultural Network is now online at http://www.acn.net.au/ [123]
Australia’s Cultural Network is a public access gateway to Australian cultural organisations, resources, activities and events. It is also an exchange centre for resources, ideas and information where cultural workers and organisations can communicate with each other to improve and develop their use of online services. Currently a search for the term "audio-visual" retrieves more than 400 documents including policy statements from IASA member archives.
Over 500 Australian cultural websites and over 400 current events are available through the site’s Website finder and Event finder respectively. Cultural organisations can add their websites and cultural events to the network’s databases.
Australia’s Cultural Network is an initiative of the Australian Government and is managed by the Australian Federal Department of Communications and the Arts. The website was launched officially by the Australian Federal Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts on 15 April 1998 in Sydney, Australia.
The following announcement has been received of an international conference to be held in Bergen, Norway, September 25-28, 1998. Entitled The future of the humanities in the digital age: problems and perspectives for humanities education and research, the main topics included will be:
Humanities in the information society
International sharing of resources
Curriculum innovation in the humanities
The virtual university
International humanities scholarship facilities
The conference is an initiative of the SOCRATES/ERASMUS thematic network project on Advanced Computing in the Humanities and the SOCRATES ODL project EUROLITERATURE. The event is supported by the European Commission, the Norwegian Ministry of Education, the University of Bergen and the City of Bergen.
For more information, see http://www.futurehum.uib.no/ [124]. The deadline for submissions has already passed.
The IASA newsdesk has recently received a call for papers for the Second UK Conference on Image Retrieval The Challenge of Image Retrieval to be held February 25-26, 1999 at the Forte Post House Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.
The Challenge of Image Retrieval conference held in February 1998 was the first UK forum set up specifically to bridge the gap between the different communities with an interest in image retrieval. Building on the success of this first conference, the 1999 event again aims to bring together researchers and practitioners in the fast-growing area of image retrieval, to exchange information and gain some idea of the significance of developments in related disciplines. It should be of interest to researchers in fields as diverse as information retrieval, database, computer vision and image processing, human visual perception and interface design, as well as users and managers of image and video libraries.
The keynote speaker will be Dr Michael Swain from the Alta Vista development team at Digital Equipment Corporation, who will talk on Image searching on the Web.
See http://www.unn.ac.uk/iidr/conference.html [125] for more details.
Authors are asked to submit full papers (no longer than 5000 words), in English, to the Programme Chair, Professor David Harper. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged. Submissions should follow the style laid down for Springer-Verlag's electronic Workshops in Computing, which can be found at http://ewic.springer.co.uk/submitting/guidelines/#papers [126]. Authors are asked to follow the electronic submission guidelines set out at http://www.scms.rgu.ac.uk/research/ir/sub.html [127]. Authors who are unable to submit electronically are asked to send three papers copies of their article, together with a covering letter containing contact information, to:
Professor David Harper
The Challenge of Image Retrieval
School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
Robert Gordon University
Aberdeen AB25 1HG.
The closing date for both electronic and paper submissions is Friday 30 October 1998.
The 30th annual conference of IASA will take place in Vienna 18th - 23rd September 1999 on the occasion of the centennial of the Phonogrammarchiv.
Gerry Gibson (Library of Congress) has drawn our attention to the following U.S. Court action. The original report was by Eric J. Olson.
"In a decision that could serve as a warning to publishers, a federal judge in has upheld a copyright infringement claim involving the use of a single still photo culled from a motion picture.
Richard Feiner & Co. was granted summary judgement Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New York against HRI Industries, which owns the Hollywood Reporter, for copyright infringement on the use of a Laurel & Hardy motion picture still that the paper ran in a March 1997 issue.
According to Gregory A. Sioris, the attorney representing Feiner, the most significant part of the ruling is the court’s rejection of the "fair use" defence to copyright infringement.
In rejecting HRI’s argument that the use of one still photo from an underlying work is de minimis, or legally insignificant, and therefore a fair use, the decision set an important precedent, reversing traditional fair use guidelines followed by magazines and newspapers.
The ruling, which covers only the southern district of New York in which the case was heard, can still be appealed by HRI. Executives at the Hollywood Reporter could not be reached for comment.
Feiner, who is the sole copyright holder and licensor for several Laurel & Hardy movies, initially sued HRI in October last year over the use of a motion picture still of Laurel & Hardy from their silent film Liberty' which is one of the films he owns. The photo shows the two comedians in a precarious predicament on top of a high-rise building under construction.
According to court documents, the newspaper bought the photo from Bison Archives, a stock photo agency. Both parties agreed that the photo was originally used as a promotional still for the MGM movie Laurel & Hardy’s Laughing 20’s. The Hollywood Reporter colorized the photo and ran it in a ‘Crafts Series’ section in its March 12, 1997 issue. The paper credited Bison as the source of the photo.
After Feiner sued the Hollywood Reporter, the paper moved to dismiss Feiner’s complaint on several grounds including copyright permission by MGM, public domain and fair use. The court rejected all these defences in its opinion granting summary judgment."
The UK academic sector’s Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) has recently incorporated some important guidelines for digital information. Standards for the Interchange of Digital Information http://ahds.ac.uk/resource/standards.html [128] provides access to information about standards and best practices for the interchange of digital information. Digital Preservation http://ahds.ac.uk/resource/preserve.html [129] the AHDS list of information resources and initiatives of relevance to those interested in the preservation of digital resources has been substantially extended and updated.
Paul Geffen of Microsoft maintains a homepage which includes a Directory of Classical labels, http://www2.shore.net/~lpaul/CLabels.html [130]. To help collectors find sources for the recordings listed on the pages, he has compiled lists of record labels and distributors including the address of the publisher and in many cases a US (or UK) distributor or other source for the label. A few of the labels have their own Web sites, and links are provided when possible.
The UK Society of Archivists has formed a film and sound group. Details of their activities and aims can be found at http://www.pettarchiv.org.uk/fsgmain.htm [131]. [Is this where BASC’s membership has ended up? ed.]
Famous figures from the history of recorded sound are attractive to list makers on the Web. One excellent example discovered by you Editor recently was a detailed listing of recordings conducted by Willem Mengelberg http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/people/thase29/Willem.html [132].
| Date | Event | Location |
| 1998 | ||
| Aug | IFLA Council and General Conference | Amsterdam |
| Aug 31 - Sep 4 | "KnowRight 98": XV IFIP World Computer Conference/ 2nd International Conference on intellectual property rights & free flow of information | Budapest |
| Sep 26 - 29 | AES Convention | San Francisco |
| Sep 27 - Oct 1 | FIAT Conference & General Assembly | Florence |
| November 15 - 20 | IASA Annual Conference | Paris |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | San Juan, Puerto Rico |
| 1999 | ||
| March | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Kuala Lumpur |
| April | FIAF Annual Congress | Madrid |
| July 18 - 24 | IAML Annual Conference | Wellington, New Zealand |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| August 19 - 25 | ICTM World Conference | Hiroshima |
| September | FIAT/IFTA Conference | Rio de Janeiro |
| September 18 - 23 | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | Toulouse |
| 2000 | ||
| April | FIAF Annual Conference | London |
| August 6 - 11 | IAML Annual Conference | Edinburgh |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jerusalem |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 171 412 7411, fax 44 171 412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14],
and
Elsebeth Kirring, Statsbiblioteket, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark,
tel. 45 8946 2055, fax 45 8946 2050, e-mail ek@kumsb.dk [67].
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 27 BY 15 SEPTEMBER 1998
In particular, you are urged to notify IASA (via this Bulletin, or via the Secretary General) of any changes to the contact details printed in the current IASA Directory.
http://www.llgc.org.uk/iasa/ [16]
The IASA url was changed (simplified) recently to:
http://www.llgc.org.uk/iasa [133]
If you try to reach it using the old url, access will be redirected automatically to the new address.
The websites of eighteen IASA members are now linked to this page and the site is host to a growing network of links to useful audiovisual sites around the world. If your institution has recently installed a website, be sure to let the Editor know.
Following the merger of Südwestfunk and Süddeutscher Rundfunk as Suedwestrundfunk, area codes for the phone and fax numbers have been amalgamated. Here are the new telephone and fax numbers for IASA General Secretary Albrecht Haefner:
phone +49 7721 929 3487
fax +49 7221 929 2094
Likewise, the domain of his e-mail address has changed:
albrecht.haefner@swr-online.de [134]
Inger Kielland wrote to say that she will be retiring in September from her job at Norsk Rikskringkasting Oslo "being old enough to get money doing that, and young enough to wonder whether there is a life outside the walls of this beloved organisation". We wish her well in her retirement.
Marit Hamre, head of the Record Library in Programservice Oslo, will be the IASA contact person from October 1st 1998 (e-mail marit.hamre@nrk.no [135]). Meanwhile Inger’s old job will be kept vacant for the rest of the year, to save money...
The Gemeentelijke Archiefdienst Rotterdam has recently changed its name and address to:
Gemeentearchief Rotterdam
Hofdijk 651 (visiting address)
Postbus 71 (postal address)
NL-3000 AB Rotterdam
Studio manager Aad van der Struijs can be contacted at:
tel. +31 10 2434 591
fax +31 10 2434 666
e-mail astruijs@bart.nl [136]
IASA welcomes to two new full individual members:
Lluis Ubeda Rueralt, Santa Llucia 1, 08002 Barcelona, Spain, who works in the Department de Fonts Orals of the Arxiu Históric de la Ciutat, Ajuntament de Barcelona (Oral history collections, Barcelona City Archives) and Mrs. P.V. Bharathi Nambair, PO Box 1227, Ruwi, Code 112, Sultanate of Oman, who is an ethnomusicologist currently undertaking a comparative study of folk music in Oman and the Malabar Coast.
Welcome also to RTI (Record Technology Inc), 486 Dawson Drive, Camarillo, CA 93012-8090, U.S.A. as an Associate Institutional member. The contact is Don MacInnis, fax 00 805 987 0508.
The IASA Executive Board has recently awarded a research grant worth £2,000 ($3360) to a survey project known as Archiving the Music World. Archiving the Music World is a joint project of the International Music Collection at the British Library National Sound Archive (NSA), and Music for Change. (Music for Change is a new organisation which aims to support community music projects throughout the world, and to use music to promote respect and understanding of different cultures and people. It works with partner organisations in the UK and overseas, including Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Voluntary Service Overseas and the World Music Network.)
NSA Curator Dr Janet Topp-Fargion writes:
"Sound archives are a relatively new and in many cases unknown phenomenon in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and parts of Asia. Due to the wide range of social and political changes in all of these regions throughout the 20th century, there has appeared a desire to preserve tradition. This project is a first step in responding to the new demand.
Some archives are well financed and structured, others are very small, with little or no budget, and are run on a voluntary basis. The benefits of sound archives in developing countries are the same as those in the West - the preservation of unique music, educational value and places to gain inspiration - but they also have to tackle a number of different problems. Many archives (which are not always labelled as such, often being housed in radio stations, universities, and with record companies or with individuals) suffer from lack of monetary support, basic equipment and materials, and sufficient expertise. This can lead to deterioration and loss of recordings. Knowledge of the extent and content of sound recording collections in developing countries is limited, as no substantial research has been carried out to document them. This is the starting point of the Archiving the Music World project.
The project aims to compile a database of collections of recorded music throughout the world, to highlight their existence, condition, status, accessibility, and plans for their preservation. It will focus particularly on countries where resources and expertise are scarce, and existing collections are in danger of being lost.
By drawing on the International Music Collection’s (IMC) own world-wide network of contacts and linking with members of IASA, the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the International Council for Traditional Music, it will look beyond collections in established institutions such as archives, libraries and other repositories.
The project would potentially feed into established programmes such as UNESCO’s Memory of the World which aims "to guard against collective amnesia calling upon the preservation of the valuable archive holdings and library collections all over the world ensuring their wide dissemination". It also feeds into the broader aim of raising the profile of music recordings as documentary heritage within the "owning" countries to encourage local policy-making as regards their long-term preservation.
Using questionnaires and other data collection methods, the project will document recorded music collections and sound archives on a database and in a printed publication, thereby providing the first comprehensive source of such information. It will include the archives’ contact details, resources, accessibility, funding mechanisms, users, aims and policies, and needs. This stage of the project will take 6 months and will run from July to December 1998.
The information will be essential for ethnomusicologists, universities, sound archives and music students world-wide. It will also be beneficial for citizens of the relevant countries. It will broaden knowledge of the world-wide use and structure of sound archives, that will hopefully stimulate further research and investigation. It will help create a dialogue between institutions and encourage the sharing of information. Finally, sufficient knowledge will allow organisations to assist each other across the world, through advice, contacts and practical assistance.
Through the project, IASA will establish contact with a broad range of international bodies, individuals and resources, and where appropriate will enter into exchange programmes which will raise their profile in countries around the world, thus potentially extending membership. The report will be of use to IASA in developing strategies for the preservation of recordings in developing countries feeding into IASA’s outreach programmes."
For the first time in the history of IASA, a company has agreed to the business of IASA. IBM Germany have donated an IBM ThinkPad 770 to the Association. On behalf of IASA, the Secretary-General was the happy person who received the generous donation from Bernd-Peter Hamels, Head of IBM’s Germany Media Division leading in digital mass storage systems. People working in a IASA project where this mobile computer can be profitably used please contact the Secretary-General (albrecht.haefner@swr-online.de [134]).
Following the success of the design for IASA’s new leaflet, I have asked the British Library Design Office to transfer elements of that design to other IASA publications. I aim to display the new designs at the Paris Conference with a view to incorporating them in the next issues of this Bulletin, the Journal and the Directory.
Please note that IASA Journal no.12 will not be appearing until January. This is because the Annual Conference is much later in the year than usual and the Journal which follows it traditionally features papers and Conference business in its pages.
The IASA Executive Board has asked for this plan to be made available to the members ahead of the Paris Conference. The Board urges you to consider this plan before the Paris Conference and to make your views known during the Conference or directly to the Secretary-General.
The purpose of this document is to give a critical overview of the Association’s current state and an assessment of its future, focusing in detail on the following areas:
1. Purposes and aims
2. Financial resources
3. Organisational situation
4. The work of IASA
As a result, a medium-term working plan for the term 1997-1999 has been drawn up to support the Executive Board in the management of the Association.
IASA is a relatively small organisation with about 350 members from almost 50 countries. All activities within IASA require voluntary contributions by the elected officers and other willing members; there is no payment involved, neither to the individual officer nor to his/her parental institution.
1. Purposes, aims and objectives of IASA
According to the Constitution, the purposes of the Association are:
A. To strengthen the bonds of co-operation between archives and other institutions which preserve sound and audiovisual documents.
B. To initiate and encourage activities that develop and improve the organisation, administration and contents of recorded sound and audio- visual collections, and, in pursuance of these aims, to co-operate with other organisations in related fields.
C. To study all techniques relevant to the work of sound and audiovisual archives and other institutions which preserve these documents, and to disseminate the results of such study on an international scale.
D. To encourage, on an international level, the exchange of sound and audio- visual documents and of literature and information relating to these documents.
E. To stimulate and further by every means the preservation, documentation and dissemination of all recorded sound and audiovisual collections.
For the time being, the Board does not see any need to change the purposes, aims and objectives as laid down in the Constitution. The transposition into practice, however, needs to be intensified and carried out more energetically as well as the realization of the modification of the Constitution as adopted by the membership by postal ballot in December 1995.
A. Co-operation between archives should be intensified by:
exchange of know-how, knowledge, experience and information
exchange of staff (management as well as basic)
offering training places for guest students, probationers etc.
offering research capacity (free of charge, if possible)
offering research subjects (free of charge, if possible)
B. Initiation and encouragement of activities should be increased by
offering research grants, with assistance from the ‘richer’ members/large institutions for scientific work (diplomas, doctorate theses, etc.) supporting and furthering research by publishing, dissemination etc.
carrying out research projects
arranging and organizing national or regional exhibitions, workshops, seminars etc.
C. Selection of study objects, dissemination of results should be enhanced by
translation into English, if necessary, and make them available
use of the internet
D. Exchange of sound and audiovisual documents ... Regarding the purposes and aims of archives we have generally to consider whether it makes sense to collect material without putting due emphasis on re-use and exploitation. Probably, re-use and exploitation will, in the future, more and more be the justification for an archive’s existence. Hence, all measures which are useful for this purpose should be reinforced, such as:
facilitation of the mutual retrieval in archive holdings between members
facilitation of copyright clearance between members
use of all technical possibilities for the exchange of material between members
E. Stimulation and furthering the preservation and documentation of all sound and audiovisual collections should be increased, e.g., by
expertise submitted by the association or by members
co-operation of members as experts in/with organisations other than IASA
The implications and consequences of the constitutional change to include audiovisual materials have to be accommodated. IASA should try to make up for the lack of audiovisual experience. IASA must therefore:
agree a definition of ‘audiovisual’
identify members who are willing to focus on AV matters
gain new members who are AV practitioners
co-operate with institutions experienced in the AV field
deal with AV issues and matters by studying them, e.g. by internal or external working groups, seminars, exhibitions etc.
disseminate/publish results of IASA’s AV engagement
2. Financial resources
IASA is completely funded by membership dues. The only regular expenditure is on the printing costs of the IASA Journal and the IASA Information Bulletin. All work is carried out voluntarily. For some Board officers IASA pays travel costs associated with Board meetings and conferences. IASA also awards travel and research grants as resources permit.
IASA cannot afford extra expenditure on such items as fees for external speakers or costs of interpreters during a conference, travel expenses to send members officially to interesting meetings, training fees (to mention but a few). Therefore, IASA should explore the possibility of actively seeking sponsors. A distinction must be made between:
national/local sponsorship for e.g. organizing a conference, paying for a reception or supporting an exhibition
regional/international commercial sponsoring for the Association’s work
IASA itself as a possible sponsor
3. Organisation and officers
IASA has at present six committees, some of them being based on archive types such as
National Archives Committee
National Branches and Affiliated Organisations Committee
Radio Sound Archives Committee
others being function-based such as
Cataloguing and Documentation Committee
Discography Committee
Technical Committee
The formation and dissolution of a committee is decided by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Executive Board. Officers of the committees (chairpersons, secretaries) are elected within the committees. The committees exclusively decide, without any influence of the Executive Board, on the objects and tasks they deal with.
The committee structure of the Association needs to be revised. The number of the function- based committees should be reduced to those actually involved of necessity in permanent and ongoing development. Working/study/project groups, with the aim of a precise task to be performed in a fixed period, could be founded as a substitute or a replacement for dissolved committees. Those committees based upon archive types should therefore be organised as sections in order to distinguish them from the function-based committees.
The membership elects an Executive Board consisting of eight officers. As mentioned under (1) above, the work of these officers is voluntary. Among the officers, it is, above all, the Secretary-General, but also the President, the Editor and the Treasurer who have to spend a lot of hours every week just to keep the Association running. With the current structure, there is really not enough time for them to increase involvement, to develop improvements, to try to find sponsors, to keep continuous contact with international and/or regional bodies such as UNESCO or EC or to actively recruit new members. As a consequence, a lot of basic tasks which a professional association should deal with in order to spread its international standing, to enlarge its activities and to expand its organisation, such as advertising, sponsorship, public relations, recruitment, conference structures, etc., have been neglected; there was not any assigned responsibility within the Executive Board.
Whilst the Secretary-General, the Editor and the Treasurer have their responsibilities based upon the Constitution, there are no such assignments for the President, the Past President and the three Vice Presidents. A distribution of responsibilities to all Board members has therefore been considered.
At the midyear board meeting 1997 in Paris it was unanimously agreed upon the following assignments:
President: Association’s general policy, including reorganisation of structures and Constitution.
Secretary-General: Secretariat; reorganisation of structures and Constitution
Past President: Relations with national/regional branches and affiliated organisations
Vice President 1: Advertising, sponsorship and public relations
Vice President 2: Recruitment
Vice President 3: Conference structures
Editor: Publishing and information
Treasurer: Finances, membership administration and statistics
In addition to these assignments, all Board members are encouraged to develop ideas and make proposals for all areas. A clear separation between the areas will not always be possible; over-lappings may occur. Furthermore, the introduction of a resident administrative secretariat (paid, part time) having a permanent office is what could relieve the Secretary-General of routine jobs and help him or her to concentrate more on essential tasks.
4. The work of IASA
The work of IASA has two equivalent levels. One is the practical level where IASA acts internally: to keep the members satisfied by organising successful conferences, disseminating sufficient and interesting information via the IASA Journal and the IASA Information Bulletin, providing information such as a membership list, an information leaflet, an internet homepage etc. That is: to see to it that the average member really feels that she/he gets value for her/his membership dues.
The other is the political level where IASA acts externally to promote internationally the profession of sound and audiovisual archiving - both inside and outside of the archiving world - and to influence decision-making bodies and make them aware of the fact that sound and audiovisual recordings are an indispensable part of the cultural heritage which must be preserved for the future. This can be done e.g. by personal lobbying, by developing guidelines, recommendations, policy papers etc.. Co-operation with other international organisations and national/regional/local groups will make the case stronger and increase the possibility of real influence.
Both levels are equally important and the Executive Board must not carry out one at the expense of the other.
4.1 The practical level is made up of
Annual conferences
Information and publications
Recruitment
Reorganisation of structures
Constitutional changes
The annual conferences are important as a means of communication between members and to disseminate information on the latest developments in the audiovisual archiving profession. There is, obviously, a need for improvement both regarding the content as well as the structure and organisation of the conferences. The content and the organisation of IASA’s annual conferences must be arranged as attractively as possible in order to enable communication between and information of the members in the best way.
Together with the annual conferences, publication is essential for the promotion of the Association. The editor’s publication policy presented to the membership and agreed upon by the board in Perugia 1996 is a good working tool for the next years.
Apart from IASA’s periodicals, the IASA Journal and the Information Bulletin, further publications have to be strived for such as a regularly revised membership list, a revised information leaflet, an information package, and, most of all, the permanent evolution of the IASA homepage in the internet.
There have been very little active initiatives for the recruitment of new members so far. For the time being, we only respond to requests from outside. What is needed is to organise recruitment campaigns to special target groups, e.g. in certain geographical areas. A professional information package is an important tool for recruiting. The Association's resources and influence depend, among other things, upon the number of its members. Hence, recruitment is of strategic significance and has to be carried out considerably more actively than in the past.
The structure and organisation of IASA has been a topic for constant discussion during many years. Questions have been raised about the numbers of committees (see above), relations to national organisations and affiliated associations, the role of the institutional versus the individual members etc. Many members agree that there is a permanent need for a reorganisation of structures. Therefore, organisation and structure of the Association have to be screened periodically, taking into account whether it is necessary to follow up any international archival development or to adapt them to the needs of internal changes.
Likewise, IASA’s Constitution should routinely checked to ensure that it is up-to-date and to determine whether it needs amendments or changes.
4.2 The political level is made up of
Relations with other organisations
Relations with national branches and affiliated organisations
Policies and position papers
Special projects
Relations with other organisations
IASA is a non governmental organisation and, in the previous structure of UNESCO, had obtained category B status. Very recently, IASA has achieved ‘operational relations’ status. Even though IASA has good relations with, and has gained the confidence of UNESCO it is a fact that IASA alone is too small to obtain formal relations with UNESCO. This does not mean, however, that IASA will no longer get contracts for special projects. IASA will also continue to be invited to AV meetings and to be consulted in various AV archival matters.
It is, in principle, important that the AV archive organisations keep a high profile within UNESCO because that will raise the status of these associations and will give more
influence in promoting the profession both nationally and internationally. To strengthen the AV position vis-à-vis UNESCO, IASA advocates to join forces with the other AV-NGO's: FIAF and FIAT.
The Round Table of Audiovisual Records (RT) consists of representatives of IASA, FIAF, FIAT, ICA, IFLA and UNESCO (observing). The RT started as an informal working group formed by people from the various organisations, with a special interest in audiovisual records. The TCC (Technical Co-ordinating Committee) is a subcommittee to the RT. From the beginning, a lot of attention was paid by the RT to initiate projects which could be funded by UNESCO. IASA has taken many important initiatives at the RT and has also done a lot of work in specific projects such as the Curriculum Development, the Glossary, the
Bibliography, the AV Reader, the Survey of Endangered Collections etc. Now as before, the RT, although getting on and being in the need for some renewal, is one of the most informative forums between the AV archive organisations and the only one where joint projects can be agreed upon or arranged.
Another organisation with which IASA has relations traditionally is IAML. Moreover, IASA has signed the Tokyo Resolution on a Strategic Alliance of NGO's in Information to Serve Better the World Community and is, therefore, a member of The Global Information Alliance administered by the International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID), in which UNESCO has a great interest. Board members should be appointed to be responsible for contacts with IAML, FID, ICOM, AES, IEC and ISO.
Relations with national/regional branches and affiliated organisations
As a true international association, IASA has an important role to play in co-ordinating national and regional activities. It is essential that the branches, as well as the affiliated organisations such as AFAS, ARSC and ASRA, feel that IASA could speak for them, that IASA is their ‘umbrella organisation’ at the international level. Mutual exchange of information is necessary to improve the contacts between IASA and the branches and affilites. Moreover, branches and affiliates need much more rights to a say in IASA matters. The Board is discussing an appropriate model to achieve this goal.
Policies and position papers
Since the profession of sound and AV archiving is rapidly changing, there is an urgent need for advice and assistance from IASA. The Association has, for instance, been invited to join working groups on copyright and on technical standards. IASA must be prepared to send representatives to such working groups. Those representatives must be familiar with the views of the Association and ready to argue for them.
IASA needs to agree on common positions and to publish a set of recommendations,
standards and rules covering several aspects of the profession. These should be part of the information package and available free of charge to all members. Moreover, IASA needs an overall policy statement on the importance of preserving the sound and audiovisual heritage.
Special projects
The experience with the IASA Cataloguing Rules project shows that concrete work towards a specific goal is vitalizing for the membership. To see that results actually are achieved and reported makes one feel that IASA is a lively and dynamic association. Several members have said that they are willing to contribute to the work of IASA. IASA needs to encourage and support, morally and financially, projects that are successfully managed, to motivate those who are ready to engage themselves in project work and to initiate and set up more projects.
Millennium Memory Bank
Rob Perks, the British Library National Sound Archive’s Curator of Oral History, talks about how the NSA and the BBC are collaborating on the biggest European radio and oral history project ever devised. My thanks to the British Library’s staff newsletter Shelflife for permission to reprint this text.
After the success of the National Life Story Awards in 1993/4 I wanted to do another oral history project for the Millennium - to demonstrate the value of personal testimony and to generate an archive of interviews from ‘ordinary’ people, to fill gaps in the NSA’s oral history collections and provide a unique snapshot of what makes Britain ‘tick’ at a special moment in our history.
As we started talking to the New Millennium Experience Company (NMEC), which is responsible for the Dome and the Millennium Challenge [principal components of the U.K.’s millennium celebrations], we realised that the BBC and NSA were thinking along similar lines and it made sense to pool resources. We are now working together on an ambitious joint project (in collaboration with the Oral History Society, the National Life Story Collection and the Arts Council of England), backed by an investment of £1.3 million from BBC Regional Broadcasting.
The BBC is currently recruiting forty project producers, one for every local radio station in the U.K. From September this team will be creating forty parallel series of sixteen, themed, half-hour programmes (640 in all), and in the process gathering around 8,000 oral history interviews on MiniDisc.
People will be asked to talk about a number of themes: their homes and families, their changing experience of work and leisure, of growing up, getting older, and of their hopes and fears for the future. These interviews will form an important new oral history archive - The Millennium Memory Bank - at the NSA.
NSA staff are playing an important role, not only in archiving the material but in training BBC staff how to conduct oral history interviews and showing them how to document the recordings. Each interview will be barcoded and documented by BBC staff using a template compatible with the NSA’s CADENSA catalogue and the original MiniDiscs will arrive at the NSA once the programmes have been edited and are ready for transmission in September 1999.
Discussions are also taking place between the BL and NMEC on expanding the project. Our original vision was to create an online digital archive accessible anywhere in the U.K., but that depends on receiving funding from NMEC. Whatever happens with NMEC, the Millennium Memory Bank is well on track and will provide a remarkable new resource for all kinds of BL users in the future.
Peter Copeland, Technical Manager, British Library National Sound Archive reports on using MiniDisc for field recordings.
"This report describes some experiences and experiments with Sony’s MiniDisc format, used as a sound-recording medium, mainly for wildlife, during a trip to Canada during the summer. I did not try the format for computer data, or for pre-recorded audio software. The equipment used was a Sony MZ-R30 portable (my property), and a Denon DN-045R minidisc replicator (the property of the NSA). Editing in-the-field was done on the former. I should explain that I consider myself an operator, not an engineer. I believe in the principle of doing formal tests on the equipment to be sure it is working to specification, and then breaking or bending the rules to get the effect I want. So you will find little here by way of formal engineering tests.
The discs Maxell and Sony 74-minute blank discs were tried (magneto-optical technology). I tried recording some music at home, and one of the Maxells developed a ‘skip’ when I came to play it back on location. Otherwise I am not aware of any problems (though wildlife recording is not a stringent testbed for ‘skips’).
The MZ-R30 portable recorder This is the top-of-the-range portable machine sold by Sony for amateur applications. It cost me £240 in London, including five blank discs and some AA-sized alkaline batteries. However, although it bears the trade name Walkman, the instruction book specifically states that it lacks the digital buffer-memory to allow music to be played continuously while jogging. I don’t jog - but waving the machine around quite violently as it played gave no problems. It may be worth remarking that the instructions also warn you to have the machine steady when you STOP recording, so the disc’s Table-of-contents (TOC) cannot become corrupted as it is updated.
All the inputs and outputs are stereo 3mm mini-jacks, including the digital input. This latter is achieved by plugging an optical adapter (not supplied) into the LINE IN jack, when the machine recognises it and (allegedly) omits the analogue-to-digital converters. Mini-jacks are not part of my standard kit and as connecting-leads vary as the square of the number of connectors, this was regrettable. Furthermore the minijack still suffers from the complaint I raised when it appeared about fifteen years ago: the female cannot withstand the weight of a reasonable amount of cable between a work-surface and the floor. It is therefore essential to put the machine on the ground to operate it while it’s connected to a reasonably long microphone-cable. However, I recognise the machine could not have been made so small and lightweight using any other type of connector. The digital connections are SP-DIF compatible, so both analogue and digital inputs will continue to invoke the digital compression native to this medium. The digital input will invoke SCMS copy-protection as well. I used Beyer DT40 headphones, which were 25-ohm impedance and drew a lot of current. The machine withstood this very well, so I could have extremely loud monitoring if I wished.
The LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) shows an impressive number of features and is well thought-out. The level-display works when recording and playing back. It has only twelve segments, and comprises a single channel which seems to be the sum of the left and right inputs; but this display proved essential for reasons which will become apparent below.
The machine was subjected to the usual analogue tests of frequency-response and distortion. It showed a flat overall response between about 20Hz and 18kHz which was satisfactory for my purposes; but I didn’t have a calibration disc, so I cannot assume the response would be the same when played on another machine. The noise-level was rather less satisfactory. I discovered the fault lay with the analogue inputs, exacerbated by the automatic volume control; a shorting-plug in the line-in socket resulted in a peak-signal-to-noise ratio between 80 and 90dB.
Power-supply considerations Normally, the machine would be used with a lithium-ion rechargeable battery accommodated within the machine’s casing. However this proved to be the principal weakness of the machine. The battery itself worked perfectly, but the charger plugged straight into a British 13A mains socket. It was at least twice the weight of the machine, and of course it cannot be used in foreign countries. So I fully charged the lithium-ion battery to give me a head start, and carried it to Canada as hand-baggage so it would not be subject to the stresses of an unpressurised cargo-hold.
It would normally be my policy to buy ordinary batteries in my destination country for three reasons. (1) To reduce the weight; (2) to avoid them exploding in the cargo hold; and (3) to circumvent the problems of different mains connectors and voltages. I did not try my alkaline cells before I left. I bought two makes of alkaline batteries in Canada, Duracell and Radio Shack. Two AA-sized ones were necessary, and could not be fitted into the machine. Sony provided an add-on plastic widget which screwed onto one end of the machine; I considered this highly vulnerable to knocks. A colleague prefabricated for me a strong cardboard case for the machine. When the two components were slid into this, it prevented the shear stresses which would inevitably have broken the connections; but it was not then possible to see the LCD.
In practice I found it impossible to work without seeing the LCD. As I needed spectacles for this, it made headphone monitoring unnecessarily complicated. The display wasn’t illuminated, so a torch was also vital at dawn.
Unfortunately this was not the end of the power-supply problems. The LCD display also included a representation of the state of the battery, and it was clear the machine drew much more current when it was recording. With alkaline batteries it would only record for about half-an-hour before it gave up. (However, it was clever enough to record the table-of-contents with its last gasp). This meant I was unable to record a complete dawn chorus, for which the 74-minute capacity of the disc would have been ideal.
The same batteries could then be used for replaying and editing the results, provided a careful watch was kept on the display. Two things caused the battery-voltage to drop significantly: rewriting the TOC, and rapidly searching for tracks. These caused the voltage to drop almost to the bottom limit again; but it appeared to recover after a second or two. There was no detectable change in the battery status when playing loud sounds on the headphones.
I did not experience a system crash during editing. The edits were just like analogue tape - that is, if the backgrounds were consistent, the edits were inaudible. The only difference was that once you had deleted something, you couldn’t put it back. So it’s obviously better to clone the master and edit the clone when feasible; but released disc-space can be used again, so editing on-location reduces the number of blank discs you need. I preferred the latter course, since vast swathes of obvious rubbish could be deleted immediately while I remembered it. The other way would have required hours of playback first.
A further problem was that it was normal practice to ask the machine to seek the end of the recorded contents and park itself there. But voltage-dips made it forget this information, and I lost almost three days’ work when I started work in the dark and the machine overwrote the first few tracks. This forced me to adopt one of two strategies for recording by touch as soon as an interesting sound occurred.
One was to record a number of five-second tracks of silence at the beginning of the disc (I chose thirty). This could be useful during subsequent editing for providing the equivalent of yellow leaders between takes. If I started recording and saw the machine was doing another Track 1, the loss would not be significant. The other was always to start each day’s work with a brand-new disc. This would have meant carrying at least one disc for every day of the holiday (I only took ten).
Theoretically I overwrote only about fifteen minutes of data; but the new Table of Contents did not reflect the existence of about eleven other tracks with about thirty minutes of older sounds. Roger Wilmut has shown me some ideas taken from the Internet which show how to cheat a MDS-303 mains machine to play this data. It relies on the fact that this machine doesn’t write a table-of-contents until you eject the disc; but you can prepare a 74-minute blank disc with just one track and eject it with a suitable TOC. You then invoke a test system to allow you to eject the disc without rewriting the TOC, and use it to put the 74-minute TOC onto the corrupted disc. You can then get all the sound back (including all the unrecorded sections), and you can then re-edit your way out of the difficulty. However you can only use the original disc (not a clone). I have yet to ascertain whether this would work in my case.
One of the alkaline batteries developed a leak in the cargo hold as a result of a flight within Canada (one out of eight). So, in my opinion, the power difficulties can only be solved by buying another lithium-ion recharger in the destination country, or carrying the British recharger plus a 110 volt transformer, or carrying twenty or thirty precharged lithium-ion batteries as hand-luggage (they cost about £20 each). These considerations completely invalidate the medium in my opinion, so I shall not be using it again if I can avoid it.
Other presettable facilities It is possible to programme the machine to record in mono, doubling the length of a disc to 148 minutes. Both the machine and the cloning-kit allow mono and stereo tracks to be mixed on the same disc. But it's an operational nightmare to set the machine in the heat of the moment. Because alkaline batteries didn't last the length of one disc, I was happy to record the gun-mike in double-mono (which also give me a vestige of a backup!) In the field, the machine proved very rugged; I was even able to record in conditions of morning dew which soaked me and the machine. This would have ruined any digital tape-based medium unless the machine and tape had been kept warm overnight.
The instructions also alleged that the automatic volume control could be disabled. But this simply didn't work on my machine, and again it would be an operational hassle if it did. I was therefore forced (a) to choose microphone(s) of appropriate sensitivity for the subject-matter, and (b) to research how to reverse-engineer the automatic volume control.
For the first situation, the gun-mike (a Sennheiser 405, one of the highest-output mikes ever) was still not sensitive enough for typical birdsong, and my colleague, Hugh Mash, had to provide a step-up transformer in the cardboard case; this worked well for bird sounds. I also planned to record some trains in stereo. My Marantz stereo electret mike was about right for this, but stereo wildlife atmospheres were undermodulated. However the limit was the background-noise of the microphone itself; the machine did justice to what little it was getting.
For the second situation, I experimented by copying wide-range music through the analogue inputs. When I played the minidisc back, I compared it against the originals on a double meter, and found that the minidisc could be made the same by routing it through a dBx117 expander with the threshold ON, the recovery-time on SLOW, and the expansion-ratio set to 1.25 : 1. I recorded one train incorrectly, because I was using the gun-mike to pick up a distant whistle, and a train passed unexpectedly on a closer track. It sounded truly awful through the automatic volume limiter; but I found I could make it acceptable (although not perfect) by increasing the expansion-ratio to 1.8 : 1 on the loudest bits.
The Denon Minidisc Replicator This is a 2-U high 19" rack unit, with slots for a source disc and a destination disc. It can also be used to erase the destination disc. When the source disc is cloned, it copies the digital audio data and the track labels without decompressing them; but it also unfragments the master disc, so the destination disc has all the audio in the right order without the reproducer undergoing major repositionings. From the archival point of view, it should be pointed out that this allows edits to be concealed. The cloning takes between one-half and one-third real time, and seems to work OK. However, it did not make any difference to the ‘skip’ on the Maxell disc.
An RS232-port and computer-software are provided to allow selected tracks to be cloned. This would be the only way to clone and edit together sound from two different discs; I have not tried this facility. I suspect (as with many Windows applications) all sorts of clashes and incompatibilities might require the use of a dedicated PC.
Further Work To Be Done (1) Check how SCMS may hamper our operation. (It may be necessary to buy a minidisc player with AES connections to strip off the copy-protection; and this must be balanced against the quality degradation from having to re-compress the data).
(2) Magneto-optic discs are liable to degrade for both magnetic and optical reasons. This should be investigated further, qualitatively if not quantitatively.
(3) Decompression and recompression should be iterated, to build up experience of (a) recognising audible side-effects, and (b) how many generations will remain inaudible to skilled listeners with an original for comparison.
Conclusions MiniDisc has some unique advantages as a collection medium. It is lightweight (provided you don’t have to carry battery-charging equipment), it is rugged (and seems to work OK in unfriendly climatic conditions), and it is easy to edit (but difficult to recover what you've thrown away).
The quality is better than any analogue medium; but it’s essential to think of it as if it were analogue, to avoid cumulative quality losses through iterated digital compressions and decompressions. A cloning-machine such as the Denon DN-045R is essential; alternatively, only original discs should be collected by archives, not copies.
The digital compression uses human psychoacoustics to achieve its end without becoming apparent through one generation. I have no way of assessing the effects for playback to wildlife! I also have no way of emulating the experiments of Richard Margoschis (in which some defects of low-level sampling were apparent), because I could not turn off my automatic volume control.
[Peter asked me to make sure that readers know that he is not quite happy with the topic as it stands; "I've been trying to do an experiment with repeated compressions and decompressions, and have been held up because the copy protect flag keeps preventing the experiment. This seems a major drawback to using MiniDisc in a professional context for the present".]
Inger Kielland has sent this message to IASA members who may be using BASF 528 tape. "We had a lot of trouble before our Maintenance Department found the reason why the tape recorders several times reset themselves on air. BASF have changed their production, but maybe they have not told their customers". Here is the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s report concerning problems with BASF PER 528 tapes produced in 1997 and 1998.
"From spring 1998, problems occurred with tape-recorders of type Studer A810 and A80. The A810 machines suddenly made a total reset in play, record and spooling mode. The A80 machines made a clicking noise that were sometimes even recorded. After some investigation, we understood that the new tapes from BASF were the cause of the problems. The design of the tapes was changed in 1997, and the two parts of the reel were mounted with screws from each side instead of screws that connected the parts electrically together. The result was a static charging of the upper part. After a while, it discharged against the chassis, the processor made a reset and the machine stopped. BASF admitted very soon to the weakness of this design, and in week no. 34, we received new tapes to test. This time the reels were put together with conducting plastic in the centre ring (about 60 kohm's between the two metal parts). In this way, the mounting of the reels could continue as before. With these new reels, we have not been able to reproduce the former problems. For further information, contact Arne Pedersen, Norwegian Broadcasting Corp, e-mail arne.pedersen@nrk.no [137].
Dietrich Schüller, Vienna Phonogrammarchiv, writes:
"During July and August 1998, the Music Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Arts and the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv joined forces in a field excursion to record musics of national minorities in north-western regions of China. Qiao Jian-zhong, Director, and Xiao Mei, Associate Researcher, of the Beijing-based institute, and Dietrich Schüller from Vienna visited the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia and the Provinces of Qinghai and Gansu and made recordings amongst the following ethnic groups: Mongols, Hui, Tibetans, Tu, Sala, Bao’an, and Dongxian. The audio recordings (on R-Dat) were augmented by video recordings in the DV format. The excursion, beyond its recorded outcome, provided the opportunity for intensive discussion about mutual experiences of the technical and methodological aspects of audio-visual documentation in the field.
The Music Research Institute specialises in the documentation of and research into Chinese traditional music and the music of the various national minorities of the Peoples Republic of China. Founded in the early 1950s, it has accumulated over 7000 hours of audio recordings in this field. UNESCO acknowledged the importance of this collection by listing it as one of the first sound archives on the World Register of its Memory of the World programme. Having survived the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution, the Institute’s concerns are presently concentrated on the preservation of its precious collection. In the course of a UNESCO mission to assess the physical state of the collection, Dietrich Schüller visited the Beijing institute in autumn 1996. Since then contacts have been maintained on a bilateral basis. The joint field excursion was but one item of the common agenda, the future co-operation will also include re-recording and preservation issues."
Exciting prospects for digital sound archives of the future have recently been unveiled on the internet at http://www.musictrial.com [138]/. MusicTrial is an integrated licensing system for online trading in sound recordings. It has stemmed from the work of the IMPRIMATUR project (see Information Bulletin 19) and has been created by the UK music rights societies MCPS and PRS together with Liquid Audio, a leading digital music distribution company based on California (http://www.liquidaudio.com/ [139]). The companies have formed a partnership to conduct a technology trial to provide an integrated Web based licence application system. It has not been possible for the Editor to try this out yet. Following the command "Get Liquified" the first barrier I encountered trying to download the player software was that the operating system in my PC was not sufficiently up-to-date. You will require Windows 95, Windows NT or Mac OS.
To update Chris Clark’s article ‘Audio-visual resource discovery on the Web’ (IASA Journal 11) a description of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set has now been published as Internet Engineering Task Force Informational RFC (Request For Comments) 2413. Dublin Core Metadata for Resource Discovery is available at ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2413.txt [140]. This means that the Dublin Core has attained significantly more status as a recognised and stable standard for creating simple descriptions of networked resources, and should help to encourage its more widespread adoption.
Also relating to that article, the Nordic metadata project has been completed. The final report is available at http://linnea.helsinki.fi/meta/nmfinal.htm [141]. A printed version has also been
The following items related to the preservation of audio, film, and or video materials are all available free of charge from the Library of Congress's Preservation Research and Testing Division. Please request them from (e-mail request preferred): Gerald D. Gibson, Preservation Research and Testing Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540-4560. Fax: (202) 707-6449, ggib@loc.gov [142]
Baker, James M. and George E. Klechefski. Risk analysis study for a representative magnetic tape collection (Preservation Research and testing Series No. 9808).- L.C., 1998
Gibson, Gerald D. Cylinder audio recordings : an annotated bibliography (Preservation Research and Testing Series No. 9604) .- LC, 1996
Nugent, William R. Digitizing library collections for preservation and archiving : a handbook for curators (Preservation Research and Testing Series No. 9705).- LC, 1997
Reilly, James N., et al.. Condition survey of motion picture holdings in the Library of Congress: evaluation of storage environments for motion picture collections (Preservation Research and Testing Series No. 9807).- LC, 1998
Storm, William D. Unified strategy for the preservation of audio and video. Preservation Research and Testing Series No. 9806).- LC, 1998
In preparation, request copy for delivery when published:
· Library of Congress preservation guidelines : # 002-labelling of compact discs
· Library of Congress preservation guidelines : # 003-environment for storage of motion picture film
· Library of Congress preservation guidelines : # 004-environment for storage of magnetic tape
· Library of Congress preservation guidelines : # 005-environment for storage of shellac discs
· Library of Congress preservation guidelines : # 006-environment for storage of vinyl discs
· Library of Congress preservation guidelines : # 007-environment for storage of acetate discs
· Library of Congress preservation guidelines : # 008-environment for storage of cylinder recordings
· Library of Congress preservation guidelines : # 009-preservation audio recording in analog format (magnetic tape)
| Date | Event | Location |
| 1998 | ||
| November 15 - 20 | IASA Annual Conference | Paris |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | San Juan, Puerto Rico |
| 1999 | ||
| March | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Kuala Lumpur |
| April | FIAF Annual Congress | Madrid |
| July 18 - 24 | IAML Annual Conference | Wellington, New Zealand |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| August 19 - 25 | ICTM World Conference | Hiroshima |
| September | FIAT/IFTA Conference | Rio de Janeiro |
| September 18 - 23 | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | Toulouse |
| 2000 | ||
| April | FIAF Annual Conference | London |
| August 6 - 11 | IAML Annual Conference | Edinburgh |
| August | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jerusalem |
| September ? | IASA Annual Conference | Singapore |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 171 412 7411, fax 44 171 412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14],
and
Elsebeth Kirring, Statsbiblioteket, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark,
tel. 45 8946 2055, fax 45 8946 2050, e-mail ek@kumsb.dk [67].
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 28 BY 15 DECEMBER 1998
Members will be very saddened to hear of the death of Sally Hine, from BBC Archives and Information in London. Sally had borne a long illness with great fortitude, never once losing her sense of optimism and fun, which was her great charm. In Paris at last year's Conference, this was most in evidence. She had been a librarian for over thirty years, first for Westminster Council, then with the BBC Reference Library and, from 1986, the BBC Sound Archives. She had a great commitment to serving the needs of programme makers, and in particular I remember a decade of working together in the arcane but hugely enjoyable world of recorded sound effects. Sally enjoyed every moment of her BBC career, and everyone who came into contact with her very soon understood that. She will be much missed by her colleagues and friends, in BASC, IASA and the BBC.
Mark Jones
The full text of Ray Edmondson's A philosophy of audiovisual archiving is now available on the Internet at http://www.unesco.org/webworld/en/highlights/audiovisual_archiving/philo1.htm [143]. There is a link to this from within the IASA website.
One new full institutional member, Phonothèque québecoise, Canada. Contact: Marielle Cartier.
And one new Associate member, Régis Berdaa, Digigram, Parc de Pré Milliet, 38330 Montbonnot, France. Fax: 04 78 52 18 44. Régis Berdaa is a marketing analyst with Digigram in charge of a research programme for audio collections.
This is the first call for papers for the IASA Conference in Vienna, Austria, September 18-23, 1999. This message first appeared on the IASA website at the end of December.
A Century of Sound Archiving
The first sound archives, known as phonogramme archives, were founded at the turn of the century, among others, in Vienna and Berlin. Their original scope was limited to the spoken word and cultural traditions. Subsequently, these archives and their followers, archives of sound and audiovisual documents, most of which have been concerned with recorded music, preserve a vast proportion of the 20th-century heritage. In fact, it is impossible to consider the life of our century without reference to recorded sound and the business of sound archives.
The centenary of the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, is an appropriate context for the theme of IASA's next annual conference in 1999: the historic aspects of sound archiving.
Scholars and archivists of all areas connected with recorded sound - musicologists, ethnologists, technicians, historians, sociologists, etc. - are invited to give 20-minute presentations on topics such as rare historical formats, the history of field recording, artistic attitudes to sound recording, training for audiovisual archivists, different national approaches to sound archiving, and sound recordings as primary source material for research. A selection of these will be published subsequently in the IASA Journal. The conference language will be English. Please submit abstracts of a maximum of 150 words by 1 March 1999 to:
Dr. Martin Elste, Vice President, IASA, SIMPK, Tiergartenstrasse 1, D-10785 Berlin
All abstracts will be screened by the IASA programme committee and applicants will be informed if their contributions are accepted by 15 May 1999.
Members are invited to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the Vienna Conference in September.
The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation at the IASA annual conferences by those who have no alternative funding and to encourage continuing participation in the work of IASA.
Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.
IASA Committees may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences. Funding for grants is limited and they will only cover a proportion of the costs involved.
Proposals for travel grants to attend the Vienna conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of April 1999 in order to be considered at the mid-year Board meeting to be held in May. Please send your application to: IASA Secretary General, Albrecht Häfner, Suedwestrundfunk, Sound Archives, D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany, Fax +49 7221 929 2094
Research grants are also available to assist in carrying out specific projects and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project which concerns the interests of IASA and which requires start-up funding or which requires financial support for work already underway is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (see address above). Applications will be considered as and when the Board of IASA meets, so the next chance will be at its mid-year meeting in May and then at Annual Conference in September.
The new FIAT/IFTA General Secretary is Lasse Nilsson, Tevearkivet, Sveriges Television AB, RH-N2G, S-105 Stockholm, Sweden.
Phone (+46 8) 784 5740The new President of FIAT/IFTA is Peter Dusek of ORF.
Björn Englund writes:
Since January, 1995, ALB has been running a project, financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Fund, which is aimed at documenting every 78 rpm record made in Sweden from 1899 to 1958, when the last regular schellac records were issued. When completed, in December 1999, it is estimated that the catalogue will contain details of some 30,000 discs on nearly 200 labels. The work is in the hand of the discographer Björn Englund and his assistant Gunilla Österbäck.
The aim is to include every single Swedish 78 recording, including advertising discs and private issues and even unissued recordings. All foreign recordings which are classified as having a Swedish connection will also be included. They will include the classification suecana and are, for example, recordings of the Cuckoo waltz (a Swedish composition from 1913, which became internationally popular from 1930) and Swedish singers abroad (like Karin Branzell, Göta Ljungberg, and Torsten Ralf).
Since we list the complete Swedish catalogue series of major international labels like HMV, Columbia and Decca, many of the issues will contain non-Swedish recordings.
In fact, Capitol (in its C 9000 series) and MGM (in its 6000 series) contain only American recordings. In this connection it might be mentioned that many titles by important artists like Nellie Lutcher (on Capitol), Les Brown, Doris Day, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Gene Krupa, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra (on Columbia), Jimmy Durante, Ziggy Elman, Earl Hines and Lena Horne (on MGM) were issued only in Sweden.
In the first stage of the project, we have only listed electrical recordings from the 1925-1958 period, since the acoustic recordings are already documented in two publications (Karleric Liliedahl: Svenska akustiska grammofoninspelningar 1903-1928 and Karleric Liliedahl: The Gramophone Co. : acoustic recordings in Scandinavia and for the Scandinavian market).
As of November, 1998, there are 22,700 catalogue records in the ALB database. Most major labels have already been entered, except Sonora (more than 2,500 issues). Other important labels remaining are Orchestrola (321 issues), Pathé (210 issues) and Toni (250 issues).
The cataloguing rules are neither AACR2 nor the Swedish version of AACR2, but rules established in 1967, when the first discographies were published by ALB's forerunner at the Swedish National Library. The main rule is that artist and title credits are given exactly as presented on the label. If a correction is needed, it is given within square brackets [ ].
Since the same title can appear in many different forms on different recordings, we have decided that the correct form is that used by the composer on the original sheet music. Fortunately, there is a yearly publication (which is cumulated every fifth year) listing all music published in Sweden since 1891, and this serves as our main source.
If we need to check non-Swedish titles we use the ASCAP and BMI databases on the Internet and also the ASCAP dictionary. We also use the database of the Swedish equivalent of BMI/ASCAP, STIM. As for the pseudonyms used by the composers/lyricists (which are very frequent in Swedish popular music), we do not disclose them, but when we publish our label discographies we include a table giving the real names. Artist pseudonyms, however, are disclosed in every catalogue record.
We use all sorts of reference works to make every catalogue record as complete as possible. Fortunately, several major companies, including Swedish EMI, have donated their archive material to ALB. The ALB library has an extensive collection of Swedish record catalogues and supplements and also hundreds of discographies and various reference books.
This makes it possible to include the following details of every title listed: Artist (not only the main artists, but also the leaders of the accompanying orchestras or groups and even the personnel's of these, when available), titles, composer(s), lyricist(s), full matrix number (including the take number or letter), recording location (including the name of the studio, if known), recording date (even the time of the day, if available), release date, first supplement and deletion date (if known). Further, we give all other issues on 78's and reissues on vinyl or CD. If a tune is taken from a work such as an opera, operetta, musical, film or revue, the title of that work is also given.
When the 78 database was established, our intention was to use the database to publish discographies from this material on a label-by-label basis. So far 4 volumes have been published (Parlophon, HMV 1925-1945, Odeon 1926-1934, the Polygram labels). However, the high printing costs and the low sales have made ALB decide to cease publishing the label discographies. We will, however, publish the remaining HMV volume covering 1925-1957, and also a revised version of the volume covering 1899-1925: Karleric Liliedahl: The Gramophone Co. : acoustic recordings in Scandinavia and for the Scandinavian market (first published in 1977 and long since deleted).
Since a copy of the ALB database is now available on the Internet (updated four times a year), anyone can make a printout of the desired material. We hope our effort can inspire other countries to start making retrospective discographies before time runs out. As record companies are taken over by other companies, much archive material is lost. That makes for instance establishing dates a difficult matter. Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland have nearly completed their retrospective cataloguing. In England, private researchers like Frank Andrews have made a great effort and in Germany Rainer Lotz has started the German National Discography on a private basis. When will we see similar efforts in other countries? [Sooner than you think - Ed.]
Richard Green write: "Marking the Millennium by celebrating 100 years of recorded sound in Canada is the slogan under which a two-year digitization project is being proposed which will establish an extensive World Wide Web site devoted to the first half-century of recorded sound in Canada. This project will dramatically expand an existing small-scale web site and database, providing details on thousands of Canadian 78-rpm discs, images of the record labels, histories of the early record companies to operate in Canada (the earliest of which, the Berliner Gramophone Company of Montreal, was the world pioneer in flat-disc technology and issued its first commercial discs in January, 1900), information on the recording technologies of the period, biographies of Canadian performers featured on 78s, and digital audio reproductions of many discs.
Known as The Virtual Gramophone in homage to Emile Berliner, this Web site will permit researchers and enthusiasts to learn about Canadian achievements in music and recording technology up to the mid-20th century, to hear Canadian performers of that era (many of whom were internationally renowned but are now largely forgotten), to study Canadian musical tastes of the period and, in general, to experience anew the cultural richness and diversity of the 78-rpm era in Canada.
The Virtual Gramophone digitization project will permit the National Library of Canada's Music Division to create a widely-accessible digital archive comprising a significant portion of its national preservation collection of Canadian 78-rpm discs, to facilitate the promotion and dissemination of Canada's recorded sound heritage, and to mark the 100th anniversary of recorded sound in Canada in a very special way at the millennium. The Virtual Gramophone Web site will allow, for the first time, on-line public access to the most historic elements of Canada's recorded sound heritage and will be a digital testament to the early days of sound recording. Here's the address: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/gramophone/ [145].
Régis Berdaa (new associate IASA member) has some questions, and possibly some answers....
Digital audio technology offers greater efficiency and flexibility than its analogue predecessor. Random access, advanced indexing capabilities, and reduced storage requirements are the key benefits. Audio archives now face the dual challenge of incorporating digital audio methods into their current operations while transferring existing archives to new formats.
For more than a decade, Digigram has been at the forefront of digital audio technology research and development. Among our collaborators are Europe's top research institutes and an international roster of development partners. We tailor our hardware and software applications to meet the evolving needs of customers in archiving, broadcasting, audio and video production, and commercial sound. With tens of thousands of PC-based sound cards and custom products answering the needs of users around the world, Digigram's digital audio technology has become the standard for superior audio processing power and performance.
Among the audio archives using Digigram technology are Bibliothèque Nationale de France and IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique).
Digigram wants to help archive project managers install the best digital audio tools to create the most appropriate, customized solution. To accomplish this goal, we seek to involve you, the experts! We would appreciate your taking a few minutes of your time to share your knowledge by answering the 7 questions that may be found at http://www.digigram.com/consultation/audio_archive.html [146] .
If you prefer a paper copy of the questionnaire, kindly contact Mr. Regis Berdaa at: +33 (0)4 76 52 47 47. Your input is important to us and we thank you in advance for your co-operation. To learn more about Digigram visit us on http://www.digigram.com [147].
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) has recently formed the Education and Training Committee which will study the current state of and future needs for education and training in specific areas of the recorded sound field. The committee is co-chaired by Sara Velez of New York Public Library's Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, and Nancy Seeger of the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Other members include: Esther Gillie (Eastman School of Music, U.S.), Ross Laird and Wanda Lazar (National Film & Sound Archives, Australia), and Susan Stinson (Syracuse University's Belfer Audio Lab).
Currently the committee is gathering information for an international resource guide to training programs for people interested in careers in recorded sound archiving and preservation. The committee feels that such a guide would be extremely helpful to those interested in pursuing careers in these areas. All types of training programs will be included, such as courses, assistantships and practicums offered in academic settings, seminars given by organizations, workshops held during conventions, and courses conducted over the Internet.
If you are an organization that provides training in these areas or if you know of such organizations, please help us make this guide as comprehensive as possible and send us information describing the program(s).
Please send to:
Sara Velez , Assistant Chief, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Rodgers & Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound, 521 West 43rd St., New York, NY 10036 USA
or
Nancy Seeger, Recorded Sound Section, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540-4698, USA
The 8th DELOS workshop on User Interfaces in Digital Libraries was held in Stockholm, Sweden, 21-23 October 1998. Papers are available at: http://www.ercim.org/publications/ws-proceedings/ [148]
The DELOS working group is an action of the ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) digital library initiative: . More on the DELOS working group at http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/DELOS/ [149], More on ERCIM at http://www.ercim.org/ [150].
The Third European Conference on Research and Advanced Technologies for Digital Libraries (ECDL'99) will take place in Paris, 22-24 September 1999, http://www-rocq.inria.fr/EuroDL99/ [151].
The DRH (Digital Resources for the Humanities) conferences have established themselves firmly in the UK and international calendar as a forum that brings together scholars, librarians, archivists, curators, information scientists and computing professionals in a unique and positive way, to share ideas and information about the creation, exploitation, management and preservation of digital resources in the arts and humanities.
The DRH 99 conference will take place at King's College London 12-15 September 1999. Proposals for academic papers, themed panel sessions, posters, demos and workshops are invited. Deadlines are:
Papers and panels : 8 March 99
Posters and demos : 29 March 99
Workshops : 29 March 99.
A Conference is to be held to launch the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme for research. Venue: Messe Essen, Essen, Germany. 25 to 26 February 1999. Cost: 125 ECU. (Nationals of countries that have applied to join the EU pay 50 ECU. Further information is on the Web at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg12/fp5/conference.html [152].
Two projects of interest to libraries have been selected for support under the Raphael cultural heritage programme. PJAECH (Preserving Jewish Archives as part of the European cultural heritage): the project aims to organise a conference in July 1999 on the preservation of Jewish archives all over Europe, as a first step to further European-wide initiatives. Partners include the European Council of Jewish Communities, based in the UK. DACE (Summit europeo 'modello per un sistema di descrizione degli archivi storici delle capitali europee'): the project aims to conduct a study on where collections about the history of European capital cities are stored.
Rural communities in Europe have historically relied on social meeting places such as inns and local hops to exchange information. Increasingly, such local information points are disappearing, leaving rural communities isolated, and without an infrastructure to support initiatives. In the UK, the Norfolk and Norwich Millenium Company is making resources available that will allow rural communities to become networked through ICT. These developments are being co-ordinated with activities in Saxony, Edinburgh and Rome, through ETHOS. Reports will be available on the Web: http://www.ethoseurope.org/ [153]. A general article on UK rural communities and their information needs by Penny Yates-Mercer and Gillian Wotherspoon of City University can be found on pages 7-8 of the Autumn 1998 (issue 21) Research Bulletin of the British Library's Research Innovation Centre (ISSN 1366-6526).
In Saxony (Germany) grammar school students are teaching older persons (50+) how to use the internet, using their own school computers. The students develop their abilities as teachers, and relate more closely to the older people in their neighbourhood. Seniors overcome technology fears, and learn of the information available on the Internet. A 1997 study showed that in Saxony 29 per cent of those aged over 50 were afraid of the complexities of new technology. Web sites: http://www.marvin.sn.schule.de/ [154], http://www.set.saxony.de/senior [155].
The IMPRIMATUR project (Intellectual Multimedia Property Rights Model and Terminology for universal Reference), is coming to an end. Some of the partners have established a company, IMPRIMATUR Services Ltd, to continue the work of the project, especially the Consensus Forums and other events. IMPRIMATUR was funded under the EC ESPRIT programme. Web: http://www.imprimatur.alcs.co.uk [156].
The Department of History at the State University of New York at Albany has presented the first issue of The Journal for MultiMedia History. It is the first peer-reviewed electronic journal that presents, evaluates, and disseminates multimedia scholarship.
This free on-line journal, http://www.albany.edu/jmmh [157]/, offers a new vision for presenting historical research. Adhering to the highest research standards and utilising the most innovative multimedia technologies, The Journal for MultiMedia History (JMMH) combines audio, visual, and hyperlinked materials with thoughtful historical analysis. By exploiting the almost magical potential of digital code, authors can explore and present a range of scholarly source materials impossible to incorporate into traditional texts. The journal also provides in-depth reviews, including audio and visual clips and links, of multimedia resources such as CD-ROMs, videos, and Web sites.
The first issue includes pieces by accomplished scholars. One item centres on a radio interview conducted in 1960 with the Nation of Islam's Elijah Muhammad, accompanied by an analysis by his biographer, Claude A. Clegg III. This issue also contains the audio and text of a lecture by Professor Kathy Peiss that focused on her new book about American women and the making of the modern consumer culture. Tom Kriger explores a labour strike in New York that took place during the Great Depression. He uses a dazzling array of photographs and oral history interviews. Adrienne Hood and Jacqueline Spafford make use of hypertext to demonstrate the promise and perils of integrating Web construction projects, and Corrine Blake offers a comprehensive hypertext review of Web-based resources for students and scholars of Islam and Islamic Civilization.
Organized as a Satellite Meeting of the General Conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), a four-day Conference will be held August 16-19, 1999 in Khon Kaen, Thailand, on the theme of "Collecting and Safeguarding Oral Traditions" in Khon Kaen, Northeastern Thailand, from 16-19 August 1999. This Conference is open to all with an interest in the preservation of oral traditions.
Within the context of the UNESCO "Memory of the World" Program, the Conference will deal with various aspects of collecting and safeguarding oral heritage, including the socio-cultural context; collection methodologies and selection criteria; care, handling, storage and preservation issues; and technical matters. Included in the Conference will be an excursion to the Research Institute of Northeastern Arts and Culture and the Sirindhorn Isan Information Center (Mahasarakham University, Thailand), an academic resource centre with comprehensive information related to all aspects of northeastern Thai cultures.
The Conference venue will be the Khon Kaen Sofitel Hotel. Special rates have been arranged, beginning at US$45 per night. There are frequent flights between Khon Kaen and Bangkok.
This Conference was originally planned as part of the series of biennial Pre-Session Seminars for developing countries, held under the auspices of the IFLA Professional Board. In 1999 it will be organized as a Satellite Meeting. Procedures for registration, including the registration fee for this event will be announced early in 1999. Participants attending this Conference may wish to attend the 65th IFLA Council and General Conference in Bangkok from 20-28 August, 1999.
Subsidies for travel and registration will be available to a limited number of candidates from the developing world. They will be selected from the nominations already presented earlier in 1998 for the originally planned Pre-Session Seminar. Funding will be made available from UNESCO, DANIDA, the IFLA ALP Core Programme and the IFLA PAC Core Programme (South East Asia and the Pacific).
Additional information may be obtained from IFLA Headquarters or from the Chairperson of the Satellite Meeting Planning Committee: IFLA Headquarters, P.O. Box 95312, 2509 CH The Hague, Netherlands; tel. +31 70 3140884; fax. +31 70 3834827; email: ifla@ifla.org [158]
| Date | Event | Location |
| 1999 | ||
| March | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Kuala Lumpur |
| April | FIAF Annual Congress | Madrid |
| July 18 - 23 | IAML Annual Conference | Wellington, New Zealand |
| August 16 - 19 | Collecting and Safeguarding Oral Traditions (see page 10) |
Khon Kaen, Thailand |
| August 20 - 28 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| August 19 - 25 | ICTM World Conference | Hiroshima |
| September | FIAT/IFTA Conference | Rio de Janeiro |
| September 18 - 23 | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | Toulouse |
| 2000 | ||
| April | FIAF Annual Conference | London |
| August 6 - 11 | IAML Annual Conference | Edinburgh |
| August 13 - 18 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jerusalem |
| September ? | IASA Annual Conference | Singapore |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
| 2001 | ||
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| September ? | IASA Annual Conference | London |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 29 BY 15 MARCH 1999
Arrangements for the IASA Conference in Vienna are at an advanced stage and invitations will be going out shortly. Dietrich Schüller provides a vorgeschmack of what we can expect from this key event in IASA’s history:
"This will be the 30th IASA Annual Conference and it will mark the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Phonogrammarchiv in Vienna. The theme of the conference is A Century of Sound Archiving. The venue will be the Headquarters of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in the heart of the city and the Farewell Dinner, by demand of Grace Koch, at Demel, k.u.k. Hofzuckerbäcker."
A reminder of the conference dates: September 18th - 22nd.
Copyright needs to be balanced with harmonised exemptions and security backed up with a code of good practice.
On the 21st and 22nd January 1999 the Austrian Academy of Sciences hosted a joint meeting of the HARMONICA Project and EBLIDA to discuss music libraries and copyright. Representatives attended from the phonograph producers, music publishers, composers' organisations, rights collection societies, broadcast organisations, together with representatives from public library music departments, music conservatory libraries, music and audio-visual archives, music information centres and software research companies.
All parties appreciated the need to recognise and protect the copyright and neighbouring rights vested in printed and recorded music as well as in the music elements in multimedia. While the industry needs to do all it can to protect those rights, libraries have a role to make materials available to their clients; archives and cultural institutions need to digitise and all may need to copy for the purpose of preservation and access.
Though these positions may appear to be diametrically opposed, the Forum in Vienna revealed much on which compromise might be reached. While the European Parliament is debating changes to copyright regulations and the phonograph companies are developing both copy protection and watermarking against piracy, some music libraries feel that they are being left out of the discussion, despite the active lobbying by much of the rest of the library sector.
Music libraries and archives have much to do to keep up to date with copyright legislation and the exemptions that govern their practice.
The main issue that emerged at the Forum was the lack of knowledge on all sides of the position and needs of the other parties. In order that the libraries can respect the position of rights holders, and that the rights holders in turn can understand and support the legitimate needs of libraries, archives and their users, they have all to talk to each other. It was clear at the Forum that many parties were hearing the views of the others for the first time.
Each of the different institutions: public libraries, specialist collections, sound and audio-visual archives and music education institutions must complete a matrix of needs and practices. With this in hand there can be a sensible basis for discussion with all the rights holders, leading to agreement on a code of good practice in these institutions which respects and is respected by the music industry.
A full report of the Vienna Forum is in preparation and will be published. For further information contact: HARMONICA, tovermeire@svb.nl [162] / dtucker@f-force.nl [163]
There is still time to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the Vienna Conference in September.
The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation at the IASA annual conferences by those who have no alternative funding and to encourage continuing participation in the work of IASA.
Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.
IASA Committees may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences.
Funding for grants is limited and they will only cover a proportion of the costs involved.
Proposals for travel grants to attend the Vienna conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of April 1999 in order to be considered at the mid-year Board meeting to be held in May. Please send your application to:
IASA Secretary General, Albrecht Häfner, Suedwestrundfunk, Sound Archives, D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany, Fax +49 7221 929 2094
Research grants are also available to assist in carrying out specific projects and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project which concerns the interests of IASA and which requires start-up funding or which requires financial support for work already underway is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (see address above). Applications will be considered as and when the Board of IASA meets, so the next chance will be at its mid-year meeting in May and then at Annual Conference in September.
The 8th DELOS workshop on User Interfaces in Digital Libraries was held in Stockholm, Sweden, 21-23 October 1998. Papers are available (or will be shortly) at http://www.ercim.org/publication/workshop_reports.html [164]
The DELOS working group is an action of the ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics http://www.ercim.org/ [150]) digital library initiative.
Related to both, the Third European Conference on Research and Advanced Technologies for Digital Libraries (ECDL'99) will take place in Paris, 22-24 September 1999: http://www-rocq.inria.fr/EuroDL99/ [151]
From EBLIDA Director, Barbara Schleihagen, via IASA General Secretary:
"I am pleased to announce that the ECUP+ brochure Licensing Digital Resources: How to avoid the legal pitfalls? by Emanuella Giavarra is now also available in printed A5 format. Individuals copies can be ordered free of charge at the EBLIDA secretariat at the address given below. EBLIDA members will automatically receive a free copy. The brochure is also available in English, French and very soon in German for downloading from the ECUP website at: http://www.eblida.org/ecup/docs/newindex.html [165].
This licensing warning brochure has been compiled in order to help the reader to understand the legal consequences of certain clauses in a licence. The publication takes you clause by clause through a standard licence and explains the impact of each of them. It also provides a list of clauses to avoid and a licensing check-list. We hope that you will find this publication useful whilst negotiating licences for electronic resources.
EBLIDA, P.O. Box 43300, NL-2504 AH The Hague, Netherlands
Per Holst, Chair of the IASA Radio Sound Archives Committee reports on the Joint IASA/FIAT Meeting in Lausanne which took place on January 25th, 1999:
" This was the second time such a joint meeting between IASA and FIAT had been arranged. Last year the meeting was held at Austrian Broadcasting Corporation in Vienna and this year Jean-François Cosandier and Ralf Dahler from Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) had generously offered to host the meeting.
The digital production systems of RSR and the SIRANAU Project (Integrated Radio System for Digital Audio Archiving) were presented. The demonstration of the functionality of the system gave a convincing impression of the possibilities the system contains with regard to fast and easy access to archival material.
Albrecht Haefner from Suedwestrundfunk (SWR) gave a report about the positive aspects of the application of digital mass storage technology in radio archives based on the experiences gained from the SWR pilot project Digital Media Archive System (DMAS).
Pekka Gronow and Markku Petaejae from Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) reported on the need to implement a digital archive system in the radio sound archive as a consequence of the introduction of CAR (Computer Aided Radio). The introduction of a digital archive system is scheduled to take place 2000-2001. The digitisation of the older analogue archives will be based on archival materiel frequently used.
Lars Gaustad from The National Library, Mo i Rana in Norway reported on the co-operation between The National Library and Norwegian Radio (NRK) about digitisation of Norwegian sound recordings. Until now 300 hours of sound from the historical collections at NRK have been digitised by The National Library. Access possibilities to the sound files are now being tested by NRK.
President of FIAT Peter Dusek and IASA Secretary General Albrecht Haefner recommended to continue the co-operation in the coming years for the exchange of information about digitisation of Radio and TV-archives.
It was announced in IASA Bulletin 27 [166]that IASA had made its first grant to a research project, Archiving The Music World. This is a summary report of progress to date.
First, a reminder of the project’s overall aim, which is "to assist the preservation, accessibility and development of collections of music throughout the world particularly in countries where resources and expertise are scarce, and existing collections are in danger of being lost".
The organisations involved are the British Library National Sound Archive (International Music Collection) and Music for Change. Progress to date includes:
List of sources drawn up
Sources researched
Initial report written
Questionnaire designed written in English, French and Spanish
Introductory letters written in English, French and Spanish
Preparation of database structure and questionnaire on computer
Basic contact information of all archives entered onto the database
All questionnaires and letters copied, collated with IASA ;information (i.e. the IASA Leaflet) and sent out
The project’s director, Janet Topp-Fargion comments: "The project is progressing well, despite a slow start due mostly to difficulties with setting up the computer database. The NSA had to acquire and install Microsoft Access software specifically for this project. Unfortunately, the two researchers have had to work on two different versions, making the merging of data from one computer to the other a time-consuming task. An exceptional computer programme and database has nevertheless been constructed, which will be an extremely useful tool not only for the completion of this project, but also for future use.
Completed questionnaires are now coming in steadily and at present almost 100 have been returned. So far replies have usually provided full and detailed answers to the questions. In addition, many respondents have expressed their enthusiasm for the project and a number of them an interest in linking with IASA and becoming actively involved in the current project.
We anticipate the database will be completed and ready for publication by the end of April 1999."
A seminar organised by the British Standards Institution (BSI) in London on March 22nd attracted a wide range of interested parties: publishers, librarians, rights societies, higher education, broadcasters and commercial companies. Your IASA Editor was there with pencil poised.
Eight varied presentations demonstrated the rapid progress being made with providing a secure and trustworthy (or low-risk) context for trading in digital content (also known as e-commerce) but also indicated that there are several worthy contenders for standardising the various components of the new trading floor.
The central preoccupation of what is essentially information engineering, is that machines discourse in numbers while people discourse in languages. The familiar ISBN, ISSN, ISRC, ISAN, ISWC numbers are already in place (or jostling for a place) to cover the mechanical requirement, though some or all could be supplanted by the new number on the block, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) which is the product of an open consortium effort led by commercial companies such as Elsevier, Microsoft and OCLC (see http://www.doi.org/ [167]). Less certain is the human requirement which generally goes by the name "metadata". When I wrote the article "Audio-visual resource discovery on the Web" for IASA Journal no.11, I was confident that a consensus was emerging. Since then new liaisons have been created between the teams behind metadata components such as Dublin Core and the Z39.50 protocol, XML and RDF have gained pre-eminence (and may threaten the former pairing) and a new fast-track project INDECS seems set to bring all developments (including new data models proposed by IFLA which are of interest to the library and archive community) together by the end of the year in support of e-commerce.
No mention was made, however, of the all-American contender, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), otherwise known as the Madison Project and currently number one hot topic at RIAA Online (http://www.riaa.com/ [168]). During the panel discussion which wound up the morning’s proceedings of the BSI seminar, it was contentiously proposed that to the recording industry all this earnest talk about inter-operable metadata, the functional granularity thereof and the disambiguation of language was pointless. Indeed, ‘functional granularity’, which means that you do something only if you have to, could be considered the cornerstone of the recording industry’s policy in the face of digital distribution. The major record companies will not be sitting up and taking notice of the metadata experts until the bottom line (their sales chart) tells them to. It will certainly be important for IASA to watch for signs of the industry’s change of attitude because any member archive concerned with collecting commercial product may find they have to re-structure entire systems, from acquisitions, through cataloguing, to preservation and access in order to accommodate the changes to the common distribution formats such as compact discs and cassettes. The first signs are there to see: when the Madison Project was launched in December last year, two days later the U.S. trade publication Billboard announced that the stock market value of the three biggest record retailing chains had fallen by a combined $175, the main reason cited being the expectation that their share of sound carrier sales will decline (source: Music & Copyright, February 1999, page 8).
Copies of papers presented will be posted at http://www.bic.org.uk/ [169] where you can already find a number of leading edge articles about this emerging area of standardisation.
Other sources to follow up:
David Bearman, Godfrey Rust, Stuart Weibel, Eric Miller, Jennifer Trant. "A common model to support interoperable metadata: progress report on reconciling metadata requirements from the Dublin Core and INDECS/DOI communities". D-Lib Magazine (January 1999) vol.5 no.1.- available at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/ [170]
SDMI questions and answers at http://www.riaa.com/tech/tech_sd.htm [171]
Gordon Reid writes: "CEDAR Audio has developed a prototype algorithm that removes large, low frequency thumps of the type encountered on degraded optical soundtracks. These thumps are not simply large clicks (which can be removed successfully using CEDAR’s various flavours of Declicking and Descratching algorithms) but are sounds that may have little transient information and which may extend for many thousands of samples.
The company has few examples of this type of audio in its archive, and would be keen to receive other examples from national (or commercial) archives and libraries. This material would be used only for research purposes, and CEDAR would be happy to sign agreements to this effect if requested.
If successful, the algorithm will be further developed into a product for the professional audio industries (including, of course, forensic agencies, archives and libraries). We believe that IASA members would find this useful in their restoration and preservation work."
CEDAR’s website is at http://www.cedar-audio.com/cedar-audio/ [172], Gordon Reid can be contacted by e-mail, gordon@cedar-audio.com [173], or phone + 44 1223 414117.
An "acronym" would be a good collective noun for a group of information specialists. Every time the door closes on a meeting at which one or more information specialists are present you can be sure that the rate of acronym citation will increase rapidly to one or more per minute (the agenda may consist of nothing but acronyms) and by the end of the meeting several new ones may have been coined.
Most IASA members are information specialists (technical experts are not exempt) and in response to an inability to remember the full spelling of the acronyms they themselves may have created, Information Bulletin No.30 [174] (which will be the first in the new design format, by the way) will include a list of those in current circulation in connection with IASA business. But.... it will have to be a joint effort. So, if you come across an acronym relevant to IASA work between now and the deadline for the next Bulletin (mid-June), please send it (and its full form) in an e-mail to the IASA Editor: chris.clark@bl.uk [14], or fax a selection to + 44 171 412 7412.
In IASA Bulletin 28 it was mistakenly announced that IFLA had published Ray Edmondson’s A philosophy of audiovisual archiving. UNESCO is the publisher, as would have immediately have been apparent if you followed up the url reference. The text of the Web-based version of the IASA Bulletin was changed as soon as the error had been pointed out. Apologies to UNESCO and the author for any subsequent inconvenience.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 1999 | ||
| April | FIAF Annual Congress | Madrid |
| July 18 - 23 | IAML Annual Conference | Wellington, New Zealand |
| August 16 - 19 | Collecting and Safeguarding Oral Traditions | Khon Kaen, Thailand |
| August 20 - 28 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| August 19 - 25 | ICTM World Conference | Hiroshima |
| September | FIAT/IFTA Conference | Rio de Janeiro |
| September 18 - 22 | IASA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| September 24 - 27 | AES Convention | New York |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | Toulouse |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 30 BY 15 JUNE 1999
The IASA/AGAVA Conference in Vienna in September is attracting a lot of interest and IASA is this year, for the first time, engaging in professional public relations work in order to ensure that the Centenary of the Phonogrammarchiv attracts as much media attention as we can muster. While the focus of our campaign is on Vienna, it is planned that IASA member archives wherever they may be situated will benefit. A press release will be sent out to national press agencies in the third week of August including the essential messages about the Phonogrammarchiv and IASA. It will also include the contact details for any relevant national audiovisual archives: those with web-sites will be most easily targeted. So, it is highly likely that someone from your local press will be contacting you late in August or just before the conference. If they do, it would be very useful to me to know about it and what the result was since this will help IASA to evaluate its public relations work for the benefit of future conferences.
As a special bonus, and to assist with your response to any media interest, you will also receive a special issue of the Bulletin marking the importance of this Conference for the work of audiovisual archivists and IASA. This will include brief histories of the Phonogrammarchiv and IASA and a time-line of significant dates in the evolution of audiovisual recording as it impacts on sound archives.
Patrick Saul, founder of the British Institute of Recorded Sound in London and founder member of IASA, died on May 9th. There will be many senior IASA members who have fond memories of the man and his achievements and I am delighted that Rolf Schuursma was able to write the following personal recollection:
"Remembering Patrick Saul the word 'pioneer' comes to mind. Although the British Institute of Recorded Sound (BIRS) appeared on stage some fifty years after the establishment of the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv, it soon became one of the leading institutions in its field, known world-wide for its broad and varied collections. This happened, of course, through the efforts of Patrick Saul. The pioneers in the then still rather raw field of sound archiving - the same could also be said of film archiving - had their shortcomings. A later generation of managerial-type directors was necessary to solve some of the problems resulting from the ever-growing collections of the new media, but didn't Patrick Saul exemplify the intensity of purpose which sought to preserve our musical past as represented on cylinder, disc or tape? It is no doubt thanks to such pioneers that we can study and enjoy the fruits of history since people began to make recordings in sound and pictures.
In July 1963 I came for the first time to London to visit Patrick Saul at the Institute's first premises in Russell Square. Having just started sound archiving at the Historical Institute of Utrecht University I must have felt rather shy in the company of a man who had been described to me as a formidable leader in the field. We met over lunch with Ms. Marie Slocombe of the BBC. Inevitably the talk directed itself to the conditions under which radio recordings were made available to listeners at the BIRS, a topic which would recur again and again in later talks with the European Broadcasting Union.
Several years after, in 1968, Patrick Saul invited me to take part in the meeting in Paris where, after a lot of rather fierce discussion, it was decided to establish an organisation which, the following year in Amsterdam, became the International Association of Sound Archives (IASA). It was Patrick's strong conviction that such an organisation had to be restricted to a group of leading organisations in the field and to exclude the large number of smaller archives and private collectors, however valuable their contribution, from the decision-making process. However, at its founding meeting the new association was designed along broader lines. Although, I believe, disappointed that his ideas were not taken up, Patrick joined IASA's Executive Board under its first President, Don Leavitt of the Library of Congress.
In 1973 Patrick Saul invited IASA to his Institute during the Association's conference at Bedford College in London. He welcomed us at the new premises, 29 Exhibition Road, with a fine speech about his experience and views, followed by a buffet dinner. I remember the occasion as one of the highlights in IASA's professional and social history, a splendid meeting of what by then had become the leading circle of sound archivists from all over the world.
Going back in history yet again, another occasion comes to mind, a dinner in Patrick's favourite Parisian restaurant which had on display a beautiful musical box. There I enjoyed a sparkling discussion with him and Herbert Rosenberg about the early history of gramophone records. But perhaps most of all I like to remember Patrick as I met him for the first time, sitting in his office between piles of records: a typically reserved British gentleman, until he started to talk intensely about sound archiving, the profession which was so dear to him.
Leaving us now behind, Patrick took with him an essential part of the history of audio archiving. We, however, keep many fond memories of him and we extend our sympathy to Diana Hull who shared such a great part of his life."
On June 11th the BBC held a special memorial celebration of the life of Sally Hine. I would estimate that more than a thousand family, friends and colleagues were present in the BBC Radio Theatre and the IASA Editor was very honoured to be asked to talk about her work in IASA and for the sound archive community in general. Speeches from several colleagues and Sally's widower were interspersed with performances of favourite pieces of music played by people she had worked with. It was a very touching and dignified occasion. The BBC made a recording of the event and copies can be obtained from Simon Rooks at BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London W1. Also, if you would like to make a donation in memory of Sally, please address it to Gloria French, The Cancerkin Centre, Royal Free Hospital, Pond Street, London NW3 2QG.
Mary Miliano writes: "One of Australia's most important and unique cultural institutions has a new identity. ScreenSound Australia, The National Collection of Screen and Sound, was launched on 21 June 1999 by the Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, in a gala event in Canberra. It is a significant step in a long-term effort to increase recognition of its work, and more importantly, take it successfully into the 21st century.
Formerly known as the National Film and Sound Archive, ScreenSound Australia is already one of the Australia's most accessed institutions. It collects, restores and shares Australia's dynamic screen and sound heritage, from archival film, television, recorded sound, radio and documentation through to contemporary productions, and is well placed to embrace digitisation and new audiovisual media.
The Canberra office of ScreenSound Australia recently underwent an $18 million redevelopment, including the completion of seven new audio studios, a purpose-build recording studio, film treatment unit, printing and processing laboratory and a video unit. ScreenSound Australia's beautiful art-deco heritage-listed headquarters in Canberra has also had a facelift.
web address: http://www.screensound.gov.au/ [175]
email address: filmsound@nfsa.gov.au [176]
Richard Green reports: "Phase Two of the National Library of Canada's Virtual Gramophone: Canadian Historical Sound Recordings web site is now available to the public http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/gramophone/ [145]. The first phase covered the early 7-inch Berliner records in Canada. Phase Two brings an additional 1,226 cataloguing records to the 2,065 already in the database. It adds another 260 complete sound recordings (RealAudio), 700 scans of different labels, four new biographies of Canadian artists, and historical information on the first 10-inch records in Canada. There is also new information on the 7-inch discs added to the database.
The enhanced cataloguing, label images, audio files and historical analysis make an important historical part of the National Library's Recorded Sound Collection available to the public for the first time."
The theme of SEAPAVAA's 4th Annual Conference was "AV archiving in the new millennium - working together to preserve our heritage". Ray Edmondson sends this report:
"Set in beautiful parkland in outer Kuala Lumpur the spectacular Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Memorial complex provided the setting for the conference symposium - with the General Assembly later convening in the nearby Tun Abdul Razak Memorial. Again, it was a record occasion with up to 200 participating in the symposium sessions, and over 40 delegates and official observers from 14 countries meeting in the General Assembly and other events. The host institution was the Arkib Negara Malaysia (National Archives of Malaysia), supported by Radio Television Malaysia (RTM), Filem Negara, the National Film Development Corporation (FINAS) and the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism.
The opening ceremony, on the morning of Monday 19 April, was officiated by guest of honour, Y.B. Dato' Sri Sabbaruddin Chik, Minister of Culture, Arts and Tourism, who gave the opening address. Y. Bhg. Dato' Habibah Zon, Director General of the National Archives, welcomed participants and SEAPAVAA President, Ray Edmondson, responded. Later in the week, Dato' Sri Sabbaruddin Chik hosted a memorable dinner for symposium participants.
The three day symposium ranged over technical, curatorial and management topics, with a common theme of "working together" - reviewing successful cooperative projects involving AV archives in two or more countries, drawing lessons from these and projecting into a future in which resources can be shared and skills and facilities built in complementary ways across the region. Projects included film repatriation from Vietnam to Laos; the ASEAN oral history project (co-ordinated in Singapore), the forthcoming SEAPAVAA regional film history publication; the regional impact of UNESCO's "Memory of the World" program; the RTM videotape restoration project; and the Philippines/Australia joint 35mm restoration of the 1939 Philippine film musical GILIW KO, which was screened in full.
Looking to the future, there were presentations on how countries can evolve national focus points for AV archiving, the UNESCO publication "A Philosophy of AV archiving", the management of vinegar syndrome, and demonstrations of the new Singapore-based "Revival" electronic image restoration system. As is customary, there was a detailed survey of AV archiving in the host country, and a presentation on its cinema history. A series of institutional visits complemented the formal presentations.
Three important strategic steps for SEAPAVAA were highlighted. The first, responding to a presentation by guest speaker Sven Allerstrand (President of IASA and Director of Sweden's ALB) was a recognition of the need to more actively embrace the audio, as well as the moving image, heritage. The second, responding to a presentation by Robert Gwamuwe of Papua New Guinea's National Library and Archives, was engagement with the needs of Pacific island countries. The third was a recognition that repatriation of collection material must be seriously addressed: most countries in the region are former colonies and significant quantities of heritage material are held in the former colonising countries.
The incoming Executive Council (which holds office for 3 years) is:
|
President: |
Ray Edmondson (Australia) |
|
Secretary General: |
Belina SB Capul (Philippines) |
|
Treasurer: |
Tuenjai Sinthuvnik (Thailand) |
|
Councillors: |
Dato' Habibah Zon (Malaysia) |
|
Julian Millar (New Zealand) |
|
|
Annella Mendoza (Philippines) |
|
|
Chantima Choeysanguan (Thailand) |
The General Assembly ended with a closing ceremony officiated by guest of honour Y.B. Dato' Drs. Suleiman Mohamad, Deputy Minister of Information.
An important outcome of the conference was a "Statement of conclusions". Symposium papers will be progressively added to the SEAPAVAA website on http://members.xoom.com/avarchives/ [177]
I was on the verge of giving up this idea in the first week of June since up until then only one person had submitted a handful of acronyms. Then, out of the blue, came this list from the IASA-ländergruppe Deutschland/Deutschschweiz via Frank Rainer Huck, to which I have only had to add a few extra items. IASA is very grateful. If you find anything missing, please let me know. This list could be produced separately for the IASA web pages in future.
|
AAAF |
Anglo-American Authority File |
|
AACR 2 |
Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition |
|
ABU |
Asian Broadcasting Union |
|
ADAM |
Art, Design, Architecture & Media Information Gateway (Internet) |
|
ACOC |
Australian Committee on Cataloguing |
|
ADPCM |
|
|
AES |
Audio Engineering Society |
|
AFAS |
Association Française des Archives Sonores |
|
AGAC |
American Guild of Authors and Composers |
|
AGAVA |
Arbeitsgemeinschaft audiovisueller Archive Österreichs |
|
AHDS |
Arts and Humanities Database System |
|
AIBM |
Association Internationale des Bibliothèques, Archives et Centres de Documentation Musicaux (s.a. IAML) |
|
AIMP |
Archives Internationales de la Musique Populaire |
|
ALA |
The American Library Association |
|
ALB |
Arkivet för ljud och bild (Stockholm) |
|
AMRA |
American Mechanical Rights Association |
|
AMIA |
Association of Moving Image Archivists (Nordamerika) |
|
AMPAS |
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences |
|
ANSI |
American National Standards Institute |
|
ARSAG |
Association pour les Recherches Scientifiques sur les Arts Graphiques |
|
ARSC |
Association for Recorded Sound Collections |
|
ASCAP |
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers |
|
ASPM |
Arbeitskreis Studium populärer Musik e.V. (Sektion BRD der IASPM) |
|
ASRA |
Australasian Sound Recordings Association |
|
AV |
Audio-visual |
|
AVAPIN |
Audiovisual Archiving Philosophy Interest Network (IASA) |
|
AVRL |
American Vintage Record Labelography (s.a. LAC) |
|
BAFTA |
British Academy of Film and Television Arts |
|
BASC |
British Association of Sound Collections |
|
BEL |
Bureau for European Licensing |
|
BIEM |
Bureau International des Sociétés gérant les Droits d'Enregistrement et de Reproduction Mécanique |
|
BMI |
Broadcast Music, Inc. |
|
BSI |
British Standards Institute |
|
BUFVC |
British Universities Film and Video Council |
|
CCC |
Canadian Committee on Cataloguing |
|
CDC |
Cataloguing and Documentation Committee (IASA) |
|
CEDAR |
Computer Enhanced Digital Audio Restoration |
|
CEDARS |
CURL Exemplars In Digital Archives |
|
CELP |
Code Excited Linear Predictor |
|
CILECT |
Association for Film Schools |
|
CIS |
Common Information Systems |
|
CISAC |
Confédération Internationale des Sociétés d'Auteurs et Compositeurs |
|
CNLIA |
Council of National Library and Information Associations |
|
CPERT |
Continuing Professional Education Round Table (of IFLA) |
|
CURL |
Consortium of University Research Libraries |
|
DIN |
Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V. |
|
DOI |
Digital Object Identifier System |
|
EBLIDA |
European Bureau for Library, Information and Documentation Associations |
|
EBU |
European Broadcasting Union (s.a. UER) |
|
ECPA |
European Commission for Preservation and Access |
|
EPIC |
European Preservation Information Center (of ECPA) |
|
FIAF |
Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film |
|
FIAT |
Fédération Internationale des Archives de Télévision (s.a. IFTA) |
|
FID |
International Federation of Information and Documentation |
|
GEMA |
Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte |
|
GESAC |
Groupement Européen des Sociétés d'Auteurs et Compositeurs (europ. Komitee der CISAC) |
|
GPI |
General Programme of Information (UNESCO) |
|
GVL |
Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten |
|
IAMHIST |
International Association for Media and History |
|
IAMIC |
International Association of Music Information Centres |
|
IAML |
International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (s.a. AIBM) |
|
IASA |
International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives |
|
IASPM |
International Association for the Study of Popular Music |
|
IBTN |
International Broadcast Tape Number (EBU-Empfehlung) |
|
ICA |
International Council of Archives (Internationaler Archivrat) |
|
ICMU |
International Council of Multimedia Users |
|
ICOM |
International Council of Museums |
|
ICTM |
International Council for Traditional Music |
|
IDF |
International DOI Foundation |
|
IFLA |
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions |
|
IFPI |
International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Industries |
|
IFTA |
International Federation of Television Archives |
|
IM |
International MARC Programme (IFLA) |
|
INDECS |
interoperability of data in e-commerce systems |
|
INPUT |
International Public Television Screening Conference (seit 1977) |
|
IPDC |
International Programme for the Development of Communication |
|
IRTEM |
Istituto di Ricerca per il Teatro Musicale |
|
ISAAR (CPF) |
International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families (ICA) |
|
ISBD |
International Standard Bibliographic Description |
|
ISBD (CF) |
International Standard Bibliographic Description - Computer Files |
|
ISBD (M) |
International Standard Bibliographic Description - Monographs |
|
ISBD (NBM) |
International Standard Bibliographic Description - Nonbook Materials |
|
ISBN |
International Standard Book Number |
|
ISMN |
International Standard Music Number |
|
ISRC |
International Standard Recording Code |
|
ISRF |
International Standard Recording File (IFPI) |
|
ISSN |
International Standard Serial Number |
|
ISO |
International Standards Organization |
|
JTC |
Joint Technical Committee |
|
JTS |
Joint Technical Symposium |
|
LAC |
Labelography Associates Committee (ARSC Committee dedicated to publishing the AVRL) |
|
MARC |
Machine Readable Cataloguing (IFLA) |
|
MCPS |
Mechanical Copyright Protection Society Ltd. |
|
MDA |
Museums Documentation Association |
|
MOMI |
The Museum of the Moving Image (London) |
|
MPEG |
Moving Picture Experts Group |
|
NAOC |
National and Affiliated Organisations Committee (IASA) |
|
NGO |
Non Government Organization |
|
NICAM |
Nearly Instantaneous Compandable Audio Matrix |
|
NSA |
National Sound Archive (British Library, London) |
|
OPAC |
Online Public Access Catalogue |
|
PGI |
General Information Programme (UNESCO) |
|
PPL |
Phonographic Performance Ltd |
|
PRS |
Performing Right Society |
|
RLG |
Research Libraries Group |
|
RTS |
Royal Television Society |
|
PAV |
Programme on Audiovisual (ICA) |
|
RSAC |
Radio Sound Archives Committee (IASA) |
|
SACEM |
Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique |
|
SDMI |
Secure Digital Music Initiative |
|
SDRM |
Société pour l'Administration du Droit de Reproduction Mécanique des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs |
|
SEAPAVAA |
South East Asia - Pacific AudioVisual Archive Association |
|
SIAE |
Societá Italiana degli Autori ed Editori |
|
SIBMAS |
Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle |
|
SPARS |
Society of Professional Audio Recording Studios (SPARS-Code) |
|
STEMRA |
Stichting tot Exploitatie van Mechanische-Reproductie Rechten der Auteurs |
|
TC |
Technical Committee (IASA) |
|
TCC |
Technical Coordinating Committee (FIAF, FIAT, IASA, ICA) |
|
UBCIM |
Universal Bibliographic Control and International MARC (IFLA) |
|
UER |
Union Européenne de Radiodiffusion (s.a. EBU) |
|
UNESCO |
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization |
|
VRA |
(Nauck's) Vintage Record Auction |
|
W3C |
World Wide Web Consortium |
|
WIPO |
World Intellectual Property Organization |
There has been an enormous amount of hype surrounding the recording industry's involvement with digital delivery over the internet and it is difficult for the sound archivist to cut through the fluff and flummery in order to plan for the future. However one particular headline in the British popular music weekly New Musical Express (NME) on June 11th did seem to announce a significant and substantial change in the way recorded music will be produced and bought in future.
Under the title "Sony puts back-catalogue online for shoppers" we read: "SONY, one of the world's biggest entertainment hardware and software corporations, announced yesterday that it plans to offer its back catalogue to record shops via a high speed digital download. Although this has been mooted for some time - a few record stores have experimented with track-by-track compilations, allowing shoppers to compile their own albums - this allows the shops access to online stock rather than having to actually have the CDs in the shop. This is in response to shops losing custom when they find that the records they want are not in stock. Sony... is the first major label to seriously commit to digitizing their back catalogue. Sony is involved in researching the Secure internet Download System (SDMI) that also involves EMI and other major companies in association with a company called Digital On Demand."
The National Science Foundation and the UK Joint Information Systems Committee have announced the first six projects which have been recommended for funding (almost $5 million over the three year project term) under the International Digital Libraries Initiative NSF/JISC Joint Program. Of the six four in particular will be of interest to:
1) Cross-Domain Resource Discovery: Integrated Discovery and use of Textual, Numeric and Spatial Data: University of California, Berkeley / University of Liverpool. The aim is to produce a next generation online information retrieval system ("Cheshire") based on international standards that will facilitate searching on the internet across collections of original materials, printed books, records, archives, manuscripts, and museum objects), statistical databases, full-text, geo-spatial, and multi-media data resources.
Contact: Paul Watry, Automated Projects Manager, Special Collections and Archives, University of Liverpool Library, PO Box 123,Liverpool L69 3DA, UK. Phone: +44 151 794 2696 Fax: +44 151 794 2681 Email: P.B.Watry@liverpool.ac.uk [178]
2) HARMONY: Metadata for resource discovery of multimedia digital objects: Cornell University / ILRT / DSTC. A three-way international partnership between Cornell University, the Australian Distributed Systems Technology Centre and the University of Bristol's Institute for Learning and Research Technology, will be devising a framework to deal with the challenge of describing networked collections of highly complex and mixed-media digital objects. The work will draw together work on the RDF, XML, Dublin Core and MPEG-7 standards, and will focus on the problem of allowing multiple communities of expertise (e.g. library, education, rights management) to define overlapping descriptive vocabularies for annotating multimedia content.
Contact: Dan Brickley, Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol, 8-10 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 1HH, UK. Phone: +44 117 928 7096 Fax: +44 117 928 7112. Email: daniel.brickley@bristol.ac.uk [179]
3) Online Music Recognition and Searching (OMRAS): University of Massachussetts / King's College, London. OMRAS is a system for efficient and user-friendly content-based searching and retrieval of musical information from online databases stored in a variety of formats ranging from encoded score files to digital audio. The overall goal of this cross-disciplinary research is to fill a gap in the provision of online facilities for musical collections: the inability to search the content for 'music' itself.
Contact: Tim Crawford, Music Department, King's College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK
Phone: +44 171 848 1821 Fax: +44 171 848 2326 Email: t.crawford@kcl.ac.uk [180]
4) Emulation options for digital preservation: technology emulation as a method for long-term access and preservation of digital resources: University of Michigan / CURL. A team of researchers at the University of Michigan and research staff in the UK from the CEDARS project, being run at the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and Cambridge under the aegis of CURL (Consortium of University Research Libraries) will investigate the potential role of emulation in long-term preservation of information in digital form. The project will develop and test a suite of emulation tools, evaluate the costs and benefits of emulation as a preservation strategy for complex multi-media documents and objects, and develop models for collection management decisions about how much effort and resources to invest in exact replication within preservation activity. The project team will assess options for preserving the original functionality and 'look and feel' of digital objects and develop preliminary guidelines for the use of different preservation strategies (conversion, migration and emulation).
Contact Kelly Russell, CEDARS Project Manager, Edward Boyle Library, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. Phone: +44 113 233 6386 Fax: +44 113 233 5539 Email: k.l.russell@leeds.ac.uk [181]
At its conference in Madison Wisconsin, May 1999, The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) announced the winners of this year's Awards for excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. "Begun in 1991, the awards are given to authors of books, articles or recording liner notes to recognize those publishing the very best work today in recorded sound research. In giving these awards, ARSC recognizes the contributions of these individuals and aims to encourage others to emulate their high standards and to promote readership of their work".
The following research was honored this year during the annual conference:
Recorded General Popular Music Lotte Lenya: A Centenary Tribute, by Richard Weize, Rainer E. Lotz, et al., notes to Bear Family CDs (1998)
Recorded Classical Music Budapest String Quartet, discography by Phil Hart in the ARSC Journal: Part 1 1924-1940, in vol. 28/2 (1997), Part 2 1941-1954, in vol.29/1 (1998), Part 3
1955-1966, in vol. 29/2 (1998)
Recorded Rock, Rhythm & Blues, or Soul Elvis Presley: A Life in Music: The Complete Recording Sessions, by Ernst Jorgensen (St. Martin's Press, 1998)
Certificate of Merit The Deadhead's Taping Compendium, Vol. 1: 1959-1974, by Michael M. Getz and John R. Dwork (Henry Holt and Company, 1998)
Recorded Jazz or Blues John Coltrane: His Life and Music, by Lewis Porter (University of Michigan Press, 1998)
Certificate of Merit Dixonia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon, compiled by Ben Young (Greenwood Press, 1998)
Recorded Country Music The Encyclopedia of Country Music, edited by Paul Kingsbury (Oxford University Press, 1998)
Recorded Folk or Ethnic Music Music of Hindu Trinidad, by Helen Myers (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
Record Labels or Manufacturers Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records, by Peter D. Goldsmith (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998)
Lifetime Achievement Award The award for lifetime achievement was awarded to Colin Escott, noted author of Hank Williams: The Biography (Little, Brown, 1994), numerous books on the Sun
label including Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll (St. Martin's Press, 1991). His most recent project is All Roots Lead to Rock: Legends of Early Rock 'n' Roll: A Bear Family Reader (Schirmer Books, 1999), which he edited. Mr. Escott was the recipient of two previous ARSC awards in 1991 and 1992.
· The journal Scientific American is a common source of audio experiment and development. The May 1999 issue contains a fascinating article about micro-microphones "New sensors detect sound using light and heat" http://www.sciam.com/1999/0599issue/ [182].
· Handshake Productions is publishing a newsletter on copyright and digital media issues. The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter, in its 3rd year of publication, has contributors from around the world and subscribers from 15 countries. It is a 16-page print newsletter issued 3 times a year. Subscribers also receive two free electronic supplements: - Email Alerts for news, court cases, legislation changes, and forthcoming seminars; - an e-letter, Copyright & New Media Legal News. Take a look at the Tables of Contents from previous issues, some sample full text articles, as well as what subscribers have said by visiting http://www.copyrightlaws.com/index2.html [183]. Subscription is online or obtain subscription information at http://copyrightlaws.com/online_sub/new_subscription.html [184] or by sending an email to libraries@copyrightlaws.com [185]
· RLG Digital Preservation Report Digital Preservation Needs and Requirements in RLG Member Institutions" is available on the RLG Web site http://www.thames.rlg.org/preserv/digpres.html. [186] This report contains the results of the 1998 study of RLG members' current practices, needs, and plans for preserving their growing collections of digital holdings.
· Two new reports by Abby Smith titled "The Future of the Past: Preservation in American Research Libraries" and "Why Digitize" are now available from the US Council on Library and Information Resources website pages at: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/reports.html [187]
·A University of Glasgow consortium led by the Performing Arts Data Service (PADS) is one of two pilot sites working on a project to develop the delivery of moving images to academic institutions via networks. The project, IMAGINATION, which has been initiated by the British Film Institute, the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) and the Joint Information Systems Information Committee (JISC) may be the opening activity in a radical new network service for UK higher education. For more information about this project see http//www.pads.ahds.ac.uk [188].
| Date | Event | Location |
| 1999 | ||
| July 18 - 23 | IAML Annual Conference | Wellington, New Zealand |
| August 16 - 19 | Collecting and Safeguarding Oral Traditions (see page 10) |
Khon Kaen, Thailand |
| August 20 - 28 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Bangkok |
| August 19 - 25 | ICTM World Conference | Hiroshima |
| September 2 - 5 | AES 17th Conference "High quality audio coding" | Villa Castelleti, Signa, Italy |
| September 18 - 22 | IASA Annual Conference "A century of sound archiving" | Vienna |
| September 24 - 27 | AES 107th Convention | New York |
| October 3-5 | FIAF/IFTA Conference | Santiago, Chile |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | Toulouse |
| 2000 | ||
| February 19 -22 | AES 108th Convention | Paris |
| April | FIAF Annual Conference | London |
| July | IASA/SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Singapore |
| August 6 - 11 | IAML Annual Conference | Edinburgh |
| August 13 - 18 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jerusalem |
| September 12 - 18 | Berlin Phonogrammarchiv Centenary | Berlin |
| September 20 - 22 | IAML-Gruppe Bundesrepublik Deutschland/IASA-Ländergruppe Deutschland/Deutschschweiz |
Leipzig |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
| 2001 | ||
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| September 22 - 26 | IASA Annual Conference | London |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 31 BY 15 SEPTEMBER 1999
The new IASA Executive Board elected during the Annual Conference in Vienna is:
|
President |
Crispin Jewitt (The British Library, London) |
|
Vice-Presidents |
Magdalena Cséve (Hungarian Radio, Budapest) |
|
John Spence (ABC, Australia) |
|
|
Maria Carla Cavagnis Sotgiu (Discoteca di Stato, Rome) |
|
|
Past President |
Sven Allerstrand (ALB, Stockholm) |
|
General Secretary |
Albrecht Häfner (Südwestrundfunk, Baden-Baden) |
|
Editor |
Chris Clark (The British Library, London) |
|
Treasurer |
Pekka Gronow (Yleisradio OY, Helsinki) |
Full addresses and contact numbers for Board members will be given in the next IASA Journal.
That the Vienna conference attracted more IASA members than ever before was partly due to the centenary celebrations but was also a reflection of the recent and numerous influx of new members. A special welcome, therefore to:
Bournemouth University Library
Dorset BH12 5BB, U.K.
Dr. Tjeerd de Graaf
Goudsbloemweg 9, NL - 9765 HP Paterswolde, The Netherlands
Dr. de Graaf is a phonetics & ethnolinguistics researcher.
Joerg Houpert ( sustaining member)
Houpert Digital Audio, Fahrenheitstrasse 1, D - 28359 Bremen
Germany
Houpert Digital Audio produces digital equipment for preservation and restoration of recorded sound.
Dr. Herfrid Kier
In der Huette 2, D - 53909 Zuelpich-Niederelvenich, Germany
Dr. Herfrid Kier is a lecturer in Music at the University of Cologne.
Latvijas Zinatnu Akademijas, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art Akademijas Laukums 1, LV - 1050 Riga, Latvija
The institute holds the Folklore Archive with sound and audiovisual documents
Lithuanian Archives of Image and Sound (LAIS)
Mr. Dalius Zizys, Director, O. Milasiaus 19, LT 2016 Vilnius, Lithuania
LAIS is responsible for safeguarding the national audiovisual heritage.
Dan MacCarthy
RTE Cork, 5 Aldergrove, Highfield West College Road
Cork, Ireland
Jerry Madsen
4624 West Woodland Road, Edina, Minnesota 55424-1553, U.S.A.
Record collector, ARSC member
Philip G. Moores
Fillanne, Old Weston Road, Bishops Wood, Stafford, ST19 9AG, U.K.
Interested in the collection and preservation of historical recordings of classical pianists and conductors.
Museum of the Jewish Diaspora
Mr. Joel J. Cahen, Deputy Director-General, POB 39359, Tel Aviv 61392, Israel
Beth Hatefutsoth is the main IASA contact. She deals with the audiovisual documentation of the past and present of the Jewish diasporas.
Music Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Arts
Qiao Jianzhong, Director, Dong Zhi Men Wai, Xin Yuan Li, West Building no.1, Beijing 100027, China
The institute is responsible for collecting, recording, storage and classification of China's traditional, folklore and contemporary music.
ORF Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, Hoerfunk-Archiv
Argentinierstrasse 30a, A - 1040 Vienna
Contact: Richard Goll
Dr. Armgard Schiffer
Rotmoosweg 25, A - 8045 Graz, Austria
Dr. Armgard Schiffer retired this year from the Landesmuseum Joanneum. She is still interested in all sound archiving matters.
Chris A. Strachwitz
Arhoolie Records, 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerito, CA 94530, U.S.A.
Chris Strachwitz is concerned with vernacular regional music traditions, discography and collection of records.
Timothy Tapfumaneyi
Library supervisor c/o Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation
Radio Three Music Library, Box HG 444, Highlands.Harare, Zimbabwe
Ulf Scharlau
Remembering Dietrich Lotichius means for me a glance back over 30 years of a hearty and confident association. We met for the first time in June 1969 in his office at NDR Hamburg, which was followed by numerous pleasant and stimulating meetings and talks in Hamburg, in Stuttgart or at different radio stations in Germany or at venues abroad where IASA or IAML held their annual conferences. In 1969 my career was just starting: Dietrich Lotichius, however, was at that time already an experienced and expert sound archivist. It was said that he knew the answer to any professional question which might arise. And so he did!
The man I encountered was obviously very active and high-spirited: he also had a kind of juvenile outlook. I sensed immediately the benevolence he felt towards a young colleague in need of advice. I always felt confident of being safe when following his advice. For many years Dietrich Lotichius held important offices within the group of radio archivists of the German Public Radio Group (ARD). We admired his ability to manage difficult negotiations. He always concentrated strongly on the aims which he believed to be the right ones. But at the same time he tolerated opinions differing from his own without becoming upset.
The biography of young Dietrich Lotichius was to a great extent determined by the Second World War which forced him, like many of his generation in other countries, to abandon any personal plans. He had to become a soldier and - maybe luckily - he was captured early on by the British. Being able to speak English, the young prisoner of war (POW), who had no political agenda to pursue, was ordered from the POW camp in St. Albans into one of the special record archives of the BBC in London. Here he had to catalogue recordings from German Nazi radio which had been brought to England when the war was over. Dietrich’s control officer in charge was Timothy Eckersley, who later became the head of the BBC Sound Archives. This commission can undoubtedly be seen as the launch of Dietrich’s future career. After his release he returned to Hamburg and thanks to the experience he obtained at the BBC he started working at Radio Hamburg, which later became Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR). In 1954 he was appointed head of the sound archives of that institution.
There is no doubt that Dietrich Lotichius was deeply influenced by the time he spent in England as a POW: he was fascinated by, even in love with, the country, its people and the English language. His sympathy towards English attitudes, feelings and life style, in my opinion, formed the basis for Dietrich’s second area of professional engagement, his active involvement with international bodies, especially IAML and IASA. Indeed IASA owes its foundation in 1969 to Dietrich Lotichius and to other distinguished sound archivists from several countries, among them also Tim Eckersley, years before his superior, now his close friend.
Within IASA Dietrich was often engaged as a negotiator and skilful diplomat. He provided IASA with a lot of suggestions and ideas which today still inform the association's structure and working routines. It was his proposal to establish a professional Radio Sound Archives Committee which came into existence at the Washington conference in 1983. At the end of the 1980s he founded the History of IASA Committee (HIC) with the aim of collecting and preserving documents which might be important for the historiography of IASA: printed minutes of Board meetings or General Assemblies, conference programmes, manuscripts of speeches of IASA officials, photographs, sound and film documents, and whatever. Although HIC does not exist any longer as a committee, it is thanks to Dietrich Lotichius that IASA can now refer to a large collection of material from its first twenty years. Finally, from 1984 to 1987 Dietrich served as a Vice President in the Executive Board of IASA over which I had the honour to preside. When he retired from this office at the end of the Amsterdam conference he was unanimously appointed an Honorary Member of the association.
Yet another area is to be mentioned which was of an utmost importance for Dietrich: he loved and practised music all his life. During the Stockholm IAML/IASA conference in 1986, which was held in the conservatory of music, bored by the papers and the usual conference events Dietrich and I decided to refresh our minds and mood by playing music. We managed to find string instruments and scores in the basement of the institution and by recruiting an English colleague as a viola player and a Norwegian lady as the first violin we formed a string quartet. Dietrich played second violin, I played cello: and so we played Haydn and Mozart string quartets for a couple of hours, during which time several delegates came to listen. I am sure if we had attended the sessions we would have forgotten long ago what had been presented but this improvised rehearsal of a joint IAML/IASA string quartet we never forgot.
Some months ago I succeeded in persuading Dietrich to attend this year’s conference in Vienna. In fact he decided to come, accompanied by his wife Ellen, in order to meet again their friends and colleagues of former days who came to celebrate together with today’s IASA membership the association’s thirtieth birthday. Regrettably his plans were again interrupted. Dietrich Lotichius, who had suffered seriously from heart disease for some time, died on August 21st this year. At the memorial service which took place in the 400-year-old church of Hamburg-Bergedorf, where Dietrich lived, I was asked to commemorate Dietrich as a friend and a colleague. I expressed to his wife and his family the condolences of both the German radio archive colleagues and the membership of IASA. I am sure IASA will keep the memory of Dietrich Lotichius with gratitude.
Those of you who received the special celebration issue of the Information Bulletin in August but who could not make the Phonogrammarchiv’s 100th birthday celebrations in Vienna last month may be curious to know how those celebrations went.
The formal celebrations took place against a background of fervent socialising: the newest members from countries such as Cuba, Estonia, Latvia, China, Albania, Ireland, Papua New Guinea and Rumania were introduced to the current hard-core IASA and AGAVA delegates while some of these were meeting, perhaps for the first time, founder members Rolf Schuursma and Israel Adler. The actual birthday celebration was hosted by the parent organisation, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and held in the Academy’s magnificently ornate and capacious main hall. A large number of distinguished Austrian guests complemented the IASA and AGAVA conference delegates and filled the hall almost to capacity. They heard speeches from Karl Schlögl (Vice-President of the Academy), Sven Allerstrand (President of IASA), Joie Springer (representing the Director General of UNESCO) and the Phonogrammarchiv’s Director, Dietrich Schüller, who claimed that the present generation of archivists had "done nothing" and owed everything to the Phonogrammarchiv’s pioneers. Interspersed with the speeches were short extracts from significant recordings made by the Phonogrammarchiv from 1907 (Arthur Schnitzler) to this year (a recording of a Strauss waltz). The power and quality of some of the selections from the years in between (notably the working song of women from Nuristan) showed that perhaps Dietrich Schüller was being over-modest in his claim.
But the star turn of the evening was by the Director of the Österreichischen Phonothek, Gabriele Zuna-Kratky, who disappeared from view behind the podium during her good-humoured speech for several suspense-inducing seconds to emerge with a small birthday cake bedecked with a single but very large candle: this was presented with great charm to the deservedly proud Director of the Phonogrammarchiv.
Following the speeches, the party adjourned to a hall downstairs for drinks and a buffet, and mingled amongst an attractively presented and informative exhibition which traced the Phonogrammarchiv’s history and activities.
Next year’s IASA Conference will be held July 3rd - 7th, together with SEAPAVAA. The official invitations will be sent out early in the new year but a number of details can already be revealed in order to encourage you to attend IASA’s first trip to the Far East.
The overall theme of the conference is A future for the past. A number of themes have been decided which will form the basis for the plenary sessions: copyright issues; digital transfer priorities; selection; metadata; digital collection management; formats and obsolescence; and a session on the local situation in Singapore. Given the distance most delegates will have to travel, the main conference will revert to five days including (for IASA) the two General Assemblies. Sessions will all be joint IASA/SEAPAVAA events. IASA Committee and Section interests will be dealt with across the five days during normal conference proceedings.
Members are invited to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the Singapore Conference in July.
The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation at the IASA annual conferences by those who have no alternative funding and to encourage continuing participation in the work of IASA.
Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.
IASA Committees and Sections may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences.
The IASA Board has recently agreed new guidelines for the awarding of travel grants. You are asked to consider these carefully before making your application.
1. While the aim of IASA shall be to encourage members to attend the annual conference by supporting their travel costs, such support must take account of the current financial health of the Association. Normally, 50% of travel costs (cheapest air or train fare between the applicant’s home and the conference venue) will be met.
2. IASA will, in addition, approach the local conference organisers and request that the grantee’s registration fee be waived. The decision in each case will be up to the conference organiser.
3. Accommodation and subsistence costs will not be supported.
4. Applications must be sent in writing (by letter, fax or e-mail) to the Secretary-General in response to the announcement of travel and research grants which are published in the IASA Information Bulletin.
5. 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.
6. The method of payment shall be specified in the application including to whom moneys shall be paid and how they will be made.
7. The Secretary-General will check all applications received by the appointed deadline and will submit them to the Executive Board at its mid-year meeting for discussion and approval.
8. Applicants will be informed as soon as possible of the result after the Board’s decision has been reached.
9. IASA will not pay grants in advance of travel. Costs will be reimbursed on presentation of copies of the travel documents by the grantee to the IASA Treasurer during the conference.
10. IASA travel grants are awarded only to members of the Association; grants will not be made in support of accompanying persons.
Applications for travel grants to attend the Singapore conference should preferably be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of December 1999 in order to be considered at the mid-year Board meeting to be held in January 2000 but because of the short timescale leading up to next year’s Board meeting, applications may still be made up until the end of February. Please send your application to: IASA Secretary General, Albrecht Häfner, Suedwestrundfunk, Sound Archives, D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany, Fax +49 7221 929 2094.
Research grants are also available to assist in carrying out specific projects and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project which concerns the interests of IASA and which requires start-up funding or which requires financial support for work already underway is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (see address above). Applications will be considered as and when the Board of IASA meets, so the next opportunity will be at its mid-year meeting in January and then at Annual Conference in July.
The Executive Boards of IASA and ARSC are pleased to announce that the London conference scheduled for September 23-26 in 2001 will be a joint conference between the two organisations. This will be the first time that ARSC has met outside of North America.
The last IASA conference to be held jointly with ARSC was in Washington 1995 and it was clear that members from both organisations enjoyed the additional choice and range of conference sessions provided. London is an appropriate venue for ARSC since it has a number of active European members. The partnership is considered to have many advantages for both organisations and the extra input from ARSC to the organisation and content of the conference is most welcome.
The next edition of the IASA Directory is already in preparation for publication in March next year. Please be sure to notify The Editor, if you have not already done so, of any changes to the information which appears in the 1998 Directory.
This next instruction applies to institutional members. In view of the evidence from the recent elections that voting papers appear not to be reaching the most appropriate IASA contact person in the larger member institutions, if anyone at all, please take a careful look at the entry for your institution in the 1998 Directory and see whether or not a valid contact name has been registered. If not, please supply a name to me, the Editor: this information will be added to the IASA labels list for future mailings.
IASA Cataloguing Rules
Copies of the IASA Cataloguing Rules were delivered to IASA by the printers at State & University Library, Aarhus in September, just in time for the Vienna conference and many delegates took the opportunity to purchase copies at the conference.
The new IASA Treasurer is now finalising the most cost-effective method for ordering and paying for copies by post. The price has been set at 40 U.S. dollars but it is likely that the most suitable payment method for IASA’s new account held in Finland will be in Euros. An announcement and order form will be included in forthcoming IASA publications. However, you may place an order for a copy, to be paid for later, by writing or sending a fax to Magdalena Cséve at:
Hungarian Radio, Documentation, Bródy Sandor u.5-7,
H-1800 Budapest, Hungary.
Fax 36 1 328 8310
The on-line version of the rules will be available from the end of October at the iasa website.
London, October 11th, and hundreds of people from the media, archive and library community queued up on a warm evening outside BBC Broadcasting House to file into the launch of The year of the BBC Archive, an event held at the permanent BBC Experience exhibition in order to demonstrate how the organisation will lead its information and archives into the next century. The BBC is investing many millions of pounds in preservation projects. Most of the money is going towards new digital technology for the Sound Archive. New systems include a digital picture archive, audio and video direct to the desks of BBC programme makers and on-line news information (NEON) . It also includes delivery of "60,000 digitally mastered mood-music tracks", which some might regard as disappointing given the BBC’s reputation for nurturing and presenting music of high quality.
Speeches were heard from the Vice Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, Baroness Young of Old Scone and senior BBC executives including Paul Fiander, Head of Information and Archives. A number of distinguished guests were invited including Brian Lang (Chief Executive of the British Library), John Woodward (British Film Institute), Denis Frambourt (INA), Crispin Jewitt (President of IASA) and Peter Dusek (President of FIAT).
As the indecs project (http://www.indecs.org/ [189] reported in IASA Bulletin 29) approaches its launch conference (Names, numbers and networks) in Washington on 15th November, having succeeded in winning widespread consensus for its model tools and standards for e-commerce, the various companies around the globe that might be persuaded to buy into their ideas have been busy buying each other. Good and reliable sources for news of these developments which, sooner or later, will impact on the work of any sound archive involved in the collection of commercially produced recordings, are the websites for Billboard, Webnoize and Intertrust.
Billboard http://www.billboard.com/ [190] provides an informed weekly commentary on events relating to the Anglo-American music industry (mostly the popular music industry) as they unfold in its Sites + Sounds which covers the convergence of new technologies and the music industry. Of special interest (noted by IASA’s new Treasurer, Pekka Gronow) was the article "Online Music Sector is Evolving" in the July 24th 1999 issue.
Webnoize http://www.webnoize.com/ [191] based in Los Angeles is a good place for news about developments in the new media music industry. It appears to be updated on a daily basis. One of the recent items, as this Bulletin went to press, concerned the Music Business 2005 (MB5) conference held at the Ex'pression Center for New Media in Emeryville, California, http://www.mb-5.com/ [192] which examined how music delivery formats, record labels and media convergence will look five years from now.
Intertrust http://www.intertrust.com/ [193] (also based in California) covers a much broader spectrum of interests than the above though the recording and music industries (with clear American bias) are a small but not insignificant part. It publishes an on-line journal The Industry Standard available at http://www.thestandard.net/ [194]. New issues appear quarterly, it seems, but more recent news items on e-commerce concerns are tagged on to the pages. The June 1999 issue, for instance, contained a useful table of recent mergers and deals between some of the major players among which IASA members should note especially the purchase by the internet provider Lycos of Sonique. Lycos, which has a current base of 32 million users a month, is aware that as many as 50 percent of its users are looking for music on their site, therefore it made good business sense to provide them also with a player. Lycos has also signed with DMX, a subsidiary of cable company TCI's Liberty Digital, to provide thirty new radio channels. It will also be offering digital downloads, putting it in competition with sites like MP3.com, Tunes.com and Rioport.com. Hitherto the aim of Lycos has been to act as a "meta-aggregator for text-based content", like news. Soon they will also become an aggregator for recorded music. Lycos, from the UK, is found at http://www.lycos.co.uk/ [195].
Meanwhile, keep an eye (and ear) on the web pages for the conference which took place in Los Angeles in early September. Organised by First Conferences Ltd, Digital Distribution and the Music Industry ‘99 was included some of the most important names and products in the business, and some of the presentations can be heard or viewed, provided you have the correct facilities on your browser. Take a look, anyway, at http://www.firstconf.com/digitalmusic/ [196]
The Editor would welcome any information about similar sources of information from the non English-speaking world. A further selection of informative websites is given, as usual in the Sites and Sounds section below.
IASA readers might be puzzled at the mention in a IASA publication of a report from Oxford University but Oxford has consistently pushed forward the frontiers of the science of digitization of large-scale collections in all media and the final report by Stuart Lee Scoping the Future of the University of Oxford’s Digital Library Collections (funded by the A. W. Mellon Foundation) could well prove useful to those of you who are contemplating or engaged in the planning of major digitization initiatives. Particularly useful will be the summary recommendations and some of the appendices covering business plans and models (also including financial summaries), digitization methods, metadata and copyright.
The report can be read at http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/scoping/report.html [197]
Only a short while ago Z39.50 was the label to quote if you wanted to impress colleagues in documentation and reader services communities. What was once an American standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.50-1995) governing interoperability between distinct databases has become the matching international standard ISO 23950:1998. People have not stopped talking or writing about it. In Paul Miller’s excellent overview available through the most recent issues of the on-line journal Ariadne at http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/intro.html [198] we read that "a basic search for the term on 6 September [1999] produced a daunting 2,863 hits from Alta Vista, a scary 23,002 from Northern Light, and a positively mind-numbing 27,651 from FAST".
Paul Miller (currently the Interoperability focus for UKOLN - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/ [199]) has returned to the basics about what Z39.50 does and illustrates this with some successful applications of the present day, including the UK’s Arts and Humanities Database Service (AHDS) and the California Digital Library known as Melvyl. He ends by explaining how the standard works. Z39.50 is notoriously opaque for trainees but Paul Miller has succeeded in bringing some much- needed transparency to the subject.
This short-list of sound-related sites was recently received from IASA Treasurer, Pekka Gronow:
http://www.audible.com/ [200] is the address for Audible Inc’s growing selection of "audiobooks, comedy routines, news programs, lectures, historical audio clips, public radio shows, etc., which can be streamed or downloaded to a PC. Tune into http://www.audiohighway.com/ [201] for Audiohighway’s internet radio selection of Pop, Rock, Alternative, R&B, Jazz, and World Music. http://www.audiobookclub.com/ [202] claims to offer the largest selection of audio books, while http://www.mp3.com/ [203] is already a well-known provider of a wide range of recordings of all musical genres.
- http://www.cddb.com [204]/ is where to find "the world’s largest on-line database of audio CD information" and could emerge as a source for content metadata for sound archives. With a CDDB-enabled CD Player, downloadable from their CD Players section, each time you play a CD, your computer can access CDDB through the Internet for information about that specific disc. CDDB has data on all kinds of music, even CDs with multiple pressings.
- Michigan State University is planning an on-line collection of historical audio recordings which will make available over the internet 50,000 hours of interviews and speeches to researchers, students, and "anyone interested in the intonations, pauses, and coughs of history". The National Science Foundation (of America) announced this year a $3.6-million grant to the university to build the National Gallery of the Spoken Word. The on-line gallery will offer a broad range of material, including the first cylinder recordings by Thomas Edison, the voices of Babe Ruth and Florence Nightingale, and interviews by Studs Terkel. The IASA Newsdesk has been unable to trace a website but an abstract of the project can be viewed at http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/showaward?award=9817485 [205]
It gives me great pleasure to serve another three years as the Editor for IASA. The main aim of the last three years was to deliver a new set of designs as well as to maintain a flow of useful information about the Association and about developments in those areas which are of interest to it. I am delighted that the new design of this Bulletin has met with general approval and I have relayed this to the British Library Corporate Design Office who were largely responsible for enabling the changes.
The main aim of the next three years is to improve the coverage of news items which appear in this Bulletin. This particular issue contains a large amount of news generated by IASA itself but I am aware that the rest has mostly been derived by me from exploring the internet and this is not necessarily the best way to compile an issue which will be of interest to members in all countries, particularly where internet culture may not have arrived. What I propose from the next issue onwards is to circulate a prompt by e-mail to a select group of members (they do not yet know who they are, but I know who most of them will be) asking for new items for inclusion. If there is no news to report then I can always fall back on my current news gathering methods.
There have been suggestions that more images and graphics should be included. We proved with the Special Information Bulletin in the summer that high quality monochrome images could be accommodated easily into the format. However, I will be relying on you, the readers, to supply such images along with your news items. These can be sent as prints or negatives for scanning or as digital images in GIF or TIFF formats (though to be certain that these are of sufficiently high quality for printing they must be above 750Kb in size).
| Date | Event | Location |
| 1999 | ||
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | Toulouse |
| November 1 - 6 | AMIA Annual Conference | Montreal |
| November 5 - 7 | IASA-Ländergruppe Deutschland/Deuchschweiz Annual Conference | Cologne |
| 2000 | ||
| January 17 - 18 | IASA Executive Board, mid-year meeting | Paris |
| January 20 - 22 | JTS (Joint Technical Symposium) | Paris |
| February 19 -22 | AES 108th Convention | Paris |
| April | FIAF Annual Conference | London |
| April | ASRA Annual Conference | Melbourne |
| July 3 - 7 | IASA/SEAPAVAA Annual Conference "A future for the past" | Singapore |
| August 6 - 11 | IAML Annual Conference | Edinburgh |
| August 13 - 18 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Jersusalem |
| September 12 - 18 | Berlin Phonogrammarchiv Centenary | Berlin |
| September 20 - 22 | IAML-Gruppe Bundesrepublik Deutschland/IASA-Ländergruppe Deutschland/Deutschschweiz | Leipzig |
| September 21 - 26 | ICA 14th International Congress | Seville |
| September 22 - 25 | AES 109th Convention | Los Angeles |
| October | FIAT Annual World Conference | Vienna |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
| 2001 | ||
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| August 16 -25 | IFLA Council and General Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| September 23 - 26 | IASA/ARSC Annual Conference | London |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 32 BY 15 DECEMBER 1999
This is an edited version of FIAT President Peter Dusek's greetings to the IASA Conference in Vienna last September.
"It is an honour for me to bring greetings from one of IASA's affiliated organisations. FIAT is the umbrella organisation for television archives, at least since IASA broadened its scope from audio to audiovisual. FIAT and IASA are looking in the same direction. If you think about the digital revolution of our society, I think at the end of this development there will be no need for different organisations like FIAT, FIAF, IASA, etc.
But at the moment there are big differences. FIAT mainly deals with companies which have television production archives and that means that we have to live with old formats, with high level information content and the data-reduced browsing quality of the digitization of audio-visual contents of today is only the first step in the direction we will reach in some years.
You all know that there have been some attempts to hold joint annual conferences between FIAT and IASA, but neither Bogensee nor Washington yielded the expected results. FIAT and IASA together are too many people to enable a real exchange of information. Many members of IASA are researchers, audio-enthusiasts or radio archivists and are not interested in the problems of the television world. The overlapping interests are not significant enough to continue with such an elephantine marriage. But instead of these big meetings, we now have a working group which will be of greater importance for both organisations. The topic is digitization of radio archives as part of the digital development in the information world. This working group will meet for the third time at this conference (previous meetings were in Vienna and Lausanne) and I hope that this group will hold a further meeting in the Spring of 2000 in Rome or in Baden-Baden and then in October 2000 during the FIAT General Assembly also in Vienna.
There is also a second field of co-operation. There will be a Joint Technical Symposium in Paris between FIAT, FIAF and IASA, starting on January 20, 2000. This meeting should be one more step in the right direction and I hope that in the future we will have this Joint Technical Symposium between the three main audio-visual archive organisations. So you see, I have a dream: in some years from now maybe in seven or ten years we will have a single audio-visual organisation with several branches. We will not have three Presidents and three General Secretaries, but a strong co-operation between members of ICA, EFLA, FIAF, FIAT and IASA.
I wish the IASA General Assembly 1999 good results and I wish all our organisations that my dream has the chance to be realised."
The organisers of last year's annual conference in Vienna wish to report that the official attendance figure was 146 delegates from 37 countries. The number of delegates is definitely a record, as is probably the number of countries represented.
A number of delegates were subsidised by IASA but the organising committee also received Austrian subsidies to bring delegates from Eastern Europe, China, and Papua New Guinea. In particular, these funds came from the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and KulturKontakt, an agency which specialises in establishing and maintaining cultural contacts with Eastern Europe.
Dietrich Schüller writes: "The Phonogrammarchive is grateful to various manufacturers and distributors of audio equipment who, on the occasion of the Archive's centenary, have considerably enhanced its operations through their generous birthday gifts:
STUDER Audio Professional, for their gift of a STUDER A 810 Master Tape Recorder;
Dietmar KOLLER Recording Equipment, Vienna, in co-operation with SCHOEPS
Microphones Manufacturers, for their gift of a TASCAM DP 1 Portable R-DAT Recorder, along with a SCHOEPS MSTC 6 stereo microphone;
AKG, for providing the Archive with a pair of Blue Line CK 91 microphones, specially designed in collaboration with the Phonogrammarchiv for phonographic field work.
The Phonogrammarchiv has announced that this equipment will be used in co-operative projects with sister archives in developing countries.
Detlef Humbert (Südwestrundfunk) writes:
"Frank Rainer Huck, IASA member since 1978, retired from working at Saarländische Rundfunk at the end of last year. He had been President of the German/Swiss-German branch of IASA from 1991 until 1994 and subsequently a Vice President of the branch.
Frank Rainer Huck studied musicology, comparative literature, and psychology and first joined the musicological institute of the University of Saarbrücken before starting a long career in 1970 at Saarländische Rundfunk, one of the ARD public Broadcasting Companies, as an editor for classical and popular music. In 1975 he was appointed Head of the Archives and Library Division. Already at that time he was a determined advocate of co-operation between the ARD archives in the Southwest corner of Germany (Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Baden-Baden).
He actively participated in the work of IASA, in particular the Radio Sound Archives Section and the Cataloguing & Documentation Committee. He was a member of the Editorial Group which compiled The IASA Cataloguing Rules
He drafted the Constitution for the IASA German/Swiss-German branch and compiled and published the Directory of sound archives and sound collections in Germany and Switzerland, better known as "The Huck".
We wish him all the best in his retirement and hope he will continue to support IASA as an individual member."
This is the first call for papers for the IASA/SEAPAVAA Conference in Singapore, July 3-7 2000, the theme of which will be: A Future for the Past
As audio-visual archives enter their second century, this overall theme embraces the idea that archivists must always project their thoughts in two directions, backwards and forwards, in order to ensure that the work of the past will remain intact for future generations. The theme will be explored through a number of sub-themes: selection and acquisition; digital collection management (including metadata); format and obsolescence; the professional and political context of AV (e.g. global co-operation; persuading governments to give AV archiving greater priority; legal & copyright issues; cultural restitution; training); the state of audio-visual archiving in South-East Asia.
Technical papers will be welcomed but should not be repetitions of those given at the Joint Technical Symposium held in Paris in January. They should seek to address current needs while anticipating future developments that may be already on the horizon.
A selection of all papers delivered at the conference will be published subsequently in the IASA Journal. The conference language will be English. Please submit abstracts of a maximum of 150 words by 1 March 2000 to: Ms Irene Lim, National Archives of Singapore, 1, Canning Rise, Singapore 179868, Republic of Singapore. Fax: +65 3393583; e-mail Irene_L_L_Lim@NHB.gov.sg [206]
All abstracts will be screened by the IASA/SEAPAVAA programme committee and applicants will be informed if their contributions are accepted by 1 May 2000.
UNESCO Webworld news reported December 22nd 1999: "The greatest natural catastrophe, which has ever hit Venezuela as torrential rains poured non-stop last week causing thousands of deaths and destroying basic infrastructures and houses, has also severely affected the country's libraries and archives. According to Venezuela's National Library, a major part of the public library network of the states of Vargas, Miranda and Falcon has been destroyed. Many library service staff are dead, many are missing and there are enormous losses in equipment, collections, furniture and facilities. The overall damage in the information sector cannot yet be estimated. Also severely affected have been schools, museums, archives and cultural institutions.
UNESCO's Information and Informatics Division for Latin America and the Caribbean launched a call for world-wide solidarity from regional and international organizations, and from public and private institutions to offer prompt and generous cooperation to assist the Venezuelan Government in its efforts towards national reconstruction."
IASA has no members in Venezuela but the database compiled by the Archiving the Music World project, with support from IASA, lists two significant AV collections, including the national library's, which may have been affected by this disaster. Although the impression is "business as usual” at the national library's website (http://www.bnv.bib.ve [207]), I am sure that as Venezuelan sound archivists count the cost of this disaster any small gesture of support or sympathy from IASA might help to raise morale. Members are therefore encouraged to write to:
Ignacio Barreto, Biblioteca Nacional de Venezuela, Calle Soledad con Calle las Piedritas, Efif. Rogi, Apt. Post. 6525, Zona Ind. La Trinidad, 1071 Caracas, Venezuela (e-mail daudiov@bnv.bib.ve [208])
Gustavo Colmenares, Gerente, Fundacion Vicente Emilio Sojo, Avenida Santiago de Chile 17, Quinta Raquel, Los Caobos, 1071 Caracas, Venezuela (e-mail funves@reacciun.ve [209])
Kurt Degeller (IASA's UNESCO representative) reports on the 30th session of the UNESCO General Conference held November 11-12, 1999: "IASA's primary concern, the merging of the General Information Programme (PGI) and the Intergovernmental Informatics Programme (IIP) to form a new programme, was discussed in working group V. Proposals for a new programme were presented in the document 30 C/14 drafted by Marianne Scott (Canada) and the joint board meeting of the IIP and PGI in June 1999. The draft had been circulated and I took the opportunity to propose several amendments concerning the role of preservation and audio-visual media, many of which had been considered in the final version of the document. In its report following the examination of document 30 C/14, the Executive Committee of UNESCO mentions that "one delegate stressed that the role of libraries and archives in the new programme needs to be enhanced and that stronger co-operation with the relevant NGOs in this field be sought".
The Executive Board has now made a proposal to the General Conference recommending that it authorise the Board "to replace the General Information Programme and the Intergovernmental Informatics Programmes by a new programme, as recommended by the PGI Council and the IIP Committee, and taking account of the visions, values and objectives outlined in document 30 C/14”. Pending the establishment of the new programme, an interim committee consisting of the members of the bureaux of the PGI Council and the IIP Committee will be established. Finally, The Board invites "the Director General to prepare, in co-operation with the interim committee, a new programme and draft statutes of an intergovernmental body for the new programme and to submit these to the Executive Board at its 160th session."
In my short intervention during the debate in working group V, I emphasised that the new programme must maintain the balance between preservation and access, documents in analogue and digital form, analogue documents in paper and in audio-visual form. I mentioned also the necessity of training in the field of audio-visual archiving, the planned virtual training centre for audio-visual archiving and the JTS to be held in Paris in January. Finally, I offered the services of IASA in support of the elaboration of the new programme.
As there was no substantial opposition against the merging of the two programmes, we can presume that the General Conference will follow the proposal of the Executive Board and that a commission will meet in summer 2000".
Bern, November 16th 1999
Joie Springer, UNESCO, writes: "I would...like to encourage the submission of more audiovisual collections for registration on the Memory of the World Register. Information on nominating collections can be obtained from [the UNESCO] website at the following address:
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/en/how_to.htm [210]
A list of basic texts and databases can also be found at:
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/memory/basictexts.htm [211]
or can be obtained by writing to us at the following address:
Division of Information and Informatics, UNESCO, 1, rue Miollis, 75732 Paris Cedex 15
A workshop entitled Preservation for the Millennium: an International Collaboration , sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies, Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology was held in Manesar, just outside New Delhi, India from 5-12 December 1999. Delegates from South Africa, Ghana, Sudan, China, Papua New Guinea, Nepal, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, the USA, Australia, Austria, Cuba and Peru were funded from a grant provided by the Ford Foundation to attend. The organisers were Tony Seeger and Shubha Chaudhuri, and they provided a model of gracious and focused leadership.
The focus of the meeting was on the needs of research archives. Delegates had written papers before the meeting dealing with various aspects of audio-visual archiving, such as challenges, objectives, dissemination, networking, and funding.
The workshop began with delegates undertaking a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of their own archives. Later in the week, delegates presented questions centring on technical, ethical and copyright issues to a panel of IASA members Anthony Seeger , Grace Koch and Dietrich Schüller.
Each delegate participated in two working groups and two debates. The debates were highlights of the conference. One pitted archivists who wanted to increase their budgets against administrators who were to counter all arguments and refuse funding. The second debate was a three-way role play amongst performers, fieldworkers and archivists criticising the interactions amongst one another.
The working groups formulated a series of papers on ideal administrative structures for audio-visual archives, a philosophical statement on the importance of archives to society, possible archive services and strategies for their implementation, general principles of copyright, ethics, and guidelines for producing model forms for depositors, performers, pre-fieldwork, recording permissions and general user agreements. After the documents has been formulated, they were presented to the Indian Archives Resources Community, who offered questions and comments.
The results of the workshop will be published at a later date and it is hoped that IASA members will be able to learn more about it during the Singapore conference.
Starting in January 2000, a co-operation between the NRK and the National Library of Norway will include the digitization of all of the NRK Historical radio archive, plus digital deposit of two NRK radio channels.
The Historical archive contains some 45,000 quarter-inch tapes. Three tape engineers will use three workstations each in a daily routine whereby it is hoped they can digitize 225 tapes a week. Each recording will be digitised as .wav file, a 384 kb/s MPEG 1 layer 2 version, and a RealAudio version.
The digital deposit will be in the 384 kb/s MPEG format, and will be downloaded nightly from the NRK to the National Library, Rana Division.
An order has been placed for a mass storage system which will hold these files together with more digital objects, stemming from the library's other activities.
The financing, the people and soon the hardware will all be in place. We hope to report back with news of the progress. For more details, contact Karl Erik Andersen, Broadcast Archivist, Sound and Image Archive, National Library of Norway, Rana Division, NO-8607, Mo i Rana, Norway, tel. +47 75 12 11 82.
Previous issues of this Bulletin have reported on the rapid progress made by the indecs project. A brief report on the recent Washington conference "<names, numbers and networks>" appears at http://www.indecs.org/news/15nov_rep.htm [212]
Presentations were heard from Oliver Morgan (SMPTE), Glen Secor (Yankee Rights Management), Ralph Swick (W3C), David Martin (Book Data), Clifford Lynch (CNI). Matt Puccini (MUZE) and Nic Garnett (Intertrust) as well as Godfrey Rust, Mark Bide, Matt Puccini and Keith Hill representing the indecs consortium. Keynote speeches were given by Dr Leonardo Chiariglione, CSELT who reviewed the technological challenges for digital content management, and Cary Sherman of RIAA who updated the conference on developments within the SDMI initiative.
indecs moves across the globe to Sydney, Australia, for its next conference "Putting works to rights". Described as "an evaluation and implementation conference", this will be held 9th and 10th March 2000 at the Wentworth Hotel, Sydney and will be hosted by the Australian Copyright Industry Alliance (ACIA). Attendance will cost US$ 450. For further details contact INDECS Conference, c/o Copyright Agency Ltd, Level 19, 157 Liverpool Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia, or fax +61 2 9394 7601.
Last year I wrote a paper for the IASA Journal entitled "Audiovisual resource discovery on the web" (IJ 11). This examined just one kind of metadata, the descriptive kind, or the kind used to identify resources on the Internet. The two metadata schemes featured were Dublin Core and IMS.
Not only have things moved on swiftly since then but it is clear that there are many kinds of metadata relevant to sound archives, three at least, and within those three 'partitions' there already appears to be a bewildering range of schemes, each struggling to become the adopted standard in some place or another. It could be said that while media is converging the means to document them is diverging so that once again the scenario which confronts AV archivists is one of having to choose between mutually incompatible schemes. But I, for one, am not so pessimistic. Taking its cue from the American Z39.50 standard ,which has proved that interoperability between disparate computer systems is possible, information science in the Web environment promises the paradoxical scenario of uniformity with flexibility. Legacy cataloguing systems (as Stefan Hoffmann recommends [1]) governed by long-standing rules for spelling names and formulating uniform titles, can be harnessed to metadata stored within digital storage systems. Such metadata will consist mainly of numbers and codes since these are the data which machines understand best.
This present text is an expanded and updated version of the survey Metadata in sound archives which I presented to the Working Session of the Cataloguing Documentation Committee at IASA's Vienna conference. It was not my intention there to go into detail about any of the many initiatives now running, but just to present an overview of where the main action appeared to be and where it was heading, a map of my own Holzweg, my track through the forest. By now there will be other IASA members who have a better understanding than me and who have probably charted their own knowledge of metadata better than me.
At the evaluation conference for the indecs project (interoperability of data in e-commerce systems) in July this year one of the speakers illustrated metadata with a blank screen. One of the audience said that it was inaccurate because the screen had form - four edges [2]. There are indeed many dreams and ideas about metadata: so far it is quite difficult to recognise a scheme as being, for instance, the successor to a MARC record made for one of our recordings.
Emanations from the various metadata fora are of little help either. Rhetoric prevails over action. In April last year, the third Metadata Workshop and Concertation Meeting, organised by the European Commission, convened in Luxembourg. The major conclusions of the workshop can be summarised as follows:
for electronic documents and resources produced today, there is a pressing need for tools and systems to create and maintain metadata;
further research in this area is necessary;
the matter is complex, as requirements of different types have to be met, electronic commerce and long-term preservation of resources;
there is a need for a highest common denominator across domains and services. It is not yet clear what the specification for this is, and co-operation between many actors is necessary.
Read about the workshop at http://www.echo.lu/libraries/en/metadata/metadata3.html [213] or read a report in Ariadne (20) http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue20/metadata/ [214]
There seem to me to be three main kinds (or layers) of metadata likely to become the responsibility, in part or in total, of documentation and technical staff in audiovisual archives:
1. metadata for resource discovery
2. metadata for preservation
3. metadata for access rights and management
Metadata for resource discovery: Dublin Core, Z39.50
If you do not already have a digital storage system in operation, the closest you can get to seeing resource discovery metadata in action is to create a Dublin Core (DC) record for your archive's own website via DC-Dot: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcdot/ [215]
The DC and Z39.50 communities appear to have pooled concerns of late. Work proceeds on a project called the DC Metadata Initiative (DCMI). The lead figure in this is Stu Weibel from OCLC. See his "State of the DC Metadata initiative" in D-Lib Magazine (April 1999) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april99/04weibel.html [216]. Consider also the work of DSTC (Distributed Systems Technology Centre) in Australia, http://www.dstc.edu.au/ [217] which has an input to DCMI: Renato Ianella and Rachel Heery "Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - structure and operation" http://archive.dstc.edu.au/RDU/DCTAC/NOTE-DCSTRUCTURE.html [218]
Metadata for preservation: CEDARS, OAIS, David Bearman v Jeff Rothenberg, MPEG -7
At the Luxembourg Workshop, Michael Day (UKOLN) talked about metadata for preservation from the perspective of the CEDARS project (CURL Exemplars in Digital ARchiveS, where CURL = Consortium of University Research Libraries). The aims of this project are to promote awareness and identify appropriate strategies for collection management and long-term preservation, based on a realistic sample of current digital resources. Day noted that it was becoming increasingly recognised that metadata had an important role in the ongoing management of digital resources, including their preservation.
Day also discussed in some detail the model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) being developed by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems and its application in the CEDARS project. He concluded that digital preservation is increasingly becoming an important issue for libraries, archives and other organisations and that the creation and maintenance of relevant metadata can contribute to the solving of some digital preservation problems. He specifically pointed to the OAIS reference model as providing a common framework of terms and concepts:
Content Information
Representation Information
Preservation Description Information (broken down into Reference, Context, Provenance, and Fixity information)
Packaging Information
Descriptive Information
Projects, other than CEDARS, that are investigating the use of the OAIS model include NEDLIB in Europe and PANDORA in Australia. The British Library is also basing the design and development of its digital library on OAIS.
For Day's paper see: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~cedars/Papers/AIW02.html [219] [3] . For the OAIS model see http://ftp.ccsds.org/ccsds/documents/pdf/CCSDS-650.0-R-1.pdf [220]
Meanwhile, I can recommend re-tracing the debate in the US over Jeff Rothenberg's theories beginning in Scientific American some years ago and continued in last year's report Avoiding Technological Quicksand: Finding a Viable Technical Foundation for Digital Preservation... (Washington DC, CLIR, 1999) (available at http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/rothenberg/contents.html [221]
and the rejoinder by David Bearman "Reality and chimeras in the preservation of electronic records"D-Lib Magazine (April 1999) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april99/bearman/04bearman.html#Note-1 [222]. (Albrecht Haefner reviewed the Rothenberg report in IASA Journal no.14).
Great expectations are being aroused by MPEG-7 the standard for multi-media due to be published in 2001 which incorporates metadata for audiovisual media. See Jane Hunter "MPEG-7 behind the scenes" in D-Lib Magazine (September 1999) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september99/hunter/09hunter.html [223] or visit the MPEG website at http://www.cselt.stet.it/mpeg/ [224].
Metadata for access/rights management (SDMI, Intertrust, indecs, SMEF)
Rather than weigh up the pros and cons of each of the main players in e-commerce as it relates to audiovisual media, I will leave you to draw your own conclusions by visiting the respective web-sites:
SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) http://www.sdmi.org/ [225] (and much reported in the music industry press, e.g. Billboard and Financial Times Music & Copyright).
indecs project http://www.indecs.org/ [189] (reported on elsewhere in this Bulletin)
intertrust http://www.intertrust.com/ [193] (with their widely supported and financed Magex e-commerce system).
For a recent view of intellectual property rights in the digital environment in the United States see Henry M Gladney "Digital dilemma: intellectual property" in D-Lib Magazine (December 1999) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12gladney.html [226]. This is a distillation of the full report The digital dilemma: intellectual property in the information age available on-line at http://www4.nas.edu/cpsma/cstbweb.nsf/86e5876b3bf8b
e848525631f00688fc5/760c39d69552dcd88525681e004d52ec?OpenDocumen [227]t. It will shortly be printed in book form by the National Academies.
Meanwhile, the broadcast industry, in Europe at least, is intent on providing its own solution to digital media management. Information is evidently hard to glean but there was a press release issued by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) last year concerning Project P/Meta: http://www.ebu.ch/press_0499a.html [228]. This is based on work developed at the BBC, specifically the Media Data Group led by Carol Owens which has developed a Standard Media Exchange Framework (SMEF). To this exchange reference model they will endeavour to add SMPTE metadata. Members of the IASA Radio Sound Archives Section are invited to contribute more information on this development.
End notes
1. Stefan Hoffmann. "Between digitisation and mass storage: system structures in digital archives" IASA Journal, no.14 (December 1999)
2. The speaker was not entirely honest in his representation of metadata as a blank screen. Anyone who uses the Internet will already have been using metadata in the form of the URL or unique resource location. "URLs have been serving the combined purpose of identifying a resource and describing its location for some time now, but they are not a satisfactory means of uniquely identifying a digital resource. The URL simply points to the current location of the resource. If a resource is moved to a new location, the previous URL is no longer useful. A persistent and unique identifier would be specific to one particular digital resource and preserve access to that resource regardless of its location, as long as it still existed on the Internet". PADI: Preserving Access to Digital Information http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/topics/36.html [229]
3. A new CEDARS data catalogue is under review at the time of writing and will be featured in a future Bulletin.
Chris Clark, The British Library National Sound Archive
Please note that from April 1st this year telephone and fax numbers for members based in London will change. All seven-digit numbers under the area code (0)171 become 020 7nnn nnnn and all seven-digit numbers under the area code (0)181 become 020 8nnn nnnn. Therefore, from outside the UK, the numbers for the IASA President Crispin Jewitt become (tel) +44 020 7412 7424 (fax) +44 020 7412 7422 and for the IASA Editor, (tel) +44 020 7412 7411 (fax) +44 020 7412 7413.
The website of the National Gallery of the Spoken Word (see Bulletin no.31) is at http://www.ngsw.org/gallery.html [230]
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2000 | ||
| January 17 - 18 | IASA Executive Board, mid-year meeting | Paris |
| January 20 - 22 | JTS (Joint Technical Symposium) | Paris |
| February 19 -22 | AES 108th Convention | Paris |
| April 13 - 15 | ASRA Annual Conference "Sound of Federation" | Melbourne |
| May 31 - June 4 | ARSC Conference | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
| June 3 - 10 | 56th FIAF Annual Conference | London (National Film Theatre) |
| July 3 - 7 | IASA/SEAPAVAA Annual Conference "A future for the past" | Singapore |
| August 6 - 11 | IAML Annual Conference | Edinburgh |
| August 13 - 18 | 66th IFLA Council and General Conference | Jerusalem |
| September 12 - 18 | Berlin Phonogrammarchiv Centenary | Berlin |
| September 20 - 24 | IAML-Gruppe Bundesrepublik Deutschland/IASA-Ländergruppe Deutschland/Deutschschweiz | Leipzig |
| September 21 - 26 | ICA 14th International Congress | Seville |
| September 22 - 25 | AES 109th Convention | Los Angeles |
| October | FIAT Annual World Conference | Vienna |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
| 2001 | ||
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| August 16 -25 | 67th IFLA Council and General Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| September 23 - 26 | IASA/ARSC Annual Conference | London |
| 2002 | ||
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| 68th IFLA Council and General Conference | Glasgow, U.K. | |
| September | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 33 BY 15 MARCH 2000
Paola Bernardi, co-founder of Istituto di Ricerca per il Teatro Musicale (I.R.TE.M.) and long-time IASA member, died in Rome on December 1, 1999. Professor Carlo Marinelli (I.R.T.E.M.) pays tribute to her life and work:
"Paola Bernardi was born in Vicenza on May 21, 1930; she took her degree in piano studies at the Milan Conservatory with Carlo Vidusso in 1946. She subsequently took degrees in choral music and conducting (Rome, 1957), and in harpsichord with Ferruccio Vignanelli (Rome, 1961).
In 1948, at the early age of eighteen, she began teaching music in schools, and continued this activity until 1965, when she obtained a post as harpsichord teacher at the Conservatoire in Bologna. From 1980 until her retirement in 1997 she taught harpsichord at the Music Conservatoire in Rome. In Bologna she also taught musical pedagogy, and was the first to institute, in the Bolognese Conservatory, a course dedicated to musical orientation for primary school teachers. She also taught both of these courses at the Conservatoire in Aquila between 1975 and 1980. She was Professor at the University in Aquila in the academic year 1988-89.
She held national and international master classes, and was a jurist at many harpsichord competitions. She published several works in the field of musical pedagogy for Le Monnier, Ricordi, and De Santis. She performed as a soloist and in chamber groups such as I Solisti di Roma and Gruppo di Ricerca e Sperimentazione Musicale both of which she helped to found, and with whom she toured extensively in Italy, Europe and South America. She made many radio recordings with these groups.
Paola was among the first harpsichordists in Italy to perform early music on period instruments and she was also a distinguished performer of 20th-century harpsichord music. She recorded for RCA, Discoteca di Stato, and I.R.T.E.M.
In 1972 she founded the Associazione Clavicembalistica Bolognese over which she presided intermittently. After 1985 she originated two projects which proved to be of fundamental importance for the harpsichord in Italy: the National Harpsichord Performance Competition, organized every two years and now at its 8th event, and the editorial series which she directed until the end, and which will soon issue its sixteenth volume.
Her musicological activity comprised critical editions of Italian vocal and instrumental music of the 18th century (concertos by Felici and Martini, quartets by Guglielmi as well as four volumes of songs by Domenico Corri). She also published volumes on the harpsichord transcriptions of operas by Handel and Lully, and collaborated in the critical edition of the recording of G. Paisiello's Re Teodoro in Venezia. She harmonized popular tunes and carried out research on rhythmic education; she wrote essays on vocal music in the 18th century, and on the transcriptions of operas written by Italian composers of the 18th century, as well as by Mozart, Rossini, and Beethoven; these essays will soon be collected and published in one volume.
In 1984 she was one of the founders of I.R.T.E.M. and was a member of both the Central Committee and the Scientific Council of the Institute. She directed research on the dissemination of opera and ballet in non-theatrical contexts; she edited from a musicological viewpoint the recordings produced by I.R.TE.M. together with the Discoteca di Stato.
She was a member of the Board of Advisors for Music of the Ufficio Centrale dei Beni Librari e delle Istituzioni Culturali at the Ministry of Culture.
She was national Vice-Secretary of the Italian musicians union (Sindacato Musicisti Italiani SMI) during Goffredo Petrassi's presidency, and also member of the Board of Administration both at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna and at the Rome Opera Theater.
In the course of her 35-year long career as a harpsichord teacher Paola Bernardi gave rise to a school of performance based on an in-depth, rigorous study of the musical text, with continuous reference to compositional structure and to period treatises concerning the performance practice of early music, while at the same time giving importance to the interpretation of 20th century music played on modern harpsichords. She had many students, among whom are some of the best performers and teachers of the Italian school of harpsichordists."
Pekka Gronow, IASA's recently elected Treasurer, unexpectedly had to undergo heart surgery earlier this year. He has been advised by his doctors to reduce his professional commitments for the time being and has therefore felt obliged to resign as a IASA Board member. On behalf of the IASA membership, the Executive Board wishes Pekka a speedy recovery.
According to the Rules of the Association, in such circumstances the Executive Board is empowered to appoint a replacement Board member. The Board is therefore delighted to be able to announce the appointment of Anke Leenings as of April this year. Here are her contact details:
Anke Leenings
Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv
Bertramstrasse 8,
60 320 Frankfurt, Germany
Fax 49 69 15687 100
Email aleenings@hr-online.de [231]
Phonogrammarchiv der Universität Zürich
Freiestrasse 36, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland
Collection of Swiss nearly 800 dialect recordings made since 1909. Aims to cover dialects and socio-lects of the four national languages: German, French, Italian, Rhaeto-Romance.
Department of Folk Tradition
University of Tampere, P.O. Box 607, 33101 Tampere, Finland
Collection of Finnish folklore and popular music.
Traditional Music Archive (TRAMA)
Institute of African and Asian Studies, University of Khartoum
P.O. Box 321, Khartoum, Sudan
Audiovisual documentation, preservation and research archive of Sudanese folklore and culture.
Contact: Ali al Daw, Assistant Director
Apologies to William Moran, whose address has been incorrectly listed in the Directory and on IASA mailing lists for at least four years. The fact that he resides in La Canada, California and not in the country of Canada has now been rectified.
There are a few places left is still time to book your place at this year's IASA conference, to be held jointly with SEAPAVAA in Singapore, July 3-7. All members will by now have received their invitation together with registration forms. If this is not the case, then please contact IASA Secretary General Albrecht Haefner (fax 49 7221 929 2094, e-mail albrecht.haefner@swr-online-de [232]).
The Conference organisers have agreed to the following changes with regard to cancellations:
1. Cancellations before 15 May 2000 : replacement of payments without deduction
2. Cancellations before 15 June 2000 : replacement of payments with a deduction of 10%
3. Cancellations after 15 June : no replacement of payments
The call for papers is still open (but only just). The programme organisers are keen to consider presentations on the following topics: acquisitions; obsolescence; selection; access. If there are any current programmes of work relating to these topics in your institution which you feel would contribute usefully to the overall theme "A future for the past" or if there are any developments in your geographical area which impact on these topics, please contact John Spence urgently at Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Archives, G.P.O. 9994, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia. Fax 011 61 2 9333 2525, e-mail [233]spence.john@a2.abc.net.au [233].
Alan Ward, Manager of Archive Services at The British Library National Sound Archive has sent in this report on the Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) held last January in Paris.
"The JTS was very worth while attending. I found it most valuable for the ideas on preservation and digitisation strategy, which it confirmed or stimulated, rather than the details of this or that technique. The main programme presentations were generally well staged and chaired. The auditorium was well appointed (though refreshment arrangements took a while to get into gear) and the PowerPoint presentations and translation service all worked. However the "posters" in the lobby, though a good idea, were amateurishly presented and much too cramped for space (and few related to sound recordings), and (I think) only one of the few trade displays was concerned with audio.
There were two sessions of specific interest to sound archives. Papers 1.5-1.9 were about magnetic tape and CD-R longevity: techniques for measuring it (tape) and the results of artificial ageing studies (CD-R). Some useful overall points were (my terminology may be inaccurate in places):
On digital recordings significant analogue audio loss is measurable before block error rate increases show up on measuring devices.
Measuring block error rates does not necessarily detect all aspects of signal deterioration.
However, block error rate increases usually mirror other forms of digital loss and can therefore still be used as a good general-purpose guide.
In tests, R-DAT stands up rather better than CD-R in the long term. For this reason among others, many European broadcast archives use it in preference to CD-R.
The main drawback of R-DAT is seen not so much as its fragility and reliance on an unstable metal-particle emulsion (the usual UK worries), but its exclusively professional status. There is no consumer market and hence no product development. Manufacturers may soon abandon it. This does not of course apply to CD-R.
Of the CD-R makes and types tested by several people, a consensus generally rated Kodak as the best.
Clearly CD-R is a delicate medium and even the best of them can be badly affected by poor storage conditions. Monitoring condition and recording integrity is essential, and appears to be widely practised in many countries already. There is clearly potential for collaboration between AV repositories in testing media.
A second group of presentations (papers 3.3-3.11) were more diverse but covered several aspects of the structure of mass storage systems. Points, which struck me, were:
Currently there is a tension between the need for consistent standards for recordings and metadata, and the perceived need for immediate change and progress towards digital storage. It was clear from several presentations that much diversity and potential confusion and incompatibility has already been created in the building of mass storage systems, some based on standards inherited from existing systems created for other purposes, some newly created. Caution seemed advisable, especially since most common analogue media have plenty of shelf life left in them (as Dietrich Schüller and others keep pointing out).
The symposium made it clear that recordings and related metadata, including content descriptions, will be inextricably linked as part of one and the same system. The management of preservation and cataloguing activity in large archives needs to converge and probably merge.
The long-term survival of metadata is almost as important as the survival of digitised audio. The diversity and dubious longevity of metadata standards dwarf the problems of audio digitisation standards into comparative insignificance.
Jim Lindner rounded off the conference with a humorous but perceptive analysis of the present confused situation. He poured scorn on the many over-complex, ill-planned systems currently envisaged which will actually do more to hasten the loss of the mountains of data to be stored than doing nothing at all. (Archivists in the digital age seem to have forgotten that their main job is selection, as before). Conversely perhaps, he displayed statistics to show that every year about twice as much data can be stored for the same price as the previous year, so that theoretical affordable storage capacity will be massively greater than at present in only two or three years. The lesson: digital audio compression for archives is totally pointless. His response to the current half-baked notion of permanent "deep storage" of digital data was to suggest that the obvious problems looming with such gigantic systems could be avoided if data were kept permanently in circulation, using networked redundant computer capacity controlled by daemons. Confidentiality would be protected by encryption and splitting into separate data streams. Circulation would be maintained by terrestrial and extra-terrestrial delay lines e.g. sending data streams to extra-terrestrial satellites and back. It all made perfect sense to me but some of the delegates did not find it at all amusing."
This year's ARSC annual conference takes place 31 May to 3 June in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The programme will include discussion and playback by Tim Fabrizio and George Paul of “what might be the oldest surviving recordings in the world from two machines made by Augustus Stroh in 1878 and 1879”. It also includes a presentation by Russian discographer Valari Safonshkin on early Russian romance and gypsy recordings.
ARSC is also offering this year a pre-conference workshop given by experts from the Library of Congress and New York Public Library on “Basic care and management of sound recordings”. This will also include number one hot topic of the moment, copyright.
IASA President, Crispin Jewitt, will be attending part of the conference to present plans and ideas for the joint IASA-ARSC conference to be held in London in September 2001.
Registration for ARSC 2000 (US $ 90) is available at http://www.arsc-audio.org/ [234] or by mail at Executive Director, PO Box 543, Annapolis, MD 21404-0543
This is the first call for papers for Preservation 2000: an International Conference on the Preservation and Long Term Accessibility of Digital Materials to be held 7-8thDecember 2000 York, England. The Research Libraries Group and the Cedars project will also be organising a workshop on preservation metadata for the 6th December to be linked to the conference.
"As we enter the new millennium, many organisations and individuals share concerns about our ability to bring with us the vast array of digital materials accumulated in libraries, archives, museums and other cultural and heritage organisations. The Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) in the UK, through the Cedars project, funded through the JISC eLib programme, has been developing strategic, methodological and practical guidance for libraries and archives in best practice for digital preservation. Over the past 2 years, Cedars has been actively promoting awareness about the importance of digital preservation both amongst university libraries and archives and amongst the data creating and data supplying communities upon which they depend.
Preservation 2000 promises to bring together experts and enthusiasts from a variety of disciplines and organisations to discuss and debate recent advances in this critical area. This state of the art conference will make the most of both the interdisciplinary and international dimensions which are key to facing the challenges imposed by long term access to digital objects.
The aim of the conference is to facilitate meaningful dialogue between the wide array of organisations and individuals currently working with digital archives and preservation. The main goal for the conference is to share, disseminate and discuss current key issues concerning the preservation of digital materials.
The conference programme will focus on three main strands:
Content and selection issues for long term preservation
Models for digital archives including technical and organisational issues related to access and management
Economic and Cost Modelling for digital preservation
We invite submissions in all areas of digital archiving and preservation, including (but not limited to) the following:
Exemplars for the establishment of digital archives systems and services
Management practices commonly required by libraries and archives in addressing the longevity of digital collections
Business models for digital archives (e.g. collaborative or federated repositories)
Frameworks for the development of digital collection management policies including selection or materials
Intellectual property rights: issues for digital preservation
Security, authentication and authenticity in digital archives
Electronic publishing and digital archives
Prospective authors are asked to submit an abstract of no more than 500 words describing their paper by no later than 30 May. Notification of acceptance will be made by 30 July. A provisional Programme will be available by 30 August. Authors are encouraged to submit papers electronically and, in particular, in postscript (or PDF) format.
Abstracts should be submitted by post or email to:
Kelly Russell, Cedars Project Manager, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT. England, UK
Phone: (+44) (0) 113 233 6386 Fax:(+44) (0) 113 2335539, k.l.russell@leeds.ac.uk [181]
Digital Reality II: Preserving Our Electronic Heritage is the title of a conference co-sponsored by the NELINET Preservation Advisory Committee, the John F. Kennedy Library, and the Northeast Document Conservation Center which will take place at the John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts on Monday, June 5, 2000.
The conference poses the questions: how can libraries, archives, and organizations cope with the ever-increasing amount of digital material? Will future generations be able to read our CD-ROMs and computer files?
Speakers include Tim Berners-Lee, MIT, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Jeff Rothenberg, Rand Corporation, promoter of emulation as a digital preservation strategy, Fynnette Eaton, Smithsonian Institution, promoter of migration as a digital preservation strategy, Paul Conway, Yale University, author of articles on digital preservation and digital imaging, Walt Crawford, Research Libraries Group, an information architect and author of 14 books and over 180 articles on libraries, technology, publishing and personal computing, and Jan Merrill-Oldham, Harvard, consultant and author in preservation planning, management, and development.
Full programme and registration information is posted on the NELINET web site, http://www.nelinet.net/conf/pres/pres00/digital.htm [235]
For more information contact Robert Cunningham at NELINET, rcunningham@nelinet.net [236] or 1-800-NELINET.
Inger Johanne Christiansen announces an important conference on preservation which takes place in Bergen, May 4th-5th.
"In 1997 the publication Plan for the Preservation of Norwegian Sound Recordings http://www.nbr.no/verneplan/lyd/english/long.html [237] resulted from an excellent research project which started in 1993 on 100 years of Norwegian sound recordings and how to safeguard them. In 1994 the Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs gave financial support to the project and the second Conference of Norwegian Sound Archives was held in Oslo to discuss further progress and the last conference took place at the National Library, Rana Division in October 1998, http://www.nbr.no/lyd98/ [238] (summaries in Norwegian).
Our next conference will take place in Bergen, on of this year's European Cultural Cities, at the beginning of May this year. We are welcoming all librarians, archivists, private collectors and people from the recording industry with interest in audiovisual recordings.
The main topics will be: Sound and pictures on the Internet (speaker, Knut Magne Risvik from Fast Search & Transfer); lawyer Jon Wessel Aas, from The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation will give us an important link between the technical and juridical aspects of copyright laws; a presentation on ISRC will be given by Tom Hovde, Gramo (Joint Collecting Society for Musicians, Performing Artists and Phonogram Producers), the Norwegian association responsible for administrating the codes; Erik Brataas from Phonofile will demonstrate their new database on the Internet containing CD recordings from Norwegian Record companies. This is a database containing the whole sound track in RealAudio and MP3 format, 1300 items altogether, and with a searchable catalogue with possibilities for downloading the whole CD for listening and storing. This project was originally established as an archive for the Norwegian TV2 Company, but this database is of interest for all of us.
Another main presentation is How to establish a Norwegian Archive of popular music and rock. We are looking to Sweden, and Olle Johansson from Arkivet för ljud och bild in Stockholm will tell us how to establish and organise such an archive. In addition we have invited Jan Sneum, Danmarks Radio P3 and Trond Bjørknes, The Norwegian Rock Association, to discuss how to create and organise an institution to take better care of Norwegian popular music and rock.
Further details of the programme (in Norwegian) are at http://www.nb.no/html/lydkonferanse/html [239].
Alan Ward, The British Library National Sound Archive, reports:
"The above is the title of a report by Paul Brindley of the Institute for Public Policy Research, "Britain's leading centre-left think tank", and of the seminar held on 2nd March to launch the report. The report and meeting were both about the impact of the internet on the record industry. Although current UK copyright law can be interpreted as applying to distribution via the internet, nobody has devised a foolproof system to prevent unauthorised internet distribution of copyright music without payment to rights holders. The response of the UK record industry has been dilatory and unimaginative; developments have been effected by new players while the established companies have been worrying about the threat to their revenues and traditional business from a distribution system founded on the idea of unrestricted access. The report makes a series of recommendations, encouraging the industry to engage with e-commerce and provide quality products and services, which will gain the respect of consumers.
Several speakers supported this general theme, and, as usual on these occasions, the need for consumers to pay a fair price for everything in order to prevent the decline of musical creativity and innovation was recited. Underlying anxieties were illustrated when the discussion turned to the need to educate young people to respect copyright law and banish all thoughts of using or distributing copyright music without payment, at which point the smell of humbug began to permeate the already rather heavy atmosphere. (On a bright March day the meeting was held in the Ministry of Sound's subterranean and dimly lit dance hall.)
If the New Musical Entrepreneurs scenario gains ground, sound archives and libraries which collect the national output of published phonograms have at least as much to worry about as the old music business. In the UK for example, no forms of on-line publication are covered by statutory deposit, and means of identifying and capturing output seem as elusive as foolproof royalty collection. Much is already being created and distributed without a permanent record; if larger interests begin to operate exclusively via the internet, the proportion of lost material will increase. There must also be concerns about technical quality of downloads from internet distribution."
Copies of the report can be obtained from Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN. Tel 020 8986 5488. email ippr@centralbooks.com [240]
The long-expected response from established corporate and legal interests to the apparent free-for-all business of recorded music on the Internet is now gaining momentum in the guise of digital rights management (better known as DRM). A recent report by Michael Gebb in Billboard http://www.billboard.com [190] (February 19th 2000: "Labels jump on digital rights bandwagon") covered the main initiatives.
For the moment free use of unencrypted MP3 formats is likely to remain a fact of life because the user community is so firmly established, but now that labels are adopting SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) and similar secure digital formats the big question is how to distribute the revenue when consumers actually start paying for downloading from the Internet.
"The new DRM field breaks down into three elements: distribution, management and security protection, and fulfilment", wrote Gebb. Existing distributors, who already wield power in the world of physical products, could simply add DRM to their existing range of products and services. They are expected to engage with DRM in droves over the coming months. But like everything else in the digital environment, it is not just a case of plugging in existing ways of doing things and expecting a faster ride. As recently as last year, record labels were simply looking at promoting product on the Internet without suffering from the effects of illegal exploitation. The aim now is to harness the best authoring tools to the user interface while ensuring that transactions are governed by reliable and robust technology: protecting copyrights is even more of a necessity. This will almost certainly mean that labels and distributors sub-contract to a DRM company, a number of which are already available. For instance, Bertelsmann has launched its own digital rights management company, Digital World Services.
Electronic distribution introduces many other costs for record labels, such as "digital watermarking, compression, mastering, encoding, bandwidth, server space, clearinghouse costs, technology licensing costs, technical support, and customer service". Some of these costs will decrease as revenues from
e-distribution increase and the benefits of well-produced software are utilised.
One of the leading companies in DRM software provision is InterTrust Technology Corp. InterTrust's software "allows labels or artists to set usage rules for each music product. In one case, a user might be allowed to make one copy. In another case, the user might be allowed to make five. In a different case, it might be a one-time usage fee. In each example, rights fees would be protected". (IASA members can expect to hear more about the InterTrust solution at the Singapore Conference in July Ed).
Nobody is expecting DRM to eradicate piracy: in fact e-commerce is more likely to increase the opportunities for hackers and pirates. But what does seem likely is that the pattern of recorded music provision will change from large shipments of universal hits to highly individualised packages of customised product, for example the songs of just one particular singer or composer. If this happens then there is not much scope for piracy.
Following the news in the last Information Bulletin about the damage caused by flooding in Venezuela, the IASA news desk has received the following response from the Director of the Central University in Caracas thanking IASA for its gesture of support and seeking a way to ensure lasting contact in the future. Fortunately the floods caused no damage to Venezuelan archives.
"Agradecemos mucho su mensaje de apoyo y solidaridad para con Venezuela y nuestra institucion. Afortunadamente la zona donde se encuentra nuestra sede no tuvo mayores problemas por las lluvias. Nuestros archivos permanecen intactos... De parte nuestra institucion, reciba usted los mas cordiales saludos y nuestra total disposicion a mantener un contacto permanente. Gustavo Colmenares, Gerente."
Lynne Brindley has been appointed as the new Chief Executive of the British Library. She will be the first Chief Executive of the Library who is also a professional librarian. Lynne Brindley is currently Pro-Vice-Chancellor and University Librarian at the University of Leeds where she has been since 1997. Brindley will take over from Brian Lang at the British Library on 1 July 2000. In a statement to the UK press at the time of her appointment she said that one of her aims would be "to reach out to new publics and to put digital library developments centre stage."
CoOL, a project of the Preservation Department of Stanford University Libraries, is a full text library of conservation information, covering a wide spectrum of topics of interest to those involved with the conservation of library, archives and museum materials. http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/ [241]
It includes a number of articles by Jim Lindner (who spoke controversially at the recent Joint Technical Symposium) on tape preservation.
Kodak: permanence, handling and caring of CDs, recommended by the UK National Preservation Office:
http://www.kodak.com:80/US/en/digital/techInfo/permanence2.shtml [242]
FMD-ROM. See the article Is DVD already dead? at Roman"> http://www.3dhardware.net/features/dvdead/ [243]
Dempsey's view. Although not specifically about audiovisual media, the article by Lorcan Dempsey Scientific, Industrial, and Cultural Heritage: a shared approach is an excellent overview of the "research framework for libraries, archives and museums as they move into a shared network space". Originally prepared for the European Commission's Information Society Directorate General in the context of Fifth Framework it has also been published in the online journal Ariadne http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue22/dempsey/ [244]
Holyland Records' Chants from the Holy Land is a series of CD's featuring the depth and breadth of Christian liturgical music from the Holy Land. It consists of 40 CDs recorded live at churches and monasteries throughout the land of the Bible in the very places where the events of the Bible occurred. To review the series go to: http://www.netbeat.com/holyland [245] or http://www.holylandrecords.com [246]. - Norwegian Jazz Discography (1905 1998) available on the Web. The National Library of Norway in Cupertino with the Norwegian Jazz Archives present the printed discography by Johs Bergh on the Internet. This is the first time a complete Norwegian jazz discography has been published. It is available at http://www.nb.no/norskjazz/ [247]. Contact: Trond Valberg, National Library of Norway, Rana Division trond.valberg@nb.no [248]
British newsreel database. The British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) has now published its database of British newsreels as a CD-ROM and online. Between 1910 and 1979 the newsreels, released twice a week in British cinemas, gave millions their picture of national and world events. Such fondly remembered names as Pathe News, Gaumont British News and British Movietone News were seen in every cinema, and have now preserved an invaluable record of life and news in the twentieth century. The database has now been published as a website at http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen [249], with free access to all ac.uk addresses and BUFVC members. It is also being sold as a cross-platform (PC or Apple Mac) CD-ROM, price £95.00 (including postage and packaging) but with one copy free to BUFVC member representatives, with a discount price of £65.00 for additional copies. For more details, visit http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen or [250] contact the BUFVC at ask@bufvc.ac.uk [251]
The new IASA Directory is now available and will be sent to all members. Please remember to notify the Editor of any changes to the details recorded in the Directory as this is now used to generate the mailing lists on which the Board's communications with the membership depend.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2000 | ||
| April 13 - 15 | ASRA Annual Conference "Sound of Federation" | Melbourne |
| May 22 24 | IEEE Advances in Digital Libraries http://lsdis.cs.uga.edu/ADL2000/ADL2000CFP.htm [252] | Library of Congress, Washington DC |
| May 31 - June 4 | ARSC Conference | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
| June 3 - 10 | 56th FIAF Annual Conference | London (National Film Theatre) |
| July 3 - 7 | IASA/SEAPAVAA Annual Conference "A future for the past" |
Singapore |
| August 6 - 11 | IAML Annual Conference | Edinburgh |
| August 13 - 18 | 66th IFLA Council and General Conference | Jerusalem |
| September 12 - 18 | Berlin Phonogrammarchiv Centenary | Berlin |
| September 20 - 24 | IAML-Gruppe Bundesrepublik Deutschland/IASA-Ländergruppe Deutschland/Deutschschweiz | Leipzig |
| September 21 - 26 | ICA 14th International Congress | Seville |
| September 22 - 25 | AES 109th Convention | Los Angeles |
| October | FIAT Annual World Conference | Vienna |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
| December 7 - 8 | Preservation 2000: An International Conference on Preservation and Long-Term Accessibility of Digital Materials | York, UK |
| 2001 | ||
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| August 16 -25 | 67th IFLA Council and General Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| September 23 - 26 | IASA/ARSC Annual Conference | London |
| 2002 | ||
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| 68th IFLA Council and General Conference | Glasgow, U.K. | |
| September | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 34 BY 15 JUNE 2000
Printed in Budapest, Hungary
At the final joint session of the Singapore conference in July, three resolutions were adopted and will form the basis for future collaboration between the two associations, IASA and SEAPAVAA as well as informing their respective strategies.
1. IASA and SEAPAVAA believe there is an urgent need to develop the CCAAA [Co-ordinating Council of Audio-visual Archives Associations] as an effective co-ordinating body for the strategic development of the global audio-visual archiving sector. Both associations are keen to play an active and appropriate role within this Council, and urge UNESCO to afford it due support and recognition on a par with existing levels of support for the libraries, archives and museums peak bodies.
2. IASA and SEAPAVAA support the principle of the adequate and equitable development of audio-visual archiving skills and infrastructure in all countries of the world. The audio-visual memory of the 21st century should be truly and equitably reflective of all nations and cultures: the failures of the 20th century to secure this memory in many parts of the world must not be repeated. This principle is consistent with the development of mutual support and encouragement which are part of the raison d'être of both associations.
3. IASA and SEAPAVAA recognise that the emerging profession of audio-visual archiving now requires the recognition and availability of formal professional training at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. This will improve options for the personal development of existing practitioners and it will also open the way for young people to pursue a long term career in the profession. We encourage the development of existing and future programs to this end.
IASA Vice President John Spence (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) kept a journal of the IASA - SEAPAVAA Conference, 2000 A future for the past:
Saturday 1 July. I woke early, still living on Sydney time. But instead of the sort of Australian winter weather that gets in your bones at this time of year, slows the flow of your blood and demands that you stay in a warm bed for just ten minutes more … instead of that, it was hot, steamy and exotic. For I had woken up in that former colonial jewel of Southeast Asia, the current high-tech hub of the region: Singapore. Day 1 was taken up with the IASA Executive Board meeting which took us through to lunch-time the next day. We worked in the deceptive air conditioning of the National Archives of Singapore building, an old colonial school that once had a narrow educational remit, but which now cares for the past and the future of this flourishing island state.
Sunday 2 July. Now feeling the mood of Asia with rice and local delicacies in our stomachs we tackled day 2 with vigour. Colleagues were arriving from the four corners of the world to attend committee and section meetings. The Board started counting the delegates, took stock and started asking “why so few?” IASA attendance aside, the numbers had risen to 183 and an enthusiastic and exciting conference beckoned. We had a first glimpse of the conference venue the internationally famous Hotel Inter-Continental. In this case the new but tastefully colonial architectural feel encouraged us to believe we had stepped back in time. Our first contact with the conference organisers immediately inspired confidence they were super-efficient and friendly. Our conference bags were packed full of interesting goodies and each new compartment led us to another delight or educational guide or exquisitely designed invitation. The real event was about to begin.
Monday 3 July, 0900: The true story was gradually revealed as IASA delegates made their way to the first General Assembly. Approximately 48 of us had made the long trek to Singapore, some of the usual suspects plus a number of new faces from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Finland and Norway. Lunch, the first of many, delivered the promise of many voyages of culinary discovery ahead for a number of our European colleagues. Also new for our band of colonial adventurers was the formality that was to pervade the conference. Board members headed swiftly back to their hotel rooms to floss the teeth and don a tie and jacket for the opening ceremony. The guest of honour, Mr Lee Yock Suan, the Singapore Minister for Information and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, guaranteed us plenty of publicity. Flashes flashed, TV cameras whirled and we all stood or sat in appointed places as the grandness of the occasion unfolded. We were, the Minister assured us, at a geographical and professional point of convergence. This theme was taken up by Trond Valberg in his keynote address. Trond's message was to do with managing communication in the 3rd millennium the internet was already changing the way the world communicates, how archives communicate their message. But Trond did not merely offer us one dimensional communication. He was on-line to some of the latest web sites sites that were leading the way into the new age. We all left the auditorium stimulated and excited by the statuesque Norwegian from Mo I Rana. A big man with big ideas.
The evening was like a drug-induced dream. We were at the Singapore Art Museum. It was the cocktail hour and we were in a glass room with huge psychedelic glass mushrooms growing out of the wall. The champagne flowed and speakers praised a newly launched book on the film industry of the Asia Pacific region. If we ever doubted that this was going to be an audio visual conference this occasion dispelled that misconception: we were a multi-media gathering.
Tuesday 4 July: The celebrations of America's national day did not go unnoticed but the conference was focused on two issues at 9 am: selection and deselection. Crispin Jewitt and Kwek-Chew Kim Gek led us respectively through the audio visual selection policies of the British Library National Sound Archive the Singapore National Archives. Then it was the turn of four speakers to present cases for deselection: for preservation, through political intervention, disposal and repatriation. Magdalena Cseve (Hungarian Radio) told her story of interventionist government for the first time at a IASA conference, and Ray Edmondson (ScreenSound Australia) created a little tension by wondering aloud why more archival institutions had not followed his institution's lead in repatriating recordings that were more appropriately housed in other institutions.
The first of the technical sessions brought an update from George Boston on the state of play with tape and tape machine manufacture. It is not just that time is running out for magnetic tape. The writing is on the wall for machines as well; in fact the tape will outlast the availability of machines. George warned us we have about fifteen years to copy the thirty million hours of archival material that is stored world-wide on magnetic tape. Let's get cracking! Jim Lindner (VidiPax, USA) added to the pessimism of the session: if you think the rate of technological change is rapid now, wait till you see what the television and video industries have planned. Jim believes that AV archivists need to be on their toes to respond to changes such as the introduction of digital TV and the fact that the PC (personal computer) is becoming a capture, editing system and display system. Jim thinks we need to examine our strengths and weaknesses; don't try and do everything; decide on what formats you accept and what will be rejected, but be flexible. Finally, Dietrich Schüller (Phonogrammarchiv, Vienna) presented the case for an affordable digital mass storage system. Though 1-terabyte systems are too small for archives, they are not that much cheaper than the larger capacity systems. With so much potential in so many fields of information management he is hopeful that this situation will change.
The afternoon enticed delegates to visit local radio and TV stations: smart, modern and air-conditioned.
Wednesday 5 July: As the conference hotted up, delegates had to make some hard decisions. Joint sessions meant that you heard about research archives or archiving in tropical countries; copyright or developing the profession; cataloguing or acquisition. The session on research archives presented us with a truly international and exotic serving: the Aborigines of Australia, black suburbs of Capetown, the thousands of islands of Indonesia. In conclusion five panellists squared off in a role play of field researchers and archives responding to complaints from each other and reaching a greater understanding of each others' jobs and concerns in the process. The copyright session placed metadata centre-stage. Dr Jane Hunter (DSTC, University of Queensland) brought a professional's definition and view of metadata models to a packed house. In fact, it was concern for rights management that gave metadata some context during this session. InterTrust's Nic Garnett delivered a paper that, whilst not free of commercial interest, attempted to offer a solution to a particular problem for the entrepreneurial AV archive. InterTrust's 'technologically agnostic' software solution offers a DRM (digital rights management) solution that will track a digital asset from creation to billing. Edwin van Huis from the Netherlands Audio-visual Archive (NAA) would benefit from such a system. Edwin believes that nowadays the rights holders have more power than ever before and that archives have less space for manoeuvre. Important solutions for the NAA followed on from negotiation with the rights holders and persuading them to see things from the archive's perspective. They also negotiated central agreements with rights holders' organisations; they improved their internal rights administration and, for their clients, they offered a one-stop shop where access and clearance were settled according to their clients' timetable.
To misquote Robert Frost: 'two roads diverged in the Inter Continental, and sorry I could not choose both, long I stood and looked into one ballroom past the acquirers, but then took the other less populated, just as fair and promising of copyright matters'. It may make all the difference. For we heard of Singapore TV's BLISS catalogue with its one-stop search capability, offering multimedia support, remote access and internet enabled. And Chris Clark of the British Library National Sound Archive briefed us on the preparations for presenting their catalogue, CADENSA, on the Web. It was never going to be simple taking a reading room database to the world wide web. Both presenters stressed the motto: know and understand your users and understand what you wish to offer them. And, just when you thought that metadata had been left behind that morning, two Australians came along with their own unique perspective on the subject just to prove that metadata is hegemonic. The National Library of Australia is leading the way in our profession by developing metadata standards for preservation. Check it out on their website <http://www.nla.au/preservation/pmeta.html [253]>.
After this heavy day we still had time to visit the National Archives of Singapore. A grand tour of the facilities gave their staff ample opportunity to show that their expertise was not confined to conference organisation. But this was not the end of the day. In almost the words of Frost: 'the hotel room was cool, dark and inviting but there were miles to go before we could sleep'. The museums of Singapore beckoned and offered a rich banquet of cultural delights.
Thursday 6 July: Dietrich Schüller took the podium once more to chair a technical session dosed with video as well as audio. Firstly, Dr Chong Man Nang (Revival Digital) gave a product endorsement for this company's full bandwidth digital colour film restoration system, complete with demonstration. To the layman the results looked very impressive and as a sound archivist I found it quite enlightening to see what challenges there were for our AV cousins and what tools are at their disposal. But it was Kevin Bradley's talk on archival uses for CD-R that captured the imagination of the IASA delegates. Australia's National Library has been at the forefront of CD-R use in the archival environment and along with the support of other Australian institutions and his industry contacts Kevin has been able to develop a confidence in this technology as long as a number of careful decisions are made and followed. Firstly, CD-R is only considered as an interim medium as the Library awaits a digital mass storage system. Digital recordings require careful and accurate documentation; the CD writing system must be of high quality and chosen for compatibility of CD media, writer and editor; CDs must be regularly checked (the Library uses an inexpensive error checker, which results are periodically calibrated to a top of the range error checker). Initial tests show that early errors rise exponentially over time so it is important to minimise the early errors. Their SCSI writers performed better than stand-alones. Comparing single to double speed: the BLER was lower at double, the jitter lower at single. Thalocyanine discs perform better than cyanine discs. Since the introduction of CD-R technology in 1996 there has been virtually no measurable change in the error results from 1000 regularly tested discs. If error rate is within the acceptable parameters it is expected that transfers will contain a much lower error rate, which is encouraging for the advocates of the constantly self-refreshing archive. And finally, the writer's laser must be replaced when error testing indicates a reduction in performance measured by an increase in errors on new recordings. This comprehensive paper gave us many standard practices by which we can measure our performance in digital archiving.
Of course, we don't just digitise for preservation. Access is one of the great beneficiaries of digitisation. In fact, new technologies digital mass storage, the internet and e-commerce systems enable user access at any time, without the intervention of archivists but with control mechanisms that will manage copyright and access conventions with the ability to charge for service and deliver requested material far more quickly. ScreenSound Australia's David Watson explained how they could utilise this technology in association with the on-line version of their Mavis database to progress their e-business aims. The Australian Government, their principal funds provider, expects the archive to enter into sophisticated user-pays arrangements. As 90% of their 1.5 million objects are not in their copyright domain it is essential that better and wider access be controlled by an automated system. In a multimedia demonstration, Danish Broadcasting's Per Holst showed us just how exciting an on-line exhibition using entirely archival material could be. To celebrate their 75th anniversary the web site showed the history of Danish broadcasting as synonymous with 20th century Danish cultural and political history.
The afternoon session began with the staff of the National Archives of Singapore giving us an insight into their modern archival practices. Much of this presentation focused on their use of an internet front end to serve their users. Archives and Artifacts Online, http://www.A20.com/ [254] draws six databases together, covering audio visual records, photographs, maps and plans, private papers, files and documents. The late afternoon saw IASA & SEAPAVAA's first attempt at poster sessions. Four simultaneous presentations, three of them commercial, took place in the four corners of the ballroom. It worked well with dialogue being used as the main presentation tool - but there is room for modification and improvement. As a concept, it offers variety to the program and seems an ideal solution for commercial presentations or niche topics.
Friday 7 July: The sun rose on the final day of the conference. It was to be the warmest day of the week as the mercury climbed to 33 degrees. Heat was also rising in the ballroom as the two presidents presented their views of where their respective associations were heading. Crispin Jewitt outlined the remits of the main AV associations and asked where IASA fitted in to this patchwork as technology shakes up each and every one, some will grow and some will disappear, but all will change. The future will depend on size and flexibility and whilst not large, IASA is growing and is committed to expansion. Already IASA has shown its intentions with regard to audio-visual. A proposal to establish an AV working group is already on the table, as is the establishment of a new research archives section. IASA, Crispin believes, is well placed to lead the profession in response to the digital revolution. Ray Edmondson, too, spoke of a great future ahead for SEAPAVAA. In such a short time (five years) this association has served its members well and is committed to continuing their work with a new three-year plan. Both Ray and Crispin raised the possibility of expanding the CCAAA (Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archiving Associations) to include SEAPAVAA and other regional AV associations. This became one of three resolutions that were adopted by delegates (see headlines).
It had seemed like only yesterday that this conference had begun with its Asian brand of pomp and circumstance but as the applause and the accolades of the Closing Ceremony died away we realised that it was all over for another year. The final formalities came as our small band met for the second general assembly and Board meetings. And how would I sum up Singapore 2000? Excellently run, many interesting papers, some stimulating, others informative, some challenging. As someone said to me at the farewell dinner (worth the trip alone): “it's funny how the conference you are at always seems to be the best yet”. There were a lot of delegates who thought Singapore was the best yet. It gave us an opportunity to see the synergy between sound and audio visual archives. We experienced a single joint conference not two conferences at the one venue. We realised what a “soul mate” SEAPAVAA is. And a score out of 10? Well, you just had to be there.
IASA welcomes two new full individual members:
Michelle Grant, 5/27 Roderick Street, Amaroo, Canberra, ACT, 2914, Australia
Michelle (better known as Shelly) is currently Manager of the Sound Preservation and Technical Services Section of the National Library of Australia and may be known to some of you as one of the organisers of the IASA Annual Conference in Canberra
Catherine Lacken, Südwestrundfunk, Produktionsarchiv FS, Neckasrstr. 230, 70190 Stuttgart, Germany.
Catherine is from Ireland but moved to Germany in 1981. She has worked in the Television Archives of Süddeutscher Rundfunk (now part of Südwestrundfunk) since 1987 and is now in charge of the Television Production Archive in Stuttgart.
The IASA Secretary-General reports:
The Co-ordinating Council of Audio-visual Archives Associations (CCAAA), which is the successor to the former Round Table of Audio-visual Records, held its annual meeting on 31st March in London, and was hosted by The British Library National Sound Archive. The CCAAA's main purpose is to function as a forum for the co-ordination, communication and exchange of information between the member organisations (FIAF, FIAT, IASA; the audio-visual groups of ICA and IFLA; UNESCO as observer). The meeting was chaired by IASA's President, Crispin Jewitt.
The meeting got off to a dramatic start as the President of FIAT informed us at the last minute that his association would no longer participate in the CCAAA. He explained this decision by maintaining that structural reforms of the CCAAA which had been announced had not been made; moreover, the recent Joint Technical Symposium (January 2000, in Paris) was considered to have been badly organised in that FIAT had had no influence on the programme. The remaining members took note, with regret, of FIAT's withdrawal. The CCAAA is the only forum for the executives of the five international audio-visual organisations to meet; the departure of any one of those organisation effectively means that the council has suffered amputation. Therefore FIAT's withdrawal is rather strange and it is hoped that FIAT will reconsider and rejoin the CCAAA soon.
With respect to the JTS 2000, all CCAAA members present were unanimous in confirming that they were well satisfied with the programme. This will be expressed by a letter of appreciation to the organisers. The question of whether the AV associations will organise future joint symposia and in which form (e.g. also on non technical matters) was discussed but due to FIAT's absence no resolution was passed.
Nonetheless, the CCAAA will continue to function. It was decided that the organisation will get its own web site with links to the NGO's and that it will extend its terms of reference. Also some joint projects such as an ICA manual for audio-visual matters and regional audio-visual seminars were discussed. Finally, the CCAAA will endeavour to make an initial contact with the IST (Information Society Technology) Programme of the European Commission, even though this is not international. The next CCAAA meeting will be held in Paris next year.
Dietrich Schüller, Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Science, has sent in this progress report on The Complete Historical Collections 1899-1950.
Papua New Guinea 1904-09, Series 3 of the Phonogrammarchiv's Complete Historical Collections, was released in June. The CD box comprises five audio CDs, one CD-ROM with the images of the original written documentation, and a 224-page booklet, containing notes, photographs and transcriptions of texts and music. The author of the notes is Don Niles, Director of the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies. The greater part of the Papua New Guinea collection comes from Rudolf Pöch, physician and anthropologist, who pioneered the use of still and moving image cameras, and the phonograph in anthropological field work. Two smaller collections have been made by Father Wilhelm Schmidt, founder of the Viennese School of Anthropology, and the missionary Josef Windhuis.
The Complete Historical Collections 1899 - 1950 edition was launched on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Phonogrammarchiv last year. Series 1, The First Expeditions (1904-1909), were completed in time for the IASA Conference in Vienna. In the meantime series 2, Stimmporträts, a series of recordings of famous personalities, notably from the first decade of the last century, was completed by the end of 1999. Ready for publication are series 4, Soldiers Songs of the Austro-Hungarian Army, and series 5, Austrian Folk Music. In preparation are the collections of Rudolf Trebitsch who, between 1906 - 1913, recorded amongst the Basques, the Celtic populations of Western Europe, and the Inuit of Greenland. The Historical Collections, which meanwhile have been included by UNESCO on the Memory of the World register, will comprise 17 series of around 4,000 recordings on approximately 90 audio CDs.
The CDs are available from: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Postgasse 7
A 1010 Wien
phone 0043-1-51581/401-406
fax 0043-1-51581/400
email verlag@oeaw.ac.at [255]
internet: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/verlag/ [256]
ÖAW PHA CD7 Series 1, The First Expeditions 1901 to Croatia, Brazil and the Isle of Lesbos. 1 audio CD, 1 CD-ROM, booklet. Price ATS 399
ÖAW PHA CD8 Series 2, Stimmporträts. 4 audio CDs, 1 CD-ROM, booklet. ATS 489
ÖAW PHA CD10 Series 3, Papua New Guinea (1904 - 1909), 5 audio CDs, 1 CD-ROM, booklet. ATS 899
The National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth has received backing from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Trustees for a £1,698,000 grant - the largest grant awarded to date in Wales to a library - towards two new public areas that will open up the world of the National Library of Wales. The project centres on the extensive sound and moving image archive held at the National Library. In addition to the HLF grant, the National Assembly for Wales announced an additional £1,000,000 in support of the venture, and to this would be added a similar sum from NLW funds.
Plans include the construction of an audio-visual auditorium; the relocation of existing audio-visual services as well as the provision of enhanced access to the building and new exhibition areas.
The National Library of Wales is one of the UK's most significant repositories. A legal deposit library, it houses millions of books, periodicals, maps, manuscripts and records, paintings, prints and photographs. The collection of sound and moving images, comprising some 200,000 hours of moving image and some 100,000 hours of sound recordings relating to Wales, is central to this project.
Following the announcement, Iestyn Hughes, head of the NLW Sound and Moving Image Collection commented: -
"The new facilities, which should be ready by 2003, will transform the way in which the Sound and Moving Image Collection is used over the next decade. For the first time we will be able to accommodate both users of the Collection and staff in a comfortable environment. Most importantly, the planned auditorium will provide the ideal means to exploit and interpret Wales's surprisingly rich audio-visual heritage. The development underlines the commitment of the Library and its partners to the audio-visual and new media area, and emphasises the policy of government in Wales to opening up the nation's heritage to a far wider section of the community.
Inevitably, there will be some disruption to our work during the next three years as we relocate our equipment, staff and viewing facilities to temporary locations while the building work takes place. But as this is the single most important capital development so far in the history of the a-v collection, any temporary inconvenience is seen as trivial in comparison to the long term gains that we hope to achieve".
The IASA Board's UNESCO representative, Kurt Deggeller, reports:
Recently, the Executive Board of UNESCO approved the draft of the Information for All programme which is the result of the merger of IIP (Intergovernmental Informatics programme) and PGI (General information Programme). IASA, as an NGO (non-governmental organisation), has been invited to participate in the preparation of this programme.
The new programme has as an objective to “provide a platform for international policy discussion on preservation of information and universal access to it”. The mandate emphasises that “it shall co-operate closely with ... non-governmental organisations”.
Among the particular objectives, the programme aims to “encourage and widen access through the organisation, digitisation and preservation of information” and “to support training, continuing education and lifelong learning in the fields of information and informatics”.
Among the numerous activities planned for the programme I will mention just some of those which are especially relevant to the activities of our association:
initiate and support international debate, studies and guidelines on the protection of the world's information heritage;
initiate and support curricula development for information literacy and media competence at all levels;
support the implementation of technology and professional standards for the management and preservation of physical collection of information.
In the principles for programme implementation the collaboration with stakeholder NGOs is once again clearly mentioned.
With this new programme IASA has a unique chance to distinguish itself as a leading association for the management of audio-visual information and to improve its co-operation with sister-NGOs in the field of written documents, for instance, IFLA, ICA and FID
Detlef Humbert, Secretary IASA Radio Sound Archives Section, reports on the Joint IASA/FIAT Meeting on Digitisation of Radio and TV Archives which took place in Frankfurt am Main on March 24th and 25th 2000. After Vienna 1998 and Lausanne last year this was the third joint meeting between IASA and FIAT. It was generously hosted by Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (DRA) Frankfurt am Main. About twenty delegates, mostly from IASA, attended.
After a welcome address by the DRA's Director Joachim-Felix Leonhard, the Presidents of IASA and FIAT expressed the importance of having such meetings to deal with digitisation issues from similar but not identical points of view and to learn from each other. As Peter Dusek stated: "Radio comes to TV, TV comes to Radio".
Peter Dusek opened the panel with a short paper "Problems and Difficulties Concerning Digitisation in TV-Archives". He pointed out the high interest of the multimedia industry in combining every sound with every picture leading to the necessity of having new standardised rules for multimedia usage of sound, stills and films. The following discussion showed as major problems the speed of development in multimedia, the contrast between making profit and paying for access and the legal situation which at the present time, under current treaties, is not able to cover future technologies.
Mario Pascucci and Stefano Grego gave a report on the RAI digitisation project which started in May 1998. This project will convert the entire audio archive of approximately 380,000 hours duration including 180,000 hours analogue tape to digital Broadcast Wave Format within two years and will use industrial standard solutions only. It aims, in particular, to avoid future format conversions and to introduce an all-digital production process. Tapes are converted without selection, listening or restoration.
Robert Fischer from Suedwestrundfunk reported on several digital video projects at SWR to show what is possible and what is already done on TV using archive material. One example showed the linking of the TV archive's database FESAD with the Media Archive containing the video material of TV magazine "ARD Buffet". A joint Internet project Treasures of the world, <www.schaetze-der-welt.de> [257]is running as an accompanying offer to TV broadcast, presenting videoclips of 200 important sites of natural and cultural heritage.
Christoph Bauer from Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) presented a digitisation project of the TV Archives of ORF to preserve and distribute more than 1,700 sounds and effects and 750 hours of self-produced background music. A main point of the project is to improve access to the material between ORF's production facilities within Vienna and to and from the eight Austrian regional studios.
Albrecht Haefner from SWR spoke about three aspects of digitisation in which he is involved. A working group on SWR's digital mass storage project "AMS" (AudioMassenSpeicher) proposed a decentralised structure for the system. A tender will be issued during the next weeks. SRT, the German School for Broadcasting Technique, is offering training courses for Management, Supervisors, Production Staff and Archive Staff to get or improve professional skills in digital techniques.
Crispin Jewitt from The British Library National Sound Archive introduced the project DISCA (Digital Infrastructure for Sound Collections and Archives). The aim of this project is a digital collection management in a new environment with secure networks for shared preservation and access. Because of its scaleable system architecture DISCA could become an extensible model for any sound archive. Project partners are ALB, Stockholm, British Library National Sound Archive, London, Discoteca di Stato, Rome, Statsbiblioteket, Arhus, and Yleisradio, Helsinki.
Clemens Schlenkrich and Ludwig Stoffels from DRA presented the digital system of our host. Since 1997 analogue material has been transferred to the digital domain. A relational database is linked with the file server/tape library. Audio files are stored in RIFF-Wave format and MPEG 1 Layer 2 data reduced format for pre-listening. Yvonne Graf from IBM presented ADMIRA, the digital audio application used in the archival environment of DRA.
Short reports and presentations on developments of several audio projects were also given. Majella Breen from Irish Radio and TV (RTE) reported that RTE is spending 4.5 million Euro on digitising over 80,000 hours of audio material. Bjarne Grevsgard from Norwegian Radio (NRK) showed an impressive video film about their digitisation joint venture with the National Library of Norway. Markku Petaejae from Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) reported on his company's project for a digital radio archive using the QUADRIGA workstation for mass storage input.
Dietrich Schueller made some additional remarks o digital transfer and gave an "outlook beyond the radio world". He pointed to the incredible audio heritage that exists in all countries outside of radio archives. As the next step there had to be found a solution for smaller institutions. He talked about his vision of maybe within five years having a small, affordable "Personal Mass Storage System" (around 500 GByte).
The result of the Joint Meeting's final discussion on future co-operation between FIAT and IASA was a strong wish to continue these two-day meetings annually and in general to have a wider scope than just Radio Sound and TV Archives. As Peter Dusek stated the consolidation in FIAT will be continued by the new Board. Invitations for next year's Joint Meeting came from Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Potsdam and Suedwestrundfunk Baden-Baden.
Kurt Deggeller (Memoriav) writes:
ECHO, European Chronicles in-line, is a project of the European Union in the framework of the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme. The main objectives of the programme are:
to develop a long term reusable software infrastructure to support digital film archives (the terminology is incorrect but, as used in the official description, “film” means all kinds of moving images)
to provide web-based access to collections of historical documentary films of great international value, and
to increase the productivity and cost effectiveness of producing digital film archives.
The project will develop and demonstrate an open architecture approach to distributed digital film archive services. The distinct features of the ECHO system will be semi-automatic metadata extraction and acquisition from digital film information, speech recognition for the purpose of indexing, searching and retrieval, multi-lingual retrieval capabilities, intelligent access to digital films, automatic film summary creation, collection mechanisms, privacy and billing mechanisms.
The project began on February 1st 2000 and will last thirty months. The total cost is 4.9 million Euro.
The content providers (all audio-visual archives) are INA (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, France), NASA (Stichting Nederlands Audiovisueel Archief, The Netherlands), Istituto Luce, Italy and Memoriav (Association for the preservation of the audiovisual heritage of Switzerland).
The first phase of the training seminar on the Preservation and Restoration of Video and Audio Tape Materials was held consecutively in Jakarta, Indonesia and Manila, Philippines from February 7-14, 2000. This seminar was conducted by SEAPAVAA (South East Asia-Pacific Audio-Visual Archive Association) in co-operation with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the host institutions: Sinematek Indonesia and the Philippine Information Agency.
This project is part of a regional training programme being undertaken by SEAPAVAA to address the problems and concerns associated with video and audiotape collections in the Asia-Pacific region. The training programme aims to provide participants with an understanding of the technological and physical problems facing the magnetic collections and recommend directions for development
The Resource Persons for the first phase of the training seminar were two experts in video and audio tape materials: Dietrich Schueller (Phonogrammarchiv, Vienna) and Ken Rowland (ScreenSound Australia).
In Jakarta, there were 23 participants from the National Library, National Archive, government and privately run television and radio stations and the ethnomusicology society. Sinematek Indonesia hosted the project with support from the Directorate for Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Education and the National Archive.
In the Philippines, the seminar was attended by 61 representatives from audio-visual archiving institutions, both government and private, as well as universities, museums, music libraries and broadcasting networks in the country. The project was implemented by the Philippine Information Agency as host institution in co-operation with the Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
Among the topics that were covered in the training seminar were preservation issues, such as cleaning and treating physical and mechanical deterioration, storage and handling; ethics, guidelines and current preservation practices; and the digital future and format obsolescence.
During the course of their stay in both countries, the Resource Persons conducted visits to video and audio archiving institutions in order to provide on-site consultations of problems and concerns on their collections. Throughout the seminar, participants were encouraged to bring from their collection sample video and audio tape materials with significant or indicative problems for possible consultation with resource persons so that specific preservation strategies or treatments could be discussed and developed.
The training seminar in both countries was highly successful and effective due to the generous support of the participating institutions, the enthusiasm of the participants and the expertise of the resource persons. The outcome further affirmed SEAPAVAA's belief that this project will help ensure the long term survival of the region's video and audio tape collections which have been widely used to record oral history, tribal rituals and other culturally significant visual images, records of sights and sound that capture the distinctive flavour of our varied cultural heritages. At the end of the seminar in Manila, Dietrich Schueller expressed his appreciation of the keen interest shown by the participants and hoped that the participants would pass on their experience in order to achieve a world-wide community of experts.
The second phase of the project will take place, respectively, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the National Archives of Malaysia from June 27 to 29, Singapore at the National Archives of Singapore from July 10-12, and in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from July 17 to 21. The resource persons for this phase will be Jim Lindner of VidiPax, a magnetic media and information migration services company in New York, USA, Ian Gilmour and Viktor Fumic from ScreenSound Australia.
SEAPAVAA hopes that the second phase will be as successful as the first and that it will help improve the region's collective capacity to manage magnetic media. As SEAPAVAA President Ray Edmondson said in his message to the participants in this phase,
“It is our shared objective to improve the management, security and longevity of the tape materials available to us. We may not be able to achieve perfection, but we can maximise the possibilities offered by the facilities and skills that we have.”
This report on the Audio Engineering Society (AES) conference "Moving Audio : Pro-Audio Networking and Transfer" has been prepared by Peter Copeland of the British Library National Sound Archive.
“This AES Conference was held in London on the 8th and 9th of May 2000.
AES Chairman Mark Yonge began by reminding visitors that digital techniques were now dominant in the audio profession, with computer systems making great demands on networks to transmit streams of digital audio, exchange digital files, and carry metadata. None of the problems could be called "new" ones; but because other media (such as still pictures, moving pictures, and various forms of text) had higher profiles, audio was getting left behind.
Andy Bailey (of gedas UK, a company based in Milton Keynes) started by laying down the basic principles and vocabulary of digital communication. Some of the terminology used by digital communication managers is very vaguely defined from an engineering point-of-view. The next speaker, David Murphy (University College, Cork) confirmed Mark Yonge's assessment. He maintained that the transfer of professional digital audio is nearly impossible at the moment, though, of course, he was talking about professional audio at least one generation ahead of the type of work in which most sound archives are engaged. But many trade-off judgements are needed. These include 'latency' (how much delay there is), 'realtime' (another ill-defined term, because the audio arrives in chunks, perhaps out-of-order), difficulties of synchronising the channels of stereo and surround-sound, the need for lossy compression, and various other practical audio issues.
At this point we reached a familiar situation - advocates of half-a-dozen digital technologies claiming "it will be fixed soon." (To spare their blushes, I will not identify them, you will have to read the official AES Conference papers). Questions from the floor also revealed the lack of standardisation, another issue down-played by most of the speakers. The AES is trying to generate standards to reduce this problem, but the goal posts of digital technology keep moving.
For me, the real advantages of the conference lay with presentations concerning the areas in between those supporting the rival technologies. Julian Dunn (Nanophon, Cambridge) gave a useful summary of how to solve the problem of 'sampling jitter', which he defined as "… deviation in timing of transitions when measured with respect to an ideal clock". Means for reverse-engineering jitter were described, and tolerances were suggested (the strictest tolerance, audible with test-tones, was only 10 nanoseconds).
Steven Harris (Cirrus Logic, Marlow) spoke on Point-to-point interfaces for Digital Audio, giving a useful survey of problems linking two pieces of equipment a few meters apart. Most of these methods had specific applications (for example, multi-track recorders).
Lars Jonsson (Swedish Radio), whose paper was read in his absence by Mark Yonge, reported on Swedish Radio's four-year experience of integrating their whole network from one end of the country to the other. Their solution used Broadcast Wave files with MPEG II data-compression, running the latter as fast as possible to minimise the build-up of artefacts with repeated decompressions and recompressions.
But the most important papers were the final two. Giorgio Dimino described the radio archive of RAI in Italy, where everything is being digitised, including the documentation and cataloguing. (This will apply to television as well). RAI have written their own software called Audioteca to link all this together. RAI's results are being stored on digital linear tape cartridges (DLT) retrieved robotically, but the consensus is that this is only a temporary storage solution.
Richard Hopper, of the BBC Media Data Group, addressed the subject of Media Asset Management and enabling technologies. He began by insisting upon rigorous definitions for all terminology, having observed for example that the word 'title' means different things to lawyers, cataloguers, and computer filenames. Although it is still early days, the BBC have been forced to develop a Standard Media Exchange Format (SMEF, a registered trademark), a subset of which has been submitted to international bodies as a minimum media reference model. This may be consulted at <smef@bbc.co.uk [258]>. Although there appear to be many competing standards for metadata, Richard Hopper's thoughts successfully gave us a clear view of the future for sound archives and provided the ideal end to the conference.
A small number of errors have been brought to my attention following the publication of the IASA Directory 2000. George Boston's address is correct but please replace other contact information with
Telephone: +44 1908 520 384
Fax: +44 1908 520 781
E-Mail: keynes2@aol.com [259]
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2000 | ||
| August 6 - 11 | IAML Annual Conference | Edinburgh |
| August 13 - 18 | 66th IFLA Council and General Conference | Jerusalem |
| September 10 13 | DRH 2000. Digital Resources for the Humanities | Sheffield, UK |
| September 20 - 24 | IAML-Gruppe Bundesrepublik Deutschland/IASA-Ländergruppe Deutschland/Deutschschweiz | Leipzig |
| September 21 - 26 | ICA 14th International Congress | Seville |
| September 22 - 25 | AES 109th Convention | Los Angeles |
| September 27 October 1 | Berlin Phonogrammarchiv Centenary | Berlin |
| October | FIAT Annual World Conference | Vienna |
| November 13 18 | AMIA 10th International Conference | Los Angeles |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
| December 7 - 8 | Preservation 2000: An International Conference on Preservation and Long-Term Accessibility of Digital Materials | York, UK |
| 2001 | ||
| March 8 9 | IASA Board mid-year meeting | London |
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| August 16 -25 | 67th IFLA Council and General Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| September 23 - 26 | ARSC/IASA Annual Conference | London |
| 2002 | ||
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| 68th IFLA Council and General Conference | Glasgow, U.K. | |
| September | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
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 [260].
Language editor: Dorothy van Tonder, SABC
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 58 BY 15 MAY 2007
Printed and produced in South Africa by Heypenni Gold
Piet van Iddekinge - until a few months ago archivist of the City of Arnhem, the Netherlands, and a long-standing member of IASA - died 29 April 2000. During his long career as assistant head and later head of the City Archives of Arnhem he greatly stimulated the use of audio and audio-visual archival recordings of Dutch history, both as a source for research and as a tool for education. As an historian of Arnhem he contributed amongst many other publications several thoroughly researched and well documented books and articles about the Battle of Arnhem, September 1944, and in particular the subsequent evacuation and destruction of the city by the German Wehrmacht. Together we were part of the team that in 1965 produced a compilation film about the Battle of Arnhem, based on stock material from the Imperial War Museum and other archives. This film was used extensively in Dutch universities and public schools and also appeared in an English version. Only a few months ago many of Piet's friends enjoyed a festive ceremony at the occasion of his retirement. His unexpected death ended a full life together with his wife Adrie, full also of plans for more historical research and publications.
With him one of my best friends has gone.
Rolf Schuursma
Chinese Music Archives, Music Dept., Hui Yeung Shing Building, Chung Chi College, CUHK, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong SAR, China
Contact: Miss Renee Leung
Universities Historical Research Centre, Amara Hall, Yangon University Campus, Yangon 11041, Myanmar
The research centre is devoted to the history of Myanmar. It conducts historical research and collects historical documents and records. A number of historical publications have been produced.
Armin Vögeding
lists his main interest as the preservation of audio-media. He has worked professionally for AGFA and BASF for thirty years.
Joel Bresler
Sephardic music specialist, his collection contains over 1000 recordings of this genre.
Also a new subscriber: Hong Kong Film Archive
The theme of the ARSC-IASA Conference in 2001 to be held in London will be:
Why collect? The purpose of audio visual archives
The conference will explore and reinforce the role of institutional and individual collectors in preserving the audio-visual heritage by addressing the following themes:
Legislative provision: what must we keep? How can we keep pace with electronic publication and web-based distribution?
Who should be responsible for what? In the digital age we can share collecting responsibilities and provide shared access. But how?
Should institutions collect if they cannot provide access? How should resources be shared between acquisition, storage and processing?
Should we collect for the needs of the present or those of the
future?
"It's my collection and I'm proud of it": the riches in our
collections and what we intend to do with them.
Private collectors and public archives: how should they coexist? How can we help each other? How do our functions and aims differ?
As the conference venue (The British Library's purpose-built conference centre) can provide a full range of playback and audio-visual facilities, speakers will be strongly encouraged to illustrate their presentations with examples.
The programme committee is keen to include 'poster' sessions. Since few outside Australia appear to know what these are, here is a definition.
A poster session is a way of giving the opportunity for members who have issues or achievements of limited interest, and which are not suitable for the formalities of a conference, to communicate their message in an informal manner. The hard facts of their presentation are 'published' on posters (or maybe on a computer screen) adjacent to where they will deliver their message or in the form of handouts. The format and organisation are informal. Whilst criteria for acceptance of poster presentations are looser than those for presentations at the plenary sessions a power of veto will exist with the poster session co-ordinator. The final poster session line-up may not be finalised until the conference is under way. Poster sessions will run in parallel with the plenary sessions and possibly during break times. They will take place in a different venue to the plenary sessions and a number of posters may be presented in the same room or space.
How does it work? The presenter may deliver a short informal talk or conduct a demonstration. Generally it is an informal arrangement where much of the time is taken up with questions and answers. Delegates can drift in and out of each session, according to their interest. They become an interactive audience. Presentations may only take 5 minutes or may be as long as 15-30 minutes, and may be presented several times during the session.
What works best at a poster session? Demonstrations, mini workshops, research presentations, representations by Association branches, topics that attract strong audience feedback or interaction and, of course, topics with niche interest.
To suggest a topic for a paper or poster presentation, please send a title and summary along with your name and address to one of the programme committee:
John Spence, IASA Vice-President: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Archives, G.P.O. 9994, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia. Fax 011 61 2 9333 2525, email spence.john@a2.abc.net.au [233]
Alan Ward: The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, United Kingdom. Fax + 44 20 7412 7441, email alan.ward@bl.uk [261]
Dr Michael Biel, ARSC 2nd V.P.: P.O. Box 822, Morehead, Kentucky 40351, United States. Email m.biel@morehead-st.edu [262]
The closing date for this first call for papers is January 15th 2001. A further call for papers will be announced in the next Information Bulletin. Speakers will be contacted shortly after that deadline and informed of the committee's decision.
London has been chosen as the venue for our next conference, which will be shared with ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections). Why do we think that London will appeal to you? The conference venue itself is impressive enough. All sessions and some of the social events will be taking place in the purpose-built conference facilities of The British Library with its 250-seat, cinema-style auditorium equipped with state-of-the-art AV facilities. You will have the chance to tour the new library and see the NSA's world-famous collections close-up. Tours of famous recording locations (Abbey Road) and archives (EMI and the BBC) will be arranged and there will be plenty of free time in the evenings or during breaks to browse in London's many specialist record shops (one of the best, Mole Jazz, is just a block away from the conference venue). There are many opportunities for spending lavishly on eating out, shopping (Harrods, for instance), theatres, clubs and concert halls, but there's also plenty of variety and excitement to be had for less: NSA staff will be only too pleased to act as guides or make recommendations.
So forget all those stories about fog, strangely-attired detectives, inscrutable cockney accents and warm beer (they can be arranged too, if you want) and mark off late September 2001 in your diary for a trip to one of the most thriving AV cities on the planet.
Members are invited to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the London Conference in September 2001.
The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation at the IASA annual conferences by those who have no alternative funding and to encourage continuing participation in the work of IASA.
Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.
IASA Committees and Sections may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences.
The IASA Board has recently agreed new guidelines for the awarding of travel grants. You are asked to consider these carefully before making your application.
While the aim of IASA shall be to encourage members to attend the annual conference by supporting their travel costs, such support must take account of the current financial health of the Association. Normally, 50% of travel costs (cheapest air or train fare between the applicant's home and the conference venue) will be met.
IASA will, in addition, approach the local conference organisers and request that the grantee's registration fee be waived. The decision in each case will be up to the conference organiser.
Accommodation and subsistence costs will not be supported.
Applications must be sent in writing (by letter, fax or e-mail) to the Secretary-General in response to the announcement of travel and research grants, which are published in the IASA Information Bulletin.
Applications must contain the 100% amount of the travel costs in US$, confirmed e.g. by an official travel agency.
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.
The method of payment shall be specified in the application including to whom moneys shall be paid and how they will be made.
The Secretary-General will check all applications received by the appointed deadline and will submit them to the Executive Board at its mid-year meeting for discussion and approval.
Applicants will be informed as soon as possible of the result after the Board's decision has been reached.
IASA will not pay grants in advance of travel. Costs will be reimbursed on presentation of copies of the travel documents by the grantee to the IASA Treasurer during the conference.
IASA travel grants are awarded only to members of the Association; grants will not be made in support of accompanying persons.
Applications for travel grants to attend the London conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of February 2001 in order to be considered at the mid-year Board meeting to be held in March 2001. Please send your application to:
IASA Secretary General,
Albrecht Häfner,
Suedwestrundfunk, Sound Archives,
D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany
Fax +49 7221 929 4199
e-mail: albrecht-haefner@swr-online.de [263]
Research grants are also available to assist in carrying out specific projects and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project which concerns the interests of IASA and which requires start-up funding or which requires financial support for work already underway is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (see address above). Applications will be considered as and when the Executive Board of IASA meets, so the next opportunity will be at its mid-year meeting in March 2001 and then at Annual Conference the following September.
Information on professional training opportunities and documents concerning audio-visual archiving tends to be spread all over the world in the form of poorly distributed hard copies and on various web-sites.
Audio-visual documents are today found in all kinds of collections. Therefore the need for professionally trained personnel in audio-visual archives is growing.
In many countries, those professional training programmes that already exist for archivists and librarians contain only very basic information on how to address the problems of audio-visual documents. Specialist training is usually considered appropriate only at post-graduate level.
Faced with this situation the NGOs of the Co-ordinating Council of Audio-visual Archives Associations (CCAAA) should take the initiative to establish a Web service, which would contain not only documentation on training opportunities organised by the NGOs themselves or by others, but also training modules for distance-learning.
Here is a recommended working plan:
compile an inventory of existing documents on AV-archiving suitable for training purposes;
develop a structure for a training program, containing virtual and "real" parts;
commission the creation of new documents and training possibilities
create a dedicated web site
UNESCO has indicated that it is willing to support such an initiative financially if a proposal is presented quickly. IASA members who are willing to work on the creation of the first 2 points of the above working plan should contact, at their earliest convenience, Kurt Deggeller, Director Memoriav, Giacomettistrasse 1, CH-3000 Bern 15, Phone: +41 31 350 97 60, Fax: +41 350 97 64, e-mail: kurt.deggeller@memoriav.ch [264]
Elsebeth Kirring (Statsbiblioteket, Aarhus) reports on the initial meeting of the Nordic Metadata Group held in August at her institution.
In October 1999 a Nordic specialist meeting on digital archives was held in Mo i Rana, Norway. There it was proposed that a Nordic metadata-group should be set up in order to decide on a Nordic standard for metadata for broadcast material. The members should be representatives from the Nordic broadcast archives and national archives. The first meeting of this Group took place at Statsbiblioteket, Aarhus on 22nd August 2000.
We started off with reports on the current state of play in the respective archives represented in the Group. This revealed that regarding metadata for AV-documents most of us were in a position of wait-and-see, but that we were all interested in a common Nordic standard that could be applied in our area. We agreed on the following:
the Nordic broadcast archives and national sound and audio-visual archives will establish a Nordic metadata-group with the mandate to draw up a common Nordic minimum-standard for metadata - especially concerning broadcast material and other AV material;
its work is to be co-ordinated with similar work inside EBU and other international fora (IASA is, of course, among "other international fora" with which we wish to co-ordinate);
at its next meeting the group will specify the mandate for the work within the scope of the agreement. It is assumed that consideration will be given to the need for a common minimum metadata standard based on Dublin Core which contains the possibility of local additions when needed;
The group consists of representatives from Norsk Rikskringkasting, Sveriges Radio, Danmarks Radio, Nasjonalbiblioteket (Norway), Arkivet för ljud och bild (Sweden) and Statsbiblioteket (Denmark). Finland and Iceland are invited too, but have not reported that they are interested in joining the group.
The group is expected to produce a draft recommendation for a common Nordic platform based on Dublin Core by December 1st, 2000.
Any views on this subject are welcome. Please mail to: ek@statsbiblioteket.dk [265]
One of IASA's long-standing institutional members in the UK, the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) has just won a prestigious contract (subject to final negotiations) from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which governs IT-related services for British higher education. The contract is to provide a Negotiation Agent and an Advisory Service for Moving Pictures and Sound resources, subject to final contract negotiations.
The BUFVC "will work within the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) to provide a central service for the acquisition and promotion of electronic moving pictures and sound resources. Within this they will provide a wide variety of advice in areas such as IPR issues, tools, technologies, standards, licensing and cataloguing and will seek to promote good practice in this area."
Further information about the role of these services can be found in the open tender document at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub00/c05_00.html [266]
News received from IFLA. "The Core Programme on Preservation and Conservation (PAC) of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) has recently produced a CD-ROM entitled Safeguarding our Documentary Heritage. This bilingual, English and French, CD-ROM was made as a sequel to the guide published under the same title by the UNESCO Sub-Committee on Technology for the Memory of the World Programme. It presents recommended practices and lists the standards and reference literature related to preservation of documents of all kinds.
In order to disseminate this guide among a wider range of users, in the expectation that it might become an initial or permanent training tool, UNESCO contracted IFLA to create a thoroughly illustrated CD-ROM on the causes of deterioration of library collections and archival documents as well as on the preventive measures to be taken. With the benefit of hypertext links this CD-ROM should be able to extend the possibilities of research by providing links with other Internet sites dealing with similar information in the preservation field.
Besides the participation of experts from the UNESCO Memory of the World programme who edited the Guide, the CD-ROM is the result of fruitful collaboration between many library and archives professionals together with their respective institutions. This project, directed by IFLA PAC (Preservation and Conservation) Core Programme, hosted by the National Library of France, was carried out successfully thanks to scientific assistance from the Mission on Research and Technology of the French Ministry of Culture.
Part of the content of the CD-ROM will also be made available on the web sites of UNESCO http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/index.html [267], and of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/conservation/fr/ [268]
Free copies of the CD-ROM are available from the IFLA PAC centre at the Bibliothèque nationale de France by applying to Marie-Thérèse VARLAMOFF, Director of the project IFLA-PAC
E-mail: marie-therese.varlamoff@bnf.fr [269]
Highly recommended [Editor]
Metadata Watch http://www.schemas-forum.org [270]
The SCHEMAS project is a two-year accompanying measure to the European Commission's 5th Framework programme, its aim being to provide information about the status and use of new and emerging metadata standards, including training.
The purpose of the SCHEMAS Metadata Watch (MD Watch) is to provide a quarterly overview of world-wide progress in the metadata field, which includes work on metadata sets, schemas, frameworks, registries, and the tools needed to create and use all of these things. The added value that the MD Watch provides consists of giving readers (a) the ability to get the information they need from one easy-to-use source, (b) expert opinion and (c) a multi-tiered format that allows readers to get information at three levels of granularity. It is in the middle level that you will find the Audio-visual sector.
Also worth your attention is a recent article on SCHEMAS in the on-line serial Ariadne. 'Application Profiles: mixing and matching metadata schemas' by Rachel Heery and Manjula Patel. Issue 25 of Ariadne magazine is now available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue25/ [271]
In view of the current interest in metadata within IASA there will be regular features in this Bulletin and more articles will be commissioned for the Journal.
Axel Plathe, UNESCO Information Society Division, has notified the IASA Board that "it has placed the logo of IASA on the homepage of the new UNESCO Archives Portal http://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_archives [272] thus underlining the close relations between our two organizations in the area of international archival co-operation." IASA has provided a reciprocal link.
The UNESCO Archives Portal gives access to web sites of archival institutions around the world. It is also a gateway to resources related to records and archives management and to international co-operation in this area. With the Archives Portal, UNESCO provides a single interactive access point to information for archivists and users of archives worldwide.
Visitors to the UNESCO Archives Portal can browse through pre-established categories or search for specific words. They can add a new link or modify an already existing link. An electronic Newsletter will provide information on new entries. The "In Focus" section presents web sites of archives that are considered "particularly interesting". Visitors can also rank web sites of archives and related institutions through an on-line rating system.
The links on the UNESCO Archives Portal are listed according to the following categories:
Archives (National Archives, Regional and State Archives, Special Archives)
Associations (Professional Associations, Professional Institutions)
Conferences and Meetings (International and regional events)
Education and Training (Institutions and training courses relating to archives)
International Co-operation (Organizations and co-operation programmes)
Internet Resources (Archives Portals, On-line Directories, Publications, Mailing Lists)
Preservation and Conservation (Organizations, Programmes, Techniques)
Further to Chris Clark's presentation at the Singapore Conference, The British Library National Sound Archive (NSA) is pleased to announce that its catalogue, also known as CADENSA, will be available on the Web from the last week of October. It is being made available initially for testing and evaluation and IASA members are encouraged to take a look, do the test and submit a completed questionnaire by mid December. All comments will be considered and further changes made, if necessary, prior to the public launch of the catalogue in its new form early in 2001. We expect the url to be http://www.cadensa.bl.uk [273] with an alias http://cadensa.bl.uk [274] . There is, however, a move to change the name of the catalogue for web access. If you are unable to get in using the above urls, Try http://nsacat.bl.uk [275], or e-mail your Editor chris.clark@bl.uk [14] for assistance.
The AMIA Publications Committee has announced the launch of the new AMIA web-site at http://www.amianet.org [276]
The AMIA site provides information on all aspects of AMIA, as well as numerous resources, publications and fact sheets on moving image archiving and preservation. The site features a new look and a great deal of new content. Features and material available for the first time on the updated site include:
Information on the 2000 AMIA Conference in Los Angeles, including the
Preliminary Conference Program and local accommodations.
Proceedings from the 1998 annual conference in Miami (over 30 sessions
and presentations).
A comprehensive new fact sheet on "Storage Standards and Guidelines for
Film and Videotape"
* AMIA's comments and recommendations on the "Revision of Archival Moving
Image Materials: A Cataloging Manual (AMIM)."
The October issue of Scientific American <http://www.sciam.com/ [277]> contains a special report on the wireless web, including the drawbacks of WAP technology and the promises of 3-G[generation] wireless cell phone systems which are intended to handle audio-visual downloads. 3-G is shortly to become available in Japan, but somewhat later in Europe and America.
Rather old news by now, but still worth a look: you have probably heard about the RIAA v Napster case in the U.S. concerning illegal electronic distribution. If so, you might be interested in an article by Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation John Perry Barlow entitled Napster.com and the Death of the Music Industry
http://www.technocrat.net/958163435/index_html [278] . And there's more on Napster and MP3 controversies in a report by Laura Gasaway in Information Outlook (vol.4 no.8) pp. 44-45.
Most intriguing is the recent announcement that the United States House of Representatives has passed a bill to set up a national sound archive at the Library of Congress. As announced on the Recording Academy's web site http://www.grammy.com/news/ [279] one might be forgiven for thinking that the Library of Congress never held any sound recordings, though most of us are aware that it probably has the largest historical collection in the world. But there appears to be a new slant to this new initiative and doubtless it will boost the fortunes and profile of audio-visual archiving in the United States, and maybe also world wide. Here's part of the Recording Academy's announcement:
"Acknowledging the importance of preserving the nation's rich cultural history, the House of Representatives passed the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000. The landmark legislation, passed on July 25, will establish the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress to protect recordings that are deemed historically significant or culturally relevant [Editor's emphasis]. The Recording Academy shepherded the legislation (H.R. 4846), which is affectionately known to members of Congress as the "GRAMMY Bill." Authored by Congressmen William Thomas ... and Steny Hoyer ..., the Act will also preserve other historically important recordings such as political speeches. An annual appropriations budget of $250,000 has been established for the program, which will be supplemented by private sector funding and gifts from the public. A companion bill will be offered in the Senate which is expected to obtain approval this fall."
Meanwhile, you could add to your own collection by bidding at IASA Associate Member Kurt Nauck's 28th Vintage Record Auction. There are 7500 lots are to be sold, including: over fifty Berliners (including a rare "dog in the grooves" Canadian issue and an 8-inch secondary master dated August 1898); over 300 foreign and ethnic recordings, including African, Arabic, American Indian, Armenian, Bohemian, Brazilian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Hindi, Malaysian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Scandinavian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and West Indian (many of which are unplayed dealer stock recordings from the 1920s); hundreds of 16-inch radio transcriptions (including original Lone Ranger lacquers and the only known set of the heretofore unknown "Tennessee Party Time" programs starring Lonzo & Oscar with Chet Atkins); rare and unusual jazz, blues, country, personality and rock & roll recordings (including Frank Stokes, Elder Richard Bryant and the Dinwiddie Colored Quartette on Victor; Sarah Bernhardt on G&T, the Prisonaires on Sun and Hightower's Night Hawks on Black Patti), over 1,000 cylinders (including 50 brown wax recordings,15 Concerts, 20 Lamberts, many operatics, 8 Columbia 20th Centuries, rare boxes you may have never seen or heard of, Sir Ernest Shackleton on Edison 4 minute wax and "Let Us Not Forget" by T.A. Edison), etc.
To get your free copy of the auction catalogue, write or e-mail:
Nauck's Vintage Records, 6323 Inway Dr., Spring, TX 77389 USA
(tel) + 1 281-370-7899 / (fax) + 1 281-251-7023 / e-mail <nauck@78rpm.com [280]>
Website: http://www.78rpm.com [119]
Please remember to keep the Editor informed of any changes to the details which appear in the current IASA Directory.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2000 | ||
| September 27 - October 1 | Berlin Phonogrammarchiv Centenary | Berlin |
| October 15 - 18 | FIAT Annual World Conference | Vienna |
| November 13 - 18 | AMIA 10th International Conference | Los Angeles |
| November 13 - 15 | UNESCO Info-ethics 2000 (3rd Congress) | Paris |
| November | FIAF Executive Committee | New York |
| December 7 - 8 | Preservation 2000: An International Conference on Preservation and Long-Term Accessibility of Digital Materials |
York, UK |
| 2001 | ||
| Jan 28 - Feb 2 | British Council seminar: Libraries, museums and archives in the digital age | London |
| March 8 - 9 | IASA Board mid-year meeting | London |
| May 12 - 15 | 110th AES Convention | Amsterdam |
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| August 16 -25 | 67th IFLA Council and General Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| September 21 - 24 | 111th AES Convention | New York |
| September 23 - 26 | ARSC/IASA Annual Conference | London |
| Sept / Oct | FIAT Annual Conference | London |
| November 6 - 11 | 11th AMIA Conference | Portland, U.S. |
| 2002 | ||
| May 11 - 12 | 112th AES Convention | Munich |
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| 68th IFLA Council and General Conference | Glasgow, U.K. | |
| September | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
| October 5 - 8 | 113th AES Convention | Los Angeles, U.S. |
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 [260].
Language editor: Dorothy van Tonder, SABC
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 58 BY 15 MAY 2007
Printed and produced in South Africa by Heypenni Gold
With reference to the decision taken by the IASA Executive Board and the General Assembly at the annual conference in Singapore, July 2000, please note the following changes in membership fees as of January 2001.
The only permitted currencies for bank transfer are US-Dollar ($) or Euro (€). Therefore the current fees will be converted from British Pound Sterling (GBP £) into US-Dollar ($) and Euro (€). From January 2001 these currencies will be used exclusively for invoicing and reminders.
The key currency is the US$. Membership fees will be determined with reference to the actual currency rates, but this does not mean that the fees for 2001 have been increased in comparison to 2000. Fees shown on the invoices for 2001 will be based on the exchange rate of 30 December 2000 and will remain valid for the whole year 2001.
As the bank fees charged to both the IASA Treasury and IASA members are rather high, from January 2001 IASA will introduce discounts for advanced payment of membership fees: 5% discount for two years payment, 10% discount for three years payment.
| Membership category | Fees | 2001 | 2001+2002paying 2 years in advance saving 5% discount | 2001+2002+2003paying 3 years in advance saving 10% discount | |||
| GBP | Euro | US-Dollar | Euro | US-Dollar | Euro | US-Dollar | |
| full institutional | £ 100 | € 158 | $ 150 | € 300 | $ 285 | € 427 | $ 405 |
| full individual | £ 25 | € 40 | $ 38 | € 76 | $ 72 | € 108 | $ 103 |
| associate institutional | £ 100 | € 158 | $ 150 | € 300 | $ 285 | € 427 | $ 405 |
| associate individual | £ 25 | € 40 | $ 38 | € 76 | $ 72 | € 108 | $ 103 |
| sustaining | £ 125 | € 198 | $ 187 | € 376 | $ 355 | € 535 | $ 505 |
| subscription iasa journal | £ 35 | € 56 | $ 52 | € 106 | $ 99 | € 151 | $ 140 |
All figures calculated with reference to currency exchange rates at December 29th, 2000.
National Library Board, Singapore. Library Supply Centre, No.3 Changi South Street 2, Tower B #03-00, Singapore 486548.
This is the national and main public library in Singapore.
Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique. Av. Filipe Samuel Magaia No.715 R/C, Maputo, Mozambique.
Serves the public and academic community in Mozambique. The collection covers historical material, public records, audio-visual, oral history, cartography and iconography.
Breda Gray, Irish Centre for Migration Studies, National University of Ireland, Cork, 6 Bloomfield Terrace, Western Road, Cork, Ireland.
This is a research and teaching institution currently developing an oral archive about the effects of emigration on Irish society in the 20th century and accounts of Irish identity and experiences in the Diaspora.
Ross Harvey, School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Locked Bag 675, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia.
Ross Harvey teaches a graduate diploma in audio-visual archiving.
Saúl Maté (associate member). PO Box 264, Salford, M6 6JL, United Kingdom.
Student of audio technology.
The deadline for the first call for papers (see Information Bulletin No.35) has now passed. This is the second call for papers on the theme Why collect? The purpose of audiovisual archives. See Information Bulletin No.35 for more information. Proposals for a paper or poster presentation should be sent in the form of a title and summary along with your name and address to one of the programme committee:
John Spence, IASA Vice-President: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Archives, G.P.O. 9994, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia. Fax 011 61 2 9333 2525, email spence.john@a2.abc.net.au [233]
Alan Ward: The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, United Kingdom. Fax + 44 20 7412 7441, email alan.ward@bl.uk [261]
Dr Michael Biel, ARSC 2nd V.P.: P.O. Box 822, Morehead, Kentucky 40351, United States. Email m.biel@morehead-st.edu [262]
The deadline for this call is March 15.
Full details of the conference and a provisional programme will soon be posted at the ARSC-IASA Conference website, which is linkable from the ARSC and IASA websites respectively.
There is still time to submit applications for travel and research grants. The deadline is the end of February 2001. See details in Information Bulletin No.35 [281].
Sweden's ALB has changed its name as of January 1 2001 to Statens Ljud-och Bildarkiv.
Sven Allerstrand writes: "the acronym will be SLBA. We hope to avoid using the acronym in Swedish, and instead use the short form: Ljud- och bildarkivet, which in English means the sound and picture archive. The postal address, telephone, fax etc will be the same but we are changing the visiting address to Karlavägen 98. The url will be http://www.ljudochbildarkivet.se [282] and my e-mail address will accordingly be sven.allerstrand@ljudochbildarkivet.se. [283]"
Cinta Pujal (Arxiu Històric Nacional d'Andorra) reports:
"We are glad to report that the National Historical Archive of Andorra, attached to the Ministry of Tourism and Culture of the Andorran Government, has received the support of UNESCO for carrying out its campaign Recovery of Andorra's Film Heritage, a Task of All. This project, which will be unfolding over the course of the years 2000 and 2001, is set within the UNESCO Memory of the World programme.
Our work is organised in three phases. In the first phase we need to carry out a promotion and information campaign on the project, contacting collaborators and obtaining film documents.
Secondly, we will evaluate these documents and the respective treatments in accordance with the state of preservation and the particular features of the contents. One copy will be made for conservation, which will be deposited at the National Historical Archive, and another copy for domestic use will be delivered to the owner. These documents will be inventoried and catalogued by the international cataloguing system and rules on audio-visual archives.
In the third phase we will disseminate the documents. The dissemination of the project will be carried out in step with the completion of the various phases. We will exhibit the first results as soon as possible, holding an amateur and domestic cinema exhibition in collaboration with the Andorran Cinema Club Cine Club de les Valls, and organising in the medium term a seminar with the participation of the persons in charge of the programme, professionals from the audio-visual archives field and the owners of the documents. We wish to achieve a broader dissemination by using all the technological advances at our disposal, by taking part in congresses and seminars inside and outside our country, and by making known this initiative as widely as possible: a good way to acknowledge the historical heritage is to disseminate it.
The goal is to grant a well-deserved acknowledgement to all the protagonists (film-makers and persons filmed) who, on an amateur or domestic basis, have been present at some scene of our history, and to share with society at large these unique testimonies. We will work together - institutions, associations and individuals - to recover and enhance the appreciation of Andorra's film heritage, and to make known the existence of these documents in national and international spheres as a small contribution to making a reality of the programme Memory of the World.
We wish to express our gratitude to the collaborating organisations (RTVA, STA and Diari d'Andorra) and to the institutions and individuals who have given us support since the time when this project was only an idea. Furthermore, if you have filmed images of the Principality of Andorra or if you know of anyone who may possess any and would be interested in having them form part of a programme of international scope backed by UNESCO that is based on disseminating part of the Memory of the World, we urge you to contact us by telephone (00-376 86-05-06) or through our web site http://www.andorra.ad/arxius [284]
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) is being funded for three years through the Federal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Language Access Initiatives Program, to undertake much needed work on its recorded sound collection.
The aim of the project is to improve access to language material in the AIATSIS recorded sound collection by:
increasing the number of audiotapes that have documentation;
archiving the backlog of original field tape recordings of which there is currently only one copy in existence;
preparing comprehensive compilation tapes of specific languages for return to the appropriate intellectual property owners.
The Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages (FATSIL) is advising which languages should be given priority, as most Australian languages could be considered 'endangered'.
IASA President Crispin Jewitt reports on his attendance at the UN World Television Forum 2000.
"I attended this conference on 16-17 November at the United Nations HQ primarily on behalf of IASA, but also with a view to the British Library's general interest in broadcasting developments in the context of e-services and of the National Sound Archive. My IASA remit was to represent the interests of the audio-visual archiving profession, and the preservation of TV and radio material as cultural heritage for the wider research community.
The theme of the conference was Bridging the digital divide and it brought together major players in the media industry with NGOs and high-technology companies for two days of contrasting but stimulating sessions, addressing issues such as the role of broadcasting in social programmes, and the changing relationship between TV, radio and the internet.
The opening sessions included a welcome by the President of the General Assembly, Harri Holkeri, and a keynote event which included presentations by Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, and Greg Dyke, Director General of the BBC. Kofi Annan drew our attention to the link between civilisation and knowledge, and the consequential moral and social responsibility to share knowledge to reduce inequalities. While saying that the broadcasting industry could be an agent for change in this area, he also urged that the spread of basic literacy should not be forgotten as a necessary basic task. He announced the establishment of a UN Task Force on Bridging the Digital Divide. Greg Dyke spoke in support of the principle of public service broadcasting funded by the public purse (acknowledging with humour that in some quarters in the USA this practice was thought akin to communism).
Two particular issues of relevance to IASA arose from the sessions on education and on "the radio model". Philip Karp from the World Bank made an interesting presentation on their distance learning programmes for adult in-service training. Using a range of media including the web, video-conferencing, data links and even old-fashioned television programming, complemented by a network of local learning centres the World Bank is backing up its lending programmes with professional skills transfer around the globe. IASA has been discussing distance learning, and although the World Bank clearly has more resources at its disposal, there is much that could be learnt from this programme about effective methodologies for delivery. Another session looked at the different ways in which radio and TV were interacting with and using the Internet to develop new services. Radio was considered much more responsive to the agendas of local populations and there were examples from Latin America and East Asia of complementary use of Internet news services and local radio. There was also a presentation on the UN's own use of radio as a platform for promoting its programmes world-wide http://www.un.org/av/radio [285]. The fact that radio was much more hospitable to linguistic differences than TV was said to be an additional factor which would secure the future of radio as a medium with its own distinct position in the overall broadcasting industry. Radio is also inexpensive for the consumer and not dependent on mains electricity (which was a sentiment of little relevance to the following session about the digital vision). In this session there was naturally no consistent message from the panel, but there were solidly practical contributions from the Polish and Kenyan speakers, theoretical and visionary statements from the Italian speakers, and a strong message from the US participant no doubt quite unrelated to his current business interests. Ayisi Makatiani, the Kenyan speaker, runs a successful business which is addressing the issue of "information inequality" by providing Internet services to ordinary people in a country where the infrastructure we take for granted hardly exists. David Passero, who runs the webcasting service of RAI, pointed to the inevitable loss of control over schedules, and the fundamentally changing relationship between viewer (actor rather than spectator) and broadcaster.
The conference mainly addressed the interaction between business, technological, and social developments, and there was thus only limited overlap with specific IASA agendas, but it obviously raised very important general issues for archivists of broadcast material. There is no doubt that AV archiving has a most important role to play in documenting the process of change and preserving the cultural artefacts generated by these activities, but whether current archival structures are adequate to the task is a big question.
Amongst others I met Peter Dusek, President of FIAT, and Hugh Leonard, Secretary-General of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. It was also good to meet Wolfgang Dehn, a colleague of Albrecht Häfner at Südwestrundfunk. I believe the conference was good value for money in relation to IASA's AV remit, and also provided the BL with an opportunity to keep abreast of an area which may well become more important to it in the future.
The following message from the IASA President Crispin Jewitt was conveyed to FIAT's conference in Vienna last October.
"Mr President and Conference Delegates
It is a pleasure to convey the greetings and best wishes of the International Association of Sound and Audio-visual Archives for a successful conference, and to have the opportunity to deliver a message from a neighbouring association.
The interests and membership of our two associations overlap in a number of areas so we naturally look with interest at our relationship to consider where we can co-operate to our mutual advantage. We are constantly reminded about media convergence and of course this is removing previous distinctions, but at the same time we should take account of the differing composition of our respective memberships. FIAT predominantly, though not exclusively, includes broadcasting organisations, while IASA with a much more heterogeneous membership, includes the academic and heritage sectors, as well as broadcasters. Successful co-operation will depend on a realistic understanding of the different agendas that arise from these facts, as much as on the identification of areas of common interest.
We are both small organisations when compared with the peak bodies in the archive, library, and museum world. But we share a common need to influence policy makers and increase awareness of the importance of our work. Too often we find ourselves having to struggle for adequate funding from parent institutions, rather than influencing the wider agenda for the management of our growing audio-visual heritage. As a response to this situation IASA has been working with other associations to set up a more active 'umbrella' organisation to represent the interests and needs of the audio-visual archive profession on the wider stage. The Co-ordinating Council of Audio-visual Archives Associations (CCAAA) is currently being established with robust terms of reference and a realistic level of administrative support. We hope that FIAT will re-join IASA, FIAT, IFLA, and ICA in this new stage of co-operation.
Next year both of our associations will be meeting in London. IASA is meeting with ARSC at the British Library towards the end of September and we have the opportunity to co-ordinate the dates with FIAT for the benefit of delegates who wish to attend both conferences. Our conference theme will be Why collect the purpose of audio-visual archives: we will be reminding ourselves of the value of our work by presenting some of the cultural riches of our holdings, and also looking at ways of developing partnerships to use our limited resources to greater effect.
But all of that is for next year. In the meantime IASA sends you all best wishes for a lively and successful meeting this week in Vienna."
Sven Allerstrand (SLBA and IASA Past President) attended the conference. Here is part of his brief report to the IASA President.
"The FIAT conference went well. The IASA message was well received and as a response they decided to have their conference at the same dates as IASA. They also agreed on having at least one joint social event. We discussed holding this at BBC as this would be accepted as neutral ground: the BBC is a member of IASA and FIAT. FIAT did not respond at all to the IASA President's invitation to rejoin CCAAA.
FIAT business policy still revolves around "the archive as the heart of a production company", but there is a working group within FIAT, the Technical Studies Working group, which deals with television as source material for research and how the TV-archives could be made accessible to academics. I am a member of this group and attended my first meeting in Vienna. Steve Bryant is the chair and the other attendants were from Library of Congress, the Netherlands Audio-visual Archives, the National Archives of Canada, the Swedish Television Company and the Finnish Broadcasting Company. This has a potential to become a National Archives Commission within FIAT if the association wants to broaden its scope to the heritage sector."
The annual joint IASA/FIAT meeting will be held at the new archive building of the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv in Potsdam-Babelsberg on 18-19 May 2001.
For further information please contact:
Per Holst, Radio Sound Archives Section, c/o Danish Broadcasting Corporation
Radio Archive, Islands Brygge 81, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark
E-mail: per@dr.dk [286], Fax: 45 3520 5568
IASA's activity in Asia continues. Secretary-General Albrech Häfner recently re-Oriented himself and sent in this report of his lecturing tour in Iran and South-East Asia.
The ABU (Asia & Pacific Broadcasting Union) and the Training Centre of DW (Deutsche Welle, the German international radio) jointly funded and organized a series of workshops on Managing Modern Radio Sound Archives which took place in six Asian countries throughout the whole of October and early November 2000. Deutsche Welle, one of the German public broadcasting companies, organises as part of its mandate, training courses on programming and technical content for radio and television companies in developing countries. These take place either at the Deutsche Welle training centre in Cologne or at clients' sites anywhere in the world. Target groups for this particular series were the big national and private radio companies in the capital cities of each country. The trainees and hosts were IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, Tehran), RIB (Republik of Indonesia Broadcasting, Jakarta), Thailand Radio (Bangkok), Radio Guangdong (Guangzhou, China), SLBC (Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, Colombo) and AIBD (Asian & Pacific Institute for Broadcast Development) in Manila in conjunction with the ABU General Assembly.
The workshops were run by a team of three: one colleague from DW who is a radio generalist and who has in-depth knowledge about DW's digital radio services (including the sound archive with its digital mass storage system); an IT and network specialist from ABU; and myself as an expert on modern radio sound archives.
Each workshop lasted three days, covering subjects such as the requirements for modern radio sound archives, archive management, databases for sound archives, computerisation and digitisation, audio workstations, mass storage systems, data reduction, networks, and the like, but also (with regard to existing collections) handling, storage and conservation of audiovisual carriers. A 20-minute presentation on IASA rounded off each workshop.
We used the day prior to the start of each workshop for technical preparation (we preferred our laptops and offered powerpoint presentations via a beamer and a screen) and checks (e.g. in each country we were faced with different plugging-in systems for electrical power) and had talks, too, with the archive staff in order to obtain a rough idea of their situation. The number of attendants ranged between 25 in Colombo and 115 in Bangkok where institutions other than Thailand Radio, e.g. archives from universities and the army, participated.
The situation in each of the archives we visited varied considerably: here several small CD collections scattered in editors' offices without any central structure; there a central sound archive, holding CDs, microgroove records and magnetic tapes as well as lacquer discs and shellacs which had been utilised constantly for more than three years. Here a notebook or, at best, a card catalogue for access; there people transferring data from card catalogues onto an electronic database. Here any amount of dust due to a filterless air conditioning device; there excellent storage conditions with a temperature of 16°C and 40% RH. Here a single unmotivated person in charge of what could only be called an approximation to a sound archive; there a motivated team of ten persons. Here typewriters in the news room; there already some computer equipment for production and on-air systems. Here and there generally, a lack of money for the sound archive. The inescapable conclusion for an indulged European archivist was that there are a great many omissions to make up for and a lot of backlogs to manage.
The aim of the workshop series was to bring new ideas to the participants, in particular to raise awareness of the benefits and inevitability of digitisation. I believe that these new ideas were embraced eagerly and that IASA may soon increase its membership in this region.
The AES 20th International Conference Committee invites submission of papers for presentation at its 20th International Conference Archiving, Restoration & New Methods of Recording to be held at the Hotel Novotel, Budapest October 5 7.
"The treasury of accumulated sound recordings held by the recording industry, broadcasters, national collections and research institutions is estimated to be more than 50 million hours. This legacy constitutes an invaluable asset for the future. To preserve it and make it accessible is a challenge to audio engineers, archivists and information technologists. The conference will explore the new horizons opened by recent technological developments in the fields of preservation, restoration and access to sound recording".
The proposed topics for papers are:
Carrier degradation; accelerated ageing tests; carrier and signal restoration; quality assessment of holdings; storage conditions; re-recording historical formats; format obsolescence; mass transfer of large collections; digital mass-storage systems; file structure and metadata; migration issues; automated content analysis; multimedia services; new principles of data recording; rewritable carriers; limits for data density; solid-state memories.
Further information about conference themes can be obtained from either of the conference co-chairs:
Gábor Heckenhast Fax +36 1 384 5704
Dietrich Schüller Fax +43 1 4277 9296
Or e-mail 20thconf_cochairs@aes.org [287]
The deadline for submissions is March 1st. Proposals for papers must include provisional title, abstract (60-120 words only) and précis (500-700 words) and should be submitted to the Committee via the Internet at http://www.aes.org/20th_authors [288] . You can visit this site for more information and instructions.
All proposals should be submitted on-line. The précis should describe the work carried out, methods employed and conclusions. Also include your opinion of the paper's significance. Titles and abstracts should follow the guidelines in Information for Authors at http://www.aes.org/journal/con_infoauth.html [289]. Authors without Internet access may contact the AES Headquarters office for hardcopy forms and instructions.
Acceptance of papers (which will be e-mailed by April 15 2001) will be determined by a review committee based on an assessment of the précis. A pre-print manuscript (deadline July 16th 2001) will be a condition for acceptance of the paper for presentation at the conference. Abstracts of accepted papers will be published in the conference programme.
If you have any further questions about these formalities, please contact either of the conference paper co-chairs:
Zoltán Vajda or Heinrich Pichler at 20th_papers@aews.org [290]
The Society for Ethnomusicology will be holding its 2001 Annual Meeting on October 25-28 at the Marriott Renaissance Center, Detroit, Michigan. The conference theme is Teaching and Learning in the Twenty-First Century. There is also a pre-conference symposium on Transcription and its Futures, which will be held on October 24th.
The deadline for receipt of proposals for papers is March 7, 2001.
For information contact: SEM 2001 Program Committee, Society for Ethnomusicology, Morrison Hall 005, Indian University, Bloomington, IN 47405, United States. E-mail sem@indiana.edu [291], website http://www.ethnomusicology.org [292]
New on the National Library of Canada's The Virtual Gramophone: The First World War Era (1914-1918)
Richard Green (NLC) writes: "The latest phase of development for The Virtual Gramophone Web site has seen the addition of songs from the period of the First World War. The Great War saw an outpouring of patriotic songs and sentimental ballads urging support for soldiers, sailors, and airmen, combined with heart-felt concern for the families waiting on the home front. This era also marked the beginning of great changes in popular music, with the rise of vaudeville, the song writing of Tin Pan Alley, the start of the dance-band craze, and the rise of jazz. Canadian singers and songwriters were leaders of this musical generation.
Visitors to the Virtual Gramophone Web site can consult 724 new records in the database, 268 new digitally-restored audio recordings, and a series of articles and images explaining the period and the music, as well as biographical sketches of the major Canadian musical personalities. Of particular note is the extensive coverage in the Virtual Gramophone for Canada's premier entertainment troupe of that era, the Dumbells."
Ymgyrchu!: a century of political and social campaigning in Wales
The National Library of Wales is hosting a suite of new pages devoted to themes such as Welsh politics and the Welsh language and it contains many fascinating sound clips - http://www.llgc.org.uk/ymgyrchu/index.htm [293]
Pengelly article
The October 2000 issue of Electronics World contains an article about cylinders. A special associated CD Pandora's box is available separately from Electronics World, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 2AS, UK at a cost of 11.99 GBP. (This article appears to be available in hard copy only: a visit to the online index http://www.softcopy.co.uk/indexes.htm [294], where reprints can be purchased, indicates that recent issues (i.e. post May 1998) are not yet available).
Hangars full of musical printers and other "Weird Stuff".
The dependence on technology that makes our profession special and problematic requires us to keep and maintain arsenals of machinery. The amount of space required in the near future for this suggests that alternative use might be considered of disused military installations, such as aircraft hangars, to ensure that all formats are covered. The same problem exists for the computer industry but they appear to be several steps ahead of the sound archive community already. I was browsing through web pages for the San Francisco Bay area prior to a Christmas visit and came across two intriguing sites, neither of which I had time to visit in the physical sense. The Computer Museum History Center houses its collection of computing artefacts (including 2000 films and videotapes) in a building at Moffett Federal Airfield. Follow the links at http://www.computerhistory.org/ [295] from "highlights" and discover a bonus item recordings of a 1964 IBM 1403 printer "performing" popular songs of the time. And if you need spare parts in future for obsolete components of your digital mass storage system (e.g. rendering devices), then the Weirdstuff Warehouse http://www.weirdstuff.com [296] may be able to help. [Ed.]
York Digital Management Conference
Despite repeated flood warnings during the wettest British Autumn on record, a major conference on digital collection management managed to take place successfully in York, UK last December. You can read about it in RLG News on the Web at
http://www.oclc.org/en-UK/home.html [297]
Ugandan music collection
Gordon Nicol (Uncle Kabuye) invites IASA members to sample the delights of musical performances by Ugandan children recorded by him on New Year's Eve 1999 at Children of Uganda Tour of Light 2000 www.scotchproductions.com/uganda.html [298]
www.africa.spivideo.com [299]
It has been pointed out that IRTEM, although present in the list of institutional members, was omitted from the country index under Italy. The next issue of the Directory is due in early 2002.
Please remember to keep the Editor informed of any changes to the details that appear in the current IASA Directory.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2001 | ||
| Jan 28 Feb 2 | British Council seminar: Libraries, museums and archives in the digital age | London |
| March 8 9 | IASA Board mid-year meeting | London |
| April 22 28 | 57th FIAF Congress | Rabat, Morocco |
| May 2 5 | ASRA Conference Hunters and Collectors | Canberra |
| May 12 15 | 110th AES Convention | Amsterdam |
| May 18 19 | IASA FIAT meeting on digitisation | Potsdam-Babelsburg |
| June 21 24 | 19th AES International Conference Surround sound |
Schloss Elmau, Germany |
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| August 16 -25 | 67th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries and Librarians: Making a Difference in the Knowledge Age |
Boston, U.S. |
| September 21 24 | 111th AES Convention | New York |
| September 23 - 27 | ARSC/IASA Annual Conference Why collect: the purpose of audio-visual archives |
London |
| September 23 - 27 | FIAT Annual Conference | London |
| October 5 7 | 20th AES International Conference Archiving, restoration & new methods of recording |
Budapest |
| October 25 28 | Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting | Detroit, U.S. |
| November 6 11 | 11th AMIA Conference | Portland, U.S. |
| 2002 | ||
| May 11 12 | 112th AES Convention | Munich |
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| August 18 - 24 | 68th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries for life |
Glasgow, U.K. |
| September? | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
| October 5 8 | 113th AES Convention | Los Angeles, U.S. |
| 2003 | ||
| August 1 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| IAML | Tallinn, Estonia | |
This Information Bulletin has been compiled by
the Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 36 BY 15 MARCH 2001
At its mid-year meeting in London in March, IASA's Executive Board determined three primary objectives that will govern its work over the next eighteen months.
Fulfil the audiovisual remit of IASA
Members voted overwhelmingly several years ago to extend the scope of IASA to include 'visual' but little has been achieved. If the establishment of a new Research Archives Section is accepted by the General Assembly in London it will be encouraged to include small cross-media subject-based archives in its remit. The inclusion of audiovisual content in IASA conference programmes will be mandatory. IASA will seek to engage with metadata standardisation activities.
Extend IASA's geographical reach
The Research Archives Section, if established, will provide a focus for recruiting small institutions in Africa, Asia and Latin America and will serve as a hub for their involvement in IASA business.
The IASA website will be developed to meet the needs of a more widely separated membership
Strengthen IASA's external influence
IASA will support the development of the CCAAA as the umbrella body for AV archive associations. The IASA website will seek to address an external as well as an internal membership.
Centro Studi Jazz Arrigo Polillo, Siena, Fortezza Medicea 10, 53100 Siena, Italy.
Institution devoted to the conservation of jazz recordings with special emphasis on Italian jazz and jazz in Italy.
Cerchiari, Luca. Milan
Professor Cerchiari plans to develop a modern public sound archive for the region of Lombardy and Northern Italy.
Chin Man Iris Wong, Hong Kong
Ms Wong is Media Services Librarian at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, which has a collection of more than 30,000 media materials.
National & University Library (Slovenia), Music Collection, Tujaska 1, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
The collection includes 77,000 printed music items, 20,000 music recordings and 6,000 audiovisual items. The scope includes music of all kinds with a special emphasis on classical music.
Radio Guangdong, 686 Renminbei Road, Guangzhou, China
The aim of the station is to build a quality digital sound archive covering material produced for Guangdong Province, in particular music, literature and arts, language.
Sampradaya, No.1 Musiri Subramaniam Salai, Mylapore, Chennai 600 004, India
The centre for preserving the musical traditions of south India, especially Carnatic music. The Director is Geetha Rajagopal, e-mail samprada@giasmd01.vsn1.net.in [300]
This is the final call for papers on the theme Why collect? The purpose of audiovisual archives. See Information Bulletin No.35 for more information. Proposals for a paper or poster presentation should be sent in the form of a title and summary along with your name and address to one of the programme committee:
John Spence, IASA Vice-President: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Archives, G.P.O. 9994, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia. Fax 011 61 2 9333 2525, email spence.john@a2.abc.net.au [233]
Alan Ward: The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, United Kingdom. Fax + 44 20 7412 7441, email alan.ward@bl.uk [261]
Dr Michael Biel, ARSC 2nd V.P.: P.O. Box 822, Morehead, Kentucky 40351, United States. Email m.biel@morehead-st.edu [262]
The deadline for this call is June 15 2001
Full details of the conference and a provisional programme are now available at the ARSC-IASA Conference website, which is linkable from the ARSC and IASA sites respectively: http://www.llgc.org.uk/iasa/ [16]. http://www.arsc-audio.org/ [234]
Due to unforeseen arrangements at Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv in Potsdam-Babelsberg the joint IASA/FIAT meeting announced in Information Bulletin no. 36 has been moved to 21-22 May 2001.
For further information please contact: Per Holst, Radio Sound Archives Section, c/o Danish Broadcasting Corporation, E-mail per@dr.dk [286] , Fax: 45 3520 5568".
Iestyn Hughes writes:
"The Wales Film and Television Archive (WFTA) amalgamated with the National Library of Wales (NLW) Sound and Moving Image Collection on 1 April to form the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales / Archif Cenedlaethol Sgrin a Sain Cymru. The new archive is the fruit of close collaboration between Sgrin: Media Agency Wales, and the National Library of Wales. The Archive will eventually be housed at the National Library, where building work is currently under way to provide additional space and facilities. In the meantime, the Archive will continue to operate from the three current sites in south and mid Wales.
Iestyn Hughes, formerly Assistant Keeper responsible for the Photographic and Sound and Moving Image Collections and for corporate planning at the National Library, has been appointed to head the new archive.
The formation of the new archive ends a long period of uncertainty for both WFTA and NLW staff, and heralds what we all hope will be a period of growth and opportunity. The archive begins life with 50% additional funding, and has medium-term plans to develop and deliver significant improvements to the services currently provided by each party. The amalgamation is not so much about 'now' but about securing a long term, stable future for the national audio-visual collections, and about providing the Welsh public with a level of service of which they can be proud."
In January 2001, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) moved into new, purpose-built premises. The archival collections were transferred during early morning hours to ensure that they would remain in cool conditions, and the move of the collections was efficiently and successfully accomplished in less than a week.
The new building is located on Acton Peninsula in the middle of Canberra, the Federal capital of Australia and is sited next to the new national Museum of Australia. Both AIATSIS and the Museum of Australia opened to the public on Sunday, 11 March. The new location places AIATSIS within the
precinct of the National Library, the National Gallery, the High Court and other national institutions.
Visit the new AIATSIS web site at http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/archprod/index.htm [301] for more information on the audiovisual collections.
The launch of CADENSA, the NSA's catalogue of sound recordings, on the Internet (http://cadensa.bl.uk [274] ) at the end of January marked a step-change in the evolution of NSA services with a far-reaching increase in their accessibility and availability. The experience gained from this and the prospects it holds may be of interest to IASA members.
For libraries and archives seeking to make themselves more accessible the Internet is a powerful and timely enabler. However, managing a catalogue that is available 24 hours a day, every day, for everyone is rather different from that which is provided for a traditional reading room set-up with helpful curators in attendance. The successful launch of CADENSA on the web depended on a thorough review of the electronic interface between the NSA and its users as well as an enhancement to the catalogue itself.
The NSA - what it does, what it holds, how it can be used - is complex. Buying and installing Sirsi's WebCat browser as an extension to the existing software last May and customising our installation of it was relatively straightforward. More complicated, by far, was its accommodation into our web pages, which needed to be transformed from the 'brochure-ware' common to most first generation institutional web sites into an interactive set of real services. With the support of the British Library's web management team we brought in a consultant, Bob Hughes (his book on multimedia and web design Dust or magic was reviewed in IASA Journal 15) but otherwise all the final design work and authoring was carried out by a team of NSA staff. We believe that the new pages devoted to collections, services and information (including the catalogue) provide remote users with a range of information that now approaches what is available to those who visit our reading rooms.
The original implementation of CADENSA was designed to support the management of the NSA collection and to assist with the identification of recordings for listening appointments. Discographical research was also possible but despite the inclusion of hypertext links between the various levels of information (works, recordings and products) navigating around the catalogue was never easy for a first-time user. The effect of transferring the public interface to a web browser instantly improves navigation. Hypertext linking is the technique which underpins the Web, so it will be immediately clear to a user that if the information is underlined and in a different colour it will be possible to follow a network of links, for instance from the singer you looked up, and whose accompanist may have been unexpected, you could link to all recordings made by that accompanist. Such chain searches can proceed unbroken almost indefinitely.
While many entries for recordings on CADENSA remain summary, others are brim-full of information. Most of the entries for oral history interviews, for instance, contain lengthy interview summaries. (These are often supplied for us by those who recorded the interviews and can be pasted into CADENSA). The summaries provide a rich resource for research by subject matter but locating the context for the term you looked for was difficult off-line: on-line you can search within the summary for that term by using other tools available on the Internet. A favourite search of this kind used by NSA in demonstrations is for "Spotted Dick", a basic steamed pudding including currants that was once very popular. One of the many interviewees who mentioned this venerable dish tells a delightful story about how he and his siblings would always know on their return from school when spotted dick was going to be served as their mother was wearing only one stocking. The other was used to suspend the pudding in the boiling pan.
CADENSA can now be used also as the hub of a network of links to information that is usually considered beyond the scope of a catalogue. This is especially useful in the description of recordings that are unique to us. Whereas a typical explanatory note in a catalogue entry has to be kept short and concise, additional information can now be provided through electronic source links (MARC tag 856) to appropriate and authoritative electronic sources external to the catalogue and The British Library, e.g. an explanation of why we believe the recording we hold of Oscar Wilde reciting one of his poems is a fake, or the technical specifications of Ariel 3, Britain's first satellite, the launch of which was recorded and forms part of our actuality collection.
Networking externally can also help us to fill gaps in the catalogue. In addition to standard 'help' texts each of the specialist curators was asked to provide the text of an on-line guide to searching their subject area. Some of these subject areas are less comprehensively covered than others, the collection of commercial recordings of traditional music being a particular case in point. In order to concentrate cataloguing resources on unique unpublished recordings, the curator has simply directed her users to other sites which provide track listings for published product, such as Smithsonian Folkways and the International Library of African Music. Label and serial numbers found at these sites can then be cross-checked against CADENSA
The immediate priority for CADENSA is to improve the catalogue coverage of digitised recordings, in particular the products of our acetate disc and tape preservation project. The aim is to compile catalogue records for these recordings in such a way that, without disturbing CADENSA's internal coherence, they can be transferred automatically, most likely in XML format, to The Library's new Digital Library System (DLS) where the data will accompany the audio files which are to be stored therein. With CADENSA linked to the DLS we will be able to expand the existing token selection of audio files (retrievable by searching for "virtual NSA" on CADENSA) to something approaching a representative and critical mass.
CADENSA will also form a key component in the gradual automation of the NSA's onsite Listening & Viewing Service. E-mail has made ordering recordings and making appointments much easier, though more could be done by introducing e-commerce devices such as virtual shopping trolleys. The software supplier for CADENSA, Sirsi Corp., is working on such a facility for a future version.
One frustration encountered after the launch of CADENSA on the internet was that people expected all of the sound to be available immediately as well. Peer to peer models of doing business, even those threatened by legal action such as Napster.com, have raised expectations far beyond what the NSA, or any other IASA institutional member, can expect to deliver at the present time. Nevertheless we need to develop some form of regulated access to our recordings or others, better placed financially, will get there first. I will end with a quote from Lorcan Dempsey, Director of DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource):
"The digital medium is radically new. Although there is continuity of purpose and value within cultural institutions, these exist alongside a fundamental examination of roles and practices. The costs of developing necessary roles and sustainable practices will be high, as will the social and organisational costs of change and institution building. However, the costs of not doing so will be higher, as the cultural and intellectual legacy to future generations is entrusted to a house of cards built on a million web sites" (1).
Audiovisual archives should readily embrace the challenge of these words. The millions of recordings already held and preserved for the best part of 100 years are too valuable an asset to consign to the fluidity and fragility of the world wide web without the assurance of the secure foundations based on supported technical infrastructures and on the professional skills of staff such as are to be found in any IASA member institution.
Chris Clark (BL NSA)
(1) Lorcan Dempsey. Scientific, industrial, and cultural heritage: a shared approach, 1999. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue22/dempsey/ [244]
Kurt Deggeller (MEMORIAV) writes:
The 3rd Infoethics Congress on legal ethical and societal challenges of cyberspace organised by UNESCO's Information and Informatics division with the assistance of the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Council for the General Information Programme and the National Commissions of UNESCO took place in Paris from December 13 to 15 2000.
The main topic of the Congress was "the right to universal access to information in the 21st century". This was subdivided into three themes: the role of public authorities in access to information; the fair use concept in the information society; and protecting human dignity in the digital age.
The goal of these congresses is to reach a set of recommendations on access to information and international agreement on the financial aspects and rights of access. These recommendations should be ready for the next General Conference in autumn 2001. A world summit on information society is also in preparation for 2003.
As the list of themes shows, preservation was not covered at that Congress. The most vivid discussion took place between representatives of right holder's societies and speakers who claimed for free access to information.
Personally I was astonished that the role of libraries, archives and documentation centres as gateways to information a formula often used in the context of the information politics of UNESCO, has never really been mentioned. No speaker came from this professional area and in consequence the representation of our organisations among the participants was weak.
Even if speakers from developing countries showed clearly that they are far from having reasonable access to cyberspace, all other forms of distribution of information seems to have been forgotten, let alone the question of preservation. I think it is an important task for our organisation to bring these discussions back to reality.
A selection of the papers given at this conference is available at: http://webworld.unesco.org/infoethics2000 [302]
Issue 198 of the excellent Music & Copyright magazine (January 31st 2001) carries an announcement that various rights societies and publishers have joined together with two of the main recording industry associations, IFPI and RIAA, to collaborate on an online music transaction identifier project, known as the Music Industry Integrated Project (MIIIP). The technology is to be developed by the UK-based consultancy Rightscom.
MIIIP will allow for the efficient management of the delivery and sale of music online and to achieve this it must be interoperable with other data and identification systems, such as ISRC and ISWC. Possible frameworks are the work of the <indecs> project and the Dublin Core metadata schema.
The IASA newsdesk will keep a watch on this development though at the time of writing (in February) the only sites obtainable by searching for MIIIP were German comic strips and toy companies (characters and toys that go "miiip!"). In a global context organisations should really be more careful about their choice of acronyms.
The Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yleisradio Oy, also known as YLE) issued a press release early in March to announce the procurement of a digital storage system for its sound recordings.
YLE's Digital Radio Archive is the first large-scale system of its kind designed for long-term preservation of audio recordings, integrating tecmath AG's award-winning Enterprise Content Management System media archive with YLE's in-house software developments for metadata management. YLE's Digital Radio Archive will hold the public broadcaster's radio programmes and recordings in digital form for long-term preservation and future re-use. tecmath AG, a German high-tech software company, will act as general contractor and system integrator for the project. After a six-month design phase, the implementation phase of YLE's Digital Radio Archive project as officially launched with a press conference on March 8th, 2001, in Helsinki. Tapio Siikala, Director of YLE's Radio Division, explained why the Digital Radio Archive is so important for YLE:
"YLE is Finland's only electronic media company in possession of sizeable historical archives. Their effective utilisation will bring significant competitive advantage to our corporation."
For Jorma Laiho, YLE's Director of Technology, digitising YLE's radio archives has become a top priority:
"In the near future, all YLE networks will employ CAR (Computer Aided Radio) systems, producing radio programmes in a fully digital, computerised environment. The Digital Radio Archive will enable us to store radio programmes designated for archiving in their original, digital format, and to digitize the existing archive stock for quick access through the CAR systems."
"With this project", said Rainer A. Kellerhals, member of tecmath AG's executive board, "YLE is to become a pioneer in large-scale digital audio archiving. Having worked with Europe's broadcasting industry over the past years to develop our standard Enterprise Content Management platform media archive, we see YLE's Digital Radio Archive project as a milestone on the industry's way into the digital future."
tecmath AG is Europe's leading provider of enterprise content management systems; the company has implemented content management solutions at SWR, NDR, NRK, SAT.1 and ProSieben and holds a Framework Agreement with the BBC for media asset management systems and services.
During the press conference, Pekka Gronow, head of YLE's archives, pointed out that
"YLE's archives are more than just a giant audiovisual vault. They are the Finnish nation's audio-visual memory. By digitizing them, YLE meets its obligation to secure these archives' permanent preservation and makes access to its archive holdings much easier and more effective. There is a large demand for material from our archives in the research and library communities, which we have not been able to fulfil in the past."
For Markku Petäjä, project manager in charge of YLE's Digital Radio Archive project, co-ordinating this project with other YLE projects has been a key success factor:
"YLE's Digital Radio Archive project is one of a multitude of projects by which we keep our technological infrastructure up to date. Therefore we decided that the infrastructure for the Digital Audio Archive project was to be multi-purpose. We will use the selected hardware platform for archiving as well as for backup processes and other applications. The time schedule for the implementation of the project will be very strict, but I believe that we can fulfil the expectations of the end-users by working together with a partner which has a wide experience in content
management solutions in the broadcasting field".
The hardware and software architecture designed by tecmath AG and YLE together complied with this strategy:
"With Compaq servers, EMC's reliable, highly scalable Celerra File Server and ADIC's AML/J mixed media tape library, YLE's Digital Radio Archive will employ a reliable server platform as well as the most open and versatile online and nearline storage platforms in the market today", said Dr.-Ing. Lutz Schrepfer, Director of Engineering at tecmath AG's Content Management Systems Division. "To ensure smooth integration with YLE's complex software environment, YLE's Digital Radio Archive will use the same Oracle 8i database management system and OpenText BRS/Search full-text retrieval engine as they are in use for other mission-critical applications. As the result of joint software development and integration effort, YLE's Digital Radio Archive will combine the best features of media archive and Yle's in-house developments", says Jouni Frilander, IT specialist for YLE's Radio Division.
YLE's audio archives include a radio archive and record library. Together they contain hundreds of thousands of hours of recordings from the dawn of broadcasting to the present. A third significant YLE audio archive is the sound effects library. YLE's radio archives currently accumulate materials at the rate of some 8,000 radio broadcasts and 6,500 records (mainly compact discs) a year. Archival is selection-based; currently, less than five per cent of all broadcast radio programmes are archived, but with the introduction of the Digital Radio Archive, this percentage is expected to increase.
For more information contact Markku Petäjä, Project Manager, YLE Technical Development E-Mail: [303]markku.petaja@yle.fi [303]
or Jouni Frilander, IT Specialist, YLE Radio Division E-Mail: j [304]ouni.frilander@yle.fi [304]
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) web site has been redeveloped. This is taken from the announcement in LTWorld March 7 2001:
"Based on many of the suggestions they received in response to [the] Call for Input on DCMI Website Redesign, the new site has been redesigned and the content reorganised to meet the needs of both the existing community base as well as newcomers to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Additionally, the new site incorporates XML, RDF and CSS standards in its content management and design. Further, they anticipate WAI compliance in the very near future.
The Web site is not only easier to use and navigate but designed to employ DCMI technology and help demonstrate the effectiveness of combining encoding standards and Dublin Core semantics. Each Web page includes its own RDF metadata, which is harvested and stored within a database, facilitating effective searching and navigation of the site. The RDF toolkit used to drive the search services will be available under the DCMI Open Source License and available to the community shortly."
The new Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Web site is now available at http://dublincore.org/ [305]
Australian mirror : http://au.dublincore.org/ [306] , UK mirror http://uk.dublincore.org/ [307]
The Audio Engineering Society Standards Committee (AESSC) has approved the formation of a new working group, SC-06-06 Working Group on Audio Metadata with Chris Chambers as its chair. The setting up of this new working group is in recognition of the need to have a group that can take a more strategic view of metadata and in particularly address interfacing and infrastructure issues. These are issues which impact on other working groups and SC-06-06 will therefore have, in addition, a co-ordinating role to avoid comparative inconsistencies and ensure metadata can be exchanged as simply as possible.
The scope of the SC-06-06 Working Group on Audio Metadata includes, within the scope of SC-06, the co-ordination and support of the metadata activities of other groups within the AESSC and harmonization with other bodies through working-group level liaisons and the preparation of related documents. It does not include preparation of documents covered in the scopes of other AESSC working groups, except where documents are required to provide co-ordination, overview, and structural requirements for carrying metadata across protocols.
A key task of SC-06-06 is to co-ordinate and distribute information within the AESSC on the methods and techniques of attaching and implementing metadata through all aspects of interfacing for both real time and file transfer audio.
The one of the methods this group will explore in order to aid description of metadata is the use of universal modelling language (UML) to provide the relationships and flow of metadata requirements within the AES in an open and recognised way. This could be set out in use case descriptions, class models and sequence diagrams as described in UML. Of necessity, this group will have to work closely with other related AES working groups and external bodies such as the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the Object Management Group (OMG) to ensure integration with the wider aspects of metadata generally.
SC-06-06 will hold its first meeting in Amsterdam in conjunction with the AES Convention in May. Following discussion on the email reflector this meeting establish the projects to be undertaken. An initial project, AES-X114 has been set up.
If you have an interest in metadata, you can become a member of SC-06-06 in the usual way by sending an email to the SC-06-06 reflector with your contact details.
See the "Joining a working group" link at www.aes.org/standards/ [308] for details on joining. More information on the working group and its project are at the Bulletins and Quick Guides link.
Rachel Lord (Sound Archives/Nga Taonga Korero, New Zealand) would like to pass on her appreciation and gratitude to all the IASA members who so generously helped her out on her study trip last year. She had a fascinating time, loved meeting everyone and visiting all the fabulous archives. Her report, at time of going to press, is days away from completion and is expected to appear in the next IASA Journal.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/ [309] is the address of a new service dedicated to motion picture, broadcasting and recorded sound at the Library of Congress. The Recorded Sound Reference Center provides access to the commercial and archival audio holdings of the Library of Congress a collection that dates from 1926 when Victor Records donated over 400 discs to the Library's Music Division to supplement its print and manuscript holdings. In the custody of the Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division since 1978, the collection has grown to include over 2 million items encompassing audio formats from cylinders to CDs. The holdings complement the field recordings of the American Folklife Center and the moving image collections served in the Motion Picture and Television Reading Room. The site also includes useful, expert advice on preserving collections of sound recordings.
A number of music sites now aim to cater for those inexact categories of search beyond the orthodox name, title, number and subject variety. If you want a song that sounds like another song, or conveys a certain mood, or has lyrics that are wittier or prettier than the one you already know about then here are some places to explore. All-Music Guide http://www.allmusic.com/ [310] now includes an artist browser feature which includes "mood" and similar technology that helps a user put their feelings into words is available or is being developed at Cantametrix http://www.cantametrix.com/html/index.html [311] , MoodLogic http://www.moodlogic.com/ [312] , and MuBu (Music Buddha) http://www.mubu.com/ [313], sites which also contain food for plenty of IASA thought, particularly of the metadata variety.
(Selection courtesy of Alex Pappademas "A little mood music for the cyber set" TheStandard (September 6, 2000))
Please remember to keep the Editor informed of any changes to the details that appear in the current IASA Directory.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2001 | ||
| April 22 28 | 57th FIAF Congress | Rabat, Morocco |
| May 2 5 | ASRA Conference Hunters and Collectors | Canberra |
| May 12 15 | 110th AES Convention | Amsterdam |
| May 21 22 * | IASA FIAT meeting on digitisation | Potsdam-Babelsburg |
| June 21 24 | 19th AES International Conference Surround sound |
Schloss Elmau, Germany |
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| August 16 -25 | 67th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries and Librarians: Making a Difference in the Knowledge Age |
Boston, U.S. |
| September 21 24 | 111th AES Convention | New York |
| September 23 - 27 | ARSC/IASA Annual Conference Why collect: the purpose of audio-visual archives |
London |
| September 23 - 27 | FIAT Annual Conference | London |
| October 5 7 | 20th AES International Conference Archiving, restoration & new methods of recording |
Budapest |
| November 6 11 | 11th AMIA Conference | Portland, U.S. |
| 2002 | ||
| May 11 12 | 112th AES Convention | Munich |
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| August 18 - 24 | 68th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries for life |
Glasgow, U.K. |
| September? | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
| October 5 8 | 113th AES Convention | Los Angeles, U.S. |
| October 25 28 | Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting | Detroit, U.S. |
| 2003 | ||
| August 1 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| IAML | Tallinn, Estonia |
This Information Bulletin has been compiled by
the Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 38 BY 15 JUNE 2001
Designed by The British Library Corporate Design Office
Printed in Hungary by Rádioprint
A.E.P.I.S.A. (Hellenic Society for the Protection of Intellectual Rights)
Archive of Greek Music, 51 Samou Street & Frangoklisias, 151 25 Amarousio, Athens, Greece
IASA's first member in Greece, the Archive of Greek Music aims to collect all Greek sound recordings of all types since recording began. At present the archive holds 50,000 discs but also collects video and other formats. The contact is Sotiris Lycouropoulos.
Gaboikanngwe Maphakwane. P/bag 00390 University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana
This university department receives legal deposit of all multimedia items and these are used for teaching and research. The collection currently numbers 50 LPs, 400 CDs, 200 audiocassettes, 600 videos and more than 2000 audio files on diskette.
GLS Studios GmbH (associate), Tegernsee Landstrasse 161, D-81537, Munich, Germa
Simon Squire (associate). 148 Clarendon Park Road, Leicester LE2 3AF
Carrying out research into the history and development of the sound recording medium and its technique.
Stoney Moses Mubiana. Namibian Broadcasting Company Music Library, PO Box 321, Namibia
The Namibian Broadcasting Company (NBC) Music Library collects recorded music on all formats and preserves it for broadcasting and for use in films. Sound effects are an important feature.
Strahlenland Records GmbH (associate), Thonwerstr. 4, 53501 Graftschaft, Germany
There is still time to register for this year's conference in London at The British Library, September 23-27th, but you will need to be quick if you are keen to go on any of the professional visits as the numbers in each party are restricted. Visits that have been arranged include the BBC Sound Archive Preservation Project, The EMI Sound Archive, The audio collections of the Imperial War Museum, BBC Sound Archives at Broadcasting House.
Full conference details including the registration form and programme are at [http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/iasa.html] [314]
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's first Radio Archivist Val Napthine died in June of an aneurysm. Val was a "founding mother" of IASA Australia when, back in 1979, David Lance helped the Australian branch of IAML establish an Australian audio-visual association. IASA Australia has since become the Australasian Sound Recordings Association (ASRA), serving the needs of professionals and amateur collectors alike in Australia and New Zealand.
Val Napthine was born in 1929, in Marrickville, Sydney. She left school at the age of 15, and, after secretarial college, joined the Australian Broadcasting Commission (as it was known then) on 5 March 1945 as a junior typist and "runner" for the Overseas Department of the ABC. Val recalled with admiration the high standards of professionalism she encountered in her early days at the ABC, especially those women who headed departments and worked as producers during the war years.
Her passion for the ABC had begun earlier than that, however. She loved to say that she and the ABC were about the same age ABC was 'born' on 1 July 1932. Her father Reg was a violinist and played in theatre orchestras and string quartets. Val remembered a home atmosphere of music and laughter where music and the ABC were ever-present but also of stress and anxiety; the Depression years were particularly severe for musicians.
Val moved around the ABC over the following years working for the Talks Department, being part of the ABC's 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games team. A few months into her TV assignment, Val and her father were involved in a very serious car accident. She suffered bad neck injuries that caused her pain for the rest of her life. On her return to work, she decided to go back to radio.
She was sent to the Federal Transcription Department, as second-in-command. She arrived on a Monday and on the following Friday the Head of the Department called her into his office and told her that now she had had her training she was in charge as he was off to another department. She had to oversee staff, and organise the receipt and handling of program tapes for radio broadcasts.
Needing a break, she left for London for four-and-a-half months of Long Service and unpaid leave. She registered with an Employment Agency as a typist, going, as she said, to "all sorts of strange places", while travelling around sight-seeing in the UK and Europe. The BBC asked her to work in their Transcriptions Section and she stayed for a year gaining experience in program production and recording standards. She was offered program-making jobs in the BBC but had to decline as she needed to return home because of her mother's ill-health.
She returned to Sydney in 1962, but was disappointed to find that the ABC was not particularly interested in the work she had done with the BBC. Then she received a phone call from a senior manager, informing her that a member of Federal Parliament had raised the issue of old historical recordings seen "lying around" and being destroyed "by neglect". The report caused a great stir. Document and television archives existed but nothing was being done about recordings for radio at ABC.
Val first considered the task of setting up an ABC archive impossible but she finally agreed to 'give it a go' insisting on a "get-out" clause after 12 months if it didn't work out. ABC management had no vision, no money and no idea of how it should be organised. She searched department cupboards for material, and gathered together a small collection in the Transcriptions Department. Acetate discs had already deteriorated. There was mould everywhere. She required technical operator assistance to reclaim these discs and transfer them to analogue tape.
Val was working in the dark as there was no other sound archive in existence in Australia at that time. Peter Burgis, the sound librarian at the National Library of Australia, had his own private collection in a corner of the National Library, but he was neither an archivist nor a program-maker. She therefore contacted the BBC Radio Archives for advice.
Val set up in a little room with a technician and began listing and copying the transcription discs. This 'Dark Ages' collection, now catalogued as a result of funding for which Val fought assiduously in the early 1980s, contains some of the present-day Radio Archives' most treasured material - material that, without Val Napthine would be lost to the ABC and the Australian people.
Val was also establishing international connections. She travelled to New York and Brussels for IASA conferences. She had also established an highly-respected reputation throughout Australia. Colleagues in Australia and abroad were deeply saddened by the news of her death. James McCarthy and Pru Niedorf, fellow founders of IASA Australia, remember Val fondly and IASA's archivist, Ulf Scharlau, remembers Val's heart-warming laugh most clearly:
"The first time we met was in 1982 at the IASA meeting in Brussels. She was accompanied by Peter Burgis who became a member of our Board at that time. After the conference she and Jim Sullivan, Radio Archivist from New Zealand, travelled through Europe in order to visit as many radio archives as possible in the time they could spend. With her bright and kind humour she at once got contacts and found friends."
Ulf invited Val and Jim to visit Stuttgart and a grand time was had by all during a very hot July for which Val was completely unprepared: she had packed her winter clothing for the trip. She and Ulf met just once or twice again at later IASA conferences.
In her younger years Val had been engaged, but her fiancé was killed in New Guinea during the Second World War. She eventually married in 1978 and then left the ABC in 1985 for health reasons, settling down with her beloved Jim in Moss Vale in the southern highlands of New South Wales.
A former colleague, rural broadcaster Colin Munro remembers her as "a tall elegant woman with her mouth open to laugh", for her graciousness and superb sense of humour and for her total professionalism and knowledge of radio and the requirements of program-makers. Val set the standards for those ABC archivists that followed her.
John Spence & Jean Walker
ABC Radio Archives
One of the founding fathers of Australian audio-visual archiving, Ray Edmondson, Deputy Director of the National Screen and Sound Archive retired in April this year. He was bid farewell by past and present members of the Archive's Interim Council, staff and colleagues from the film, broadcasting and sound community at a special dinner.
Director Ron Brent and television producer and former Council member Peter Luck, among others, recounted Ray's 33-year career, recalling his role in the establishment of the National Film and Sound Archive in 1984.
Council Chair Susan Oliver said that it was Mr Edmondson who wrote the influential report, Time in our hands, that became the blueprint for the development of the Archive after 1984 : 'His work on archival philosophy and professional ethics is internationally recognised,' Ms Oliver said. 'It has set the highest standards for his colleagues and the industry and has helped position the Archive as a widely respected Australian cultural institution that is a world leader in audio-visual archiving.'
Ray Edmondson joined the National Library in 1968 as its film reference librarian, but was soon heavily involved in film acquisition in the Library's Historical Film Collection. In 1973, an Australian Film and Television School fellowship saw him on a tour studying film archives in England, Europe and North America.
The report he wrote, and the recommendations he made, had far reaching consequences. In 1984, the Hawke Government set up the National Film and Sound Archive, which has grown to become a world-leader in audio-visual archiving.
Ray conceived and directed The Last Film Search (1981) and Operation Newsreel (1988), projects that became international benchmarks for film archives. More recently, his advocacy of formal professional education for audio-visual archivists led to an internet-delivered distance-learning course, the only one of its kind in the world, now offered by the Archive in conjunction with Charles Sturt University. This is an involvement Ray will continue, along with other international commitments including his Presidency of the South East Asia/ Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA).
Ron Brent and former Council member, film producer Anthony Buckley, presented Ray with a plaque bestowing on him the title "Curator Emeritus" of the Archive.
Mr Edmondson said he was delighted to accept the honorary post. He said he was not really retiring and will still be part of the Archive's community.
Since there has been some confusion about the current name of what used to be called the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia (NFSA) the present Director Ron Brent has provided this clarification:
The formal name of the organisation is the National Screen and Sound Archive. This name contains the two important descriptors of the organisation, namely National and Archive, and this is what appears in our logo.
We also have a new marketing brand name and logo of ScreenSound Australia, a contraction of the formal name. This is the first step in a long-term effort to increase recognition of our work to a wider audience than our traditional supporters (such as into educational markets). It replaces the previous shorthand for our organisation, namely NFSA.
Gerry Gibson retired from the Library of Congress in June. An appreciation of his work for that organisation and for IASA (he served on the IASA Board in various capacities, including President 1990 - 1993) will appear in Information Bulletin no.39. [315]
Sven Allerstrand writes:
"The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images (SLBA, formerly ALB) organized in Stockholm 8-9 June, as an event under the Swedish EU Presidency, a two-day seminar entitled Safeguarding the European Audiovisual Heritage working together. The idea was to explore the interest in building a European network of national institutions to preserve and provide access to the European cultural heritage of sound and moving images.
Invited to this seminar were directors of national sound and audio-visual collections in each of the EU countries and in the applicant states. Experts in different fields and representatives of organisations like FIAT and IASA, were also invited to give presentations and to contribute to the discussion. All in all, there were 27 participants from 13 countries.
The first day was devoted to the present situation: what is preserved and what is accessible, technical issues and some examples of existing European co-operation. On the second day there were presentations on structural, technical and legal conditions for co-operation. At the concluding session those who wanted to actively take part in future co-operation discussed a draft Statement of intent by European national media archives on strategic co-operation. In this document, which was prepared by Crispin Jewitt, The British Library National Sound Archive and IASA President, six areas of interest were identified and a structure for the future work of the group was proposed. A revised draft of this 'Stockholm Statement' will be presented, and I hope, signed in London in September, at which time a more detailed report will be given to the IASA membership."
Dietrich Schüller (Vienna Phonogrammarchiv) has sent in this report:
Following the example of the successful Joint Field Excursion 1998 to Inner Mongolia, Qinghai and Gansu (cf. IASA Information Bulletin no.27), the Music Research Institute (MRI), Beijing, and the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv again joined forces to record the music of national minorities of the Peoples Republic of China. On this occasion the traditional music of the Li and Miao peoples of the Island Hainan in the south of China was the subject of our joint fieldwork excursion that took place between 30 January and 11 February 2001. Professor Qiao Jianzhong, director of MRI, Xiao Mei, senior researcher, both from Beijing, and Dietrich Schüller from Vienna, recorded a total of 16 hours of sound on DAT, and 4 hours on digital video (DV-format). Also on the team this time was Barbara Schüller, who captured the excursion on video. This was a good opportunity to test the various birthday donations to the Phonogrammarchiv under tropical conditions, namely a TASCAM DA-P1 portable DAT-recorder, a SCHOEPS MSTC 6 stereo microphone, and an AGK Blue Line ORTF microphone set (cf. IASA Information Bulletin no. 32). Given the sensitivity of most recording equipment to unfriendly climate conditions, all our equipment worked perfectly.
The excursion enjoyed the active support of local cultural authorities and specialists, and also attracted the interest of regional mass media. The publication of a selection of the field recordings on CD as a further joint project is being planned.
This year's Annual SEAPAVAA Conference and General Assembly will be held in Bangkok, Thailand from 16-20 July 2001. The Conference will adopt the theme "Ethics, Values and Standards: Building Blocks of AV Archiving". Among the topics to be discussed are the following:
The Need for Ethics, Values and Standards for AV Archiving
The Philosophy and Code of Ethics: International and Regional Perspectives
Considerations in Developing Values and Ethics for Professional Conduct
The Public Relations Department of Thailand will host this year's Conference with assistance from the National Film Archive of Thailand. Delegates will be billeted at the Arnoma Hotel located at the centre of downtown Bangkok. A special rate of US$55 per night, inclusive of breakfast has been negotiated. Conference registration fee is US$120 inclusive.
You can download the registration form and other conference details at the SEAPAVAA website: http://www.geocities.com/seapavaa/ [316]
For further information, please contact the Ms. Belina SB. Capul, SEAPAVAA Secretary-General, belinacapul@edsamail.com.ph [317] or bcapul@yahoo.com [318]
Kurt Deggeller reports: The Fifth Meeting of the Memory of the World Programme International Advisory Committee took place June 27-29 in Cheongju City. It was hosted by the Korean UNESCO Commission. A total of thirteen members of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) and thirty-two observers and representatives of non-governmental organisations were in attendance.
The aim of the Memory of the World programme http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm [319] is to establish a register of the world's documentary heritage and to organise pilot projects to improve access to the documents.
The IAC considered forty-two nomination proposals received from twenty-three countries and recommended to the Director General that half of these proposals (twenty-one) be added to the Memory of the World register.
Only two proposals came from the audio-visual area: the negative of the restored and reconstructed version of Fritz Lang's motion picture Metropolis and the historical collections of St. Petersburg Phonogram Archives (the Phonogram Archives of Berlin and Vienna had already been put on the register in a previous session). Other proposals relating to our field were not adopted. It is important that the audio-visual NGOs (IASA, FIAF and FIAT) promote more and better-prepared proposals in for the next meeting in two years.
Further developments and publications relating to the Harmony project, as introduced to IASA by Jane Hunter at the Singapore Conference last year and in the IASA Journal no.16, can be found at http://www.metadata.net/harmony/Publications.htm [320]
Jane wrote in to say of this list of publications: "The community of audio-visual archivists may be interested in either of the first two on the list: both are multimedia focussed
J. Hunter, S. Little, "Building and Indexing a Distributed Multimedia Presentation Archive using SMIL" , accepted ECDL '01, Darmstadt, September 2001
J. Hunter, C. Lagoze, "Combining RDF and XML Schemas to Enhance Interoperability Between Metadata Application Profiles" , WWW10, Hong Kong, May 2001
Jane has also recently published Adding Multimedia to the Semantic Web - Building an MPEG-7 Ontology, and of course it's on the web at http://archive.dstc.edu.au/RDU/staff/jane-hunter/semweb/paper.html [321]
Anyone with an interest in the delivery of music over the web should consider making their way to Florence in November to attend the first International Conference on Web Delivering [sic] of Music, WEDELMUSIC2001, Florence, Italy, 23rd - 24th November 2001
Topics to be covered include: XML format of music, protection aspects, transaction models, Digital rights management (DRM), databases for music archives and digital collections, tools for music distribution, mp3, wave, multimedia tools for music tuition, analysis, transposition, watermarking, Braille music, copyright protection, music education, audio and music sheet digitalisation.
Patronised by IEEE CS TC on Computer Generated Music and sponsored by IST, the European Commission, University of Florence, DSI, Fraunhofer Institute, IRCAM, SUVINI ZERBONI, RICORDI, CESVIT, SVB-FNB, ILSP, ARTEC, SMF, further details and registration can be found at http://www.wedelmusic.org/wedelmusic2001 [322] or contact WEDELMUSIC2001@dsi.unifi.it [323]
The British Library has appointed its first e-Director as part of a wider restructuring of its top tier of management. The appointment of Dr Herbert Van de Sompel as Director of e-Strategy and Programmes was announced at the end of June and he will join the Library on 1 September 2001. He will be the driving force behind the development of the British Library's e-strategy, pushing forward the role of electronic media and services in providing public access, opening up collections, creating productive partnerships with the library and scholarly network and developing new enterprises.
Dr Van de Sompel joins the Library having spent the past year as Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. For 17 years he was head of the library automation department at the University of Ghent, Belgium where he led an ambitious programme to create an outstanding electronic library and planned and implemented a range of innovative services. More recently he worked at the renowned Research Library at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, on a PhD focusing on open reference linking (OpenURL and SFX) and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). This experience may have profound significance for the development of collaborative initiatives involving audio-visual and multimedia content.
Other senior appointments made at this level recently and that will impact on the work of the National Sound Archive include Dr. Clive Field (Director of Scholarship and Collections) and Natalie Ceeney (Director of Operations and Services). Further details of all of these appointments will be found at the Information/News page of http://www.bl.uk/ [49]
The French government has adopted a law that requires every French web page to be archived, a requirement similar to the legal deposit procedures for traditional media.
In principle, every site-publisher would be responsible for this task, but for technical reasons the law allows the French national library, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and the Institut National de l'Audio-visuel (INA) to garner the entire French web, including personal home pages, at regular intervals.
It is not yet clear how the French web is defined: does it include only web pages which are physically stored on French territory, or does it consist of pages which belong to French citizens?
There are also technical problems to be solved. Archiving HTML-pages is simple, but the storing of streaming ingredients and Flash-animated and other dynamic sites still requires a lot of research before it can be carried out.
Ina estimates that about 100,000 sites have to be archived. Publishers appear to have no problem with this initiative, according to Ina http://www.ina.fr/ [324]. In fact, in many cases they will not be aware of it, which raises questions about whether privacy rights will be infringed.
The Swedish Royal Library was the first national library to try this approach starting in 1996. The project - called Kulturarw3 - was described in a lecture last year by Allan Arvidson, Krister Persson and Johan Mannerheim at an IFLA conference: http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla66/papers/154-157e.htm [325]
This project has unfortunately been put on hold. For copyright reasons it might not be continued. The future of this whole strategy seems very uncertain.
Source for France: http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=4075 [326]
Source for Sweden: e-mail from Karl-Erik Tallmo to padiforum-l@nla.gov.au [327]
The BBC's website http://www.bbc.co.uk/ [328] is regarded by many as exemplary, always developing, full of quality content and delights, among which is the recent addition of Radio 4's 'listen again service' http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml [329]. Radio 4 is the BBC's main outlet for speech programmes. The bulk of the day's programming is available but comedy and drama productions are excluded for rights reasons. Access requires RealPlayer.
The capabilities of the web are astounding even after such a relatively short history. Musicians in the IASA membership, or even if those who just like playing around with sounds, will enjoy the delights of http://www.pianographique.com/ [330]. This turns your keyboard into a musical instrument, each key activating a pre-recorded sample. You can assemble the samples into music of different styles, world music, jazz (nice guitar breaks), rap, etc. and the sounds generate images on your screen that you can manipulate to produce some decent artwork. The jazz number, for instance, enables you to design a cool 1960s Blue Note style album cover. Expect complaints from the neighbours and the rest of the family. Sound systems of this kind ought to be considered worthy acquisitions by IASA member archives.
In view of recent changes to IASA's committee structure, a new trilingual leaflet has been prepared and will be available in time for the London conference. Single copies will be distributed with the next Information Bulletin mailing in September. Please contact the Editor chris.clark@bl.uk [14] if you would like more copies.
Please remember to keep the Editor informed of any changes to the details that appear in the current IASA Directory.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2001 | ||
| July 8 - 14 | IAML Annual Conference | Périgueux, France |
| August 16 -25 | 67th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries and Librarians: Making a Difference in the Knowledge Age |
Boston, U.S. |
| September 4 - 7 | Society of Archivists Annual Conference Safeguarding our culture |
Aberystwyth, Wales |
| September 21 - 24 | 111th AES Convention | New York |
| September 23 - 27 | ARSC/IASA Annual Conference Why collect: the purpose of audio-visual archives |
London |
| September 23 - 27 | FIAT Annual Conference | London |
| October 5 - 7 | 20th AES International Conference Archiving, restoration & new methods of recording |
Budapest |
| November 6 - 11 | 11th AMIA Conference | Portland, U.S. |
| November 23 - 24 | WEDELMUSIC 2001: web delivery of music | Florence, Italy |
| November 19 - 24 | International seminar and workshops on sound and TV preservation (in association with IASA and FIAT) | Mexico |
| 2002 | ||
| May 11 - 12 | 112th AES Convention | Munich |
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| August 18 - 24 | 68th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries for life |
Glasgow, U.K. |
| September 15 - 19 | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
| October 5 - 8 | 113th AES Convention | Los Angeles, U.S. |
| October 25 - 28 | Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting | Detroit, U.S. |
| November 19 - 23 | AMIA Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| 2003 | ||
| July 6 - 11 | IAML Conference | Tallinn, Estonia |
| August 1 - 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| November 18 - 22 | AMIA Conference | Vancouver, Canada |
| 2004 | ||
| November 9 - 13 | AMIA Conference | Minneapolis, U.S. |
This Information Bulletin has been compiled by
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
© International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA)
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 39 BY 15 SEPTEMBER 2001
After the terrorist atrocities in America and the impact on air travel, the ARSC-IASA conference organisers were expecting a much lower attendance than had been registered before September 11, so it was very heartening for the organisers to see so many delegates queuing in the sunshine to register at 11.00 am on the first day.
I was especially gladdened to see so many North American delegates, some of whom had endured arduous journeys involving several security checks and delays. Gathered together for the opening reception, held in the cathedral-like space of The British Library foyer and serenaded by a reverberating NSA jazz band, the customary excitement at renewing old acquaintances and getting to know new faces was accompanied by a tangible sense of relief that we all had something else to think about for a few days.
The conference was opened by Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of The British Library, who had some flattering words for the National Sound Archive, the conference hosts. She said that two of her most magical moments during her first year in post had been associated with oral history acquisitions and associated press events. It is clear that audiovisual archives, by the very nature of their holdings can make a powerful and impressive impact on institutional and cultural life, given the right set of circumstances. With veiled reference to reorganisations underway at The British Library, she urged us to view our work as special but not separate: collections within larger organisations needed to integrate their activities in order to gain from and play a part in the new possibilities afforded by new technology. She left us to ponder that as we began our investigation of the conference theme "Why collect?"
Did we find the answer? I am not sure that we did. Certainly nobody was prepared declare with any degree of confidence or authority why we should have been collecting so much for so long and into perpetuity. Neither was there much time during sessions for debate, a conference failing in the view of some delegates. So shall we just keep going until someone or somebody stops us, on the understanding that all this collecting activity satisfies some psychological drive and in so doing helps to protect and promote cultural identities?
There were some fine papers, crisply delivered with many entertaining illustrations. The NSA's embarrassment at not being able to demonstrate its own technical facilities on account of accommodation modifications at the time of the conference was amply compensated by NSA Conservation Manager Peter Copeland's technical workshop Getting back to the original sound on old recordings. Some of the papers on the last day were needlessly rushed, partly because of the need to switch to another venue. This was unfortunate because the final session considered how collecting may look in the future with the aid of electronic distribution and educational partnerships. We, the audience, needed to consider whether a subtle shift in the collecting imperative was being suggested: collecting for a specific purpose rather than collecting just in case someone asks for it?
Professional visits included the EMI Archives, the Imperial War Museum and the BBC. Various ad hoc tours of The British Library were arranged. The conference wound up with a brief guided coach tour of central London and a splendid dinner at the Institute of Directors. The ARSC awards ceremony was an enjoyable piece of American theatre and was followed by brief but telling speeches by the respective Presidents that pronounced the joint conference to have been an enjoyable success. The organisers received their highly deserved tokens of thanks.
As the co-conspirator with Ted Sheldon during the Paris conference in 1998 who sought to coax ARSC across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, ARSC-IASA in London also gave me great personal pleasure.
The year 2002 is election year for IASA. The Nomination Committee hereby invites nominations for the following Board positions:
President
Three Vice-Presidents
Editor
Secretary-General
Treasurer
Please observe that all nominations must include a proposer, a seconder and the name of the nominee together with the office for which he/she is being nominated.
Send your nomination to any of the Nominating Committee by January 1st 2002, at the latest. The slate of nominations will be mailed to the membership by May 16th 2002 for postal ballot. The deadline for postal ballots is August 16th 2002.
Candidates applying for an Executive Board office shall, as a rule,
have professional experience in the archiving business and, as they will represent the Association if elected, a good standing and reputation;
take into account that their commitment will last for three years at least (for presidents, six years). For that term, they shall assure that they are ready to dedicate a considerable time for the business of the Association without any compensation by the Association. If they work for an institution they shall ensure that, at the time of their application, they have their institution's support and backing to hold that office as the use of institutional resources will be indispensable to the success of any appointment. Otherwise, they shall ensure that they will be able to provide the necessary resources themselves;
disclose their ability to pay for travel and accommodation expenses. It would be most desirable if they can ensure that, at the time of their application, either their institutions or they themselves are, on principle, willing to pay for travel and accommodation costs;
shall have sufficient knowledge in English enabling them to negotiate with representatives of other associations, organisations and institutions;
shall include a biography to their nomination from which the voting members may form an impression to their mind of the aptitude of the nominees. These biographies are part of the electoral list to be sent to the membership.
Those candidates applying for President will be favoured who, additionally, hold managerial posts within an archival institution and are used to making decisions and having good contacts with any other archival institutions, governmental and/or non-governmental organisations, commercial/industrial companies and other authorities.
The Nomination Committee is obliged to examine the candidates' nominations in time. If a nomination does not correspond to these guidelines, then the Nomination Committee shall call the candidate's attention to that and ask her/him for a statement. The Nomination Committee is, however, not permitted to decline nominations.
The Nominating Committee
Olle Johansson (Chair), Statens ljud- och bildarkiv, Box 24124, SE-104 51 Stockholm SWEDEN. olle.johansson@ljudochbildarkivet.se [331]
Virginia Danielson, Richard F. French Librarian, Loeb Music Library, Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. vdaniels@fas.harvard.edu [332]
Kevin Bradley National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT 2600, AUSTRALIA. kbradley@nla.gov.au [333]
Consistent with two of its stated constitutional purposes:
to initiate and encourage activities that develop and improve the organisation, administration and contents of recorded sound and audiovisual collections;
to stimulate and further by every means the preservation, documentation and dissemination of all recorded sound and audiovisual collections;
IASA wishes to nurture and recognise work that significantly improves and enhances the work of professional audiovisual archivists and to these ends proposes the establishment of an award programme. In so doing, the visibility and influence of IASA will be improved.
After many hours of deliberation and comparing our ideas with those of other associations, the IASA Board agreed in London a set of guidelines that will enable IASA's first award to be made at next year's conference in Aarhus. You are therefore invited to send in your nomination (or nominations) to the Editor, which will be dealt with according to the following agreed procedure.
Nature of the award
The award will take the form of a framed certificate, appropriately worded and attractively designed. One award will be made annually, but exceptionally, in the event that more than one outstanding candidate is nominated, the Board may sanction more than one award.
Procedure for nominations
Only IASA members are entitled to nominate award candidates.
Nominations must be submitted in writing to the Chairperson of the Awards Committee (see below) by January 1st 2002. The Awards Committee will consider all nominations and will report the winner to the Executive Board at their mid-year meeting.
Nominations
Candidates for awards need not be members of IASA but the achievement for which they are being nominated must have taken place (e.g. been published, delivered, patented, etc.) during the calendar year preceding the most recent annual conference (i.e. between September 2000 and September 2001). Awards will not be made posthumously.
Criteria for judging the nominations
The Award will be conferred on an individual or team of individuals whose contribution during the course of the permitted timeframe has met one or several of the following criteria, in that it:
represents a powerful influence on the work of IASA
serves as an example of best practice
advances standards or methodology
enriches a particular area of work in which IASA has an interest
meets an urgent requirement
The IASA Awards Committee
The Award(s) shall be administered by the IASA Awards Committee to be nominated by the Executive Board. This will consist of five voting members:
one member of the Executive Board of IASA (at the time of her or his appointment) who will serve as chairperson of the Committee
four other nominated individuals, two of whom must be members of IASA and two who are eminent in the field of sound and audiovisual archiving but who are not necessarily IASA members.
The Committee will serve a three-year term, not necessarily synchronous with the Executive Board life-cycle. Members may serve consecutive terms, at the discretion of the Executive Board.
This year's Committee is:
Chris Clark (Chair), Isabelle Giannattasio (France), Richard Green (Canada), Detlef Humbert (Germany), Joie Springer (non-IASA committee member).
Procedure for the selection and presentation of the Award
The IASA Award(s) will be presented each year at the annual conference of the Association.
The Chairperson of the IASA Awards Committee, having received all nominations by the appointed deadline, will convene a 'meeting' of the Awards Committee. This meeting will typically take place as a telephone conference or by exchange of e-mails. At this meeting nominations will be considered and judged and a shortlist of three candidates determined. Each Committee member will then separately judge the nominated work of each of the three finalists and will rate it on an overall scale of one (low score) to ten (high score). Ratings will be submitted in writing to the Committee Chair who shall compute an average score for each finalist and declare the finalist with the highest score to be the winner. In the event of a tie, the Chairperson may request a re-rating of all finalists or recommend joint winners. All ratings shall be kept secret until the results are officially announced by IASA.
Each Committee member rates all finalists by applying the general criteria specified above. Committee members may discuss nominated works with each other and with specialists if they wish; however the final rating is theirs.
A Committee member must disqualify her/himself from rating a particular work in the event of a conflict of interest or complete lack of knowledge of the subject covered. Any Committee member whose own work becomes a short-listed finalist in a given year will be automatically suspended from the Committee for the duration of that year's judging process and not rate other finalists. The IASA Executive Board may appoint a temporary replacement for a suspended or self-disqualified member. The suspended member will be reinstated following the presentation of the award(s) in question.
Once the rating process is completed, the Committee may, if it wishes, award a Certificate of Merit to particularly worthy runners-up. This will be decided by majority vote of the Committee and should be done only in exceptional cases.
Please send nominations by January 1st 2001 to Chris Clark, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK. email chris.clark@bl.uk [14] / fax 00 44 020 7412 7411
Silke Breslau, Deutsches Musikarchiv, Berlin
Sana Homsi (associate), Istanbul
Joined in order to find out more about preservation and archiving as preparation for a future project.
Gisa Jähnichen, Germany
Dr Jähnichen overseas the collection, documentation and training operations at the Archives of Traditional Music in Laos at the Berliner Phonogrammarchiv
Radio Educación Angel Urraza No. 622, Colonia del Valle, C.P. 03100, Mexico
IASA's first Mexican member is devoted to the conservation and preservation of radio programmes produced by Radio Educación since 1968. There are more than 60,000 items in the collection covering education, culture, journalism and music in Mexico.
Timkehet Teffera Mekonen, Berlin
Dr Teffera overseas the collection, documentation and technical training operations at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at the Berliner Phonogrammarchiv.
Eduardo David Vicente Leite, Radiofusão portuguesa (RDP).
Elizabeth Watson Learning Resource Centre, University of the West Indies, Barbados.
Ms Watson is in charge of a collection of 2000 videos, 2500 sound recordings and other media in support of academic research and outreach activity at the Care Hill Campus, UWI.
IASA is sorry to have learned that Harold Heckendorn, of Worthington Ohio, and long-term member of the association, died on December 31st last year. Ted Sheldon wrote:
"Harold Heckendorn was a long-standing ARSC member, and the ARSC archivist for many years. He had been ill on and on for five years or more, and finally passed away last year. He was much loved by ARSC conference attendees, and all who worked with him on the Board of Directors. A really nice man."
Members are invited to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the IASA Conference in Aarhus, Denmark in September 2002.
The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation at the IASA annual conferences by those who have no alternative funding and to encourage continuing participation in the work of IASA.
Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.
IASA Committees and Sections may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences.
The IASA Board has recently agreed new guidelines for the awarding of travel grants. You are asked to consider these carefully before making your application.
While the aim of IASA shall be to encourage members to attend the annual conference by supporting their travel costs, such support must take account of the current financial health of the Association. Normally, 50% of travel costs (cheapest air or train fare between the applicant's home and the conference venue) will be met.
IASA will, in addition, approach the local conference organisers and request that the grantee's registration fee be waived. The decision in each case will be up to the conference organiser.
Accommodation and subsistence costs will not be supported.
Applications must be sent in writing (by letter, fax or e-mail) to the Secretary-General in response to the announcement of travel and research grants, which are published in the IASA Information Bulletin. Applications must contain the 100% amount of the travel costs in US$, confirmed e.g. by an official travel agency.
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.
The method of payment shall be specified in the application including to whom moneys shall be paid and how they will be made.
The Secretary-General will check all applications received by the appointed deadline and will submit them to the Executive Board at its mid-year meeting for discussion and approval.
Applicants will be informed as soon as possible of the result after the Board's decision has been reached.
IASA will not pay grants in advance of travel. Costs will be reimbursed on presentation of copies of the travel documents by the grantee to the IASA Treasurer during the conference.
IASA travel grants are awarded only to members of the Association; grants will not be made in support of accompanying persons.
Applications for travel grants to attend the Aarhus conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of February 2002 in order to be considered at the mid-year Board meeting to be held in March 2002 Please send your application to: IASA Secretary General, Albrecht Häfner, Suedwestrundfunk, Sound Archives, D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany. Fax +49 7221 929 4199 e-mail albrecht-haefner@swr.de [334]
Research grants are also available to assist in carrying out specific projects and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project which concerns the interests of IASA and which requires start-up funding or which requires financial support for work already underway is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (see address above). Applications will be considered as and when the Executive Board of IASA meets, so the next opportunity will be at its mid-year meeting in March 2002 and then at Annual Conference the following September.
With the support of UNESCO, IASA is able to support the travel of two IASA members in Latin American or Caribbean countries to Los Archivos Sonoros y Visuales en América Latina, a series of workshops and a seminar being held in Mexico City, with organisational input from FIAT and IASA, during the week of November 19th - 24th. For details of the programme and how to register see http://www.radioeducacion.edu.mxse/ [335] apply for travel support, by November 9th 2001 at the latest, to IASA Secretary General, Albrecht Häfner, Suedwestrundfunk, Sound Archives, D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany. Fax +49 7221 929 4199 e-mail albrecht-haefner@swr.de [334]
Detlef Humbert, Secretary of the IASA Radio Sound Archives Section has sent in this report on the 4th annual IASA/FIAT Joint Meeting Digitisation of radio and TV archives.
The meeting was hosted by Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (DRA) for the second time. The venue was near Berlin at DRA's impressive new building in Potsdam-Babelsberg on May 21-22nd. Twenty-eight participants from nine European countries and the United States were welcomed by IASA Executive Board member and Deputy Director of DRA, Anke Leenings, who brought greetings from DRA's departing Director Joachim-Felix Leonhard.
IASA President Crispin Jewitt welcomed the audience on behalf of IASA and expressed his pleasure at seeing "FIAT and IASA getting together to discuss mutual areas of interest as an AV-community" in accordance with the aims of the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA). In March 2001 CCAAA terms of reference were established, a convenor was elected and a FIAT/IASA joint AV-seminar is to be held later this year in Mexico [see below].
The first paper was given by Bjarne Grevsgard, NRK Oslo: The NorWay of Safeguarding the Audiovisual Heritage showed how co-operation between the Norwegian Broadcasting System NRK and the National Library can fulfil the common interest to preserve the audiovisual heritage and make it accessible. The National Library handles the legal deposit of Norwegian radio broadcasts, which are about to be delivered online from NRK.
Richard Wright, BBC, London, reported on the importance of building a digital future by using archive preservation projects. It is estimated that around two-thirds of all archive materials are kept on deteriorating or obsolete carriers. The EC-funded project PRESTO, chaired by Richard Wright, brings together ten major European broadcast archives with seven technology partners and has as its goal the reduction of preservation costs by as much as 30 percent through the use of new technologies. PRESTO's first phase is summarised on the Internet at http://presto.joanneum.ac.at/index.asp [336].
Dietrich Schueller from the Phonogrammarchiv in Vienna gave a report on the specific problems with recorded sound collections in research archives and their experiences with digitisation. These collections are logged to different institutions on fields like musicology, ethnology, etc. Research means working with these old collections of very valuable material as a part of world cultural heritage. Different formats, speeds, materials and a recording often made under irregular conditions may even include the necessity of de-alignment of an exactly aligned tone-head to reproduce the original audio information. At the present time digitisation is carried out using two AudioCubes via Fast Ethernet to an 80 GB server and DLT7000 drive at 96kHz sampling rate and 24 bit dissolution. Future plans include a scaleable tape library, a 540 GB fileserver and the link to the University Computing Center for disaster preparedness.
Christoph Bauer, ORF, presented an overview of projects at Austrian Broadcasting System dealing with digitised assets and workflows. ORF is involved in eight such projects: Newsroom, IMX-Recording, Request Broker, Vienna Philharmonics, and EU-projects AMICITIA, PRIMAVERA, VIZARD, and PRESTO. DMA (Digital Media Architecture) is a one-year-old ORF task force with the aim of avoiding redundancies and evaluation conflicts and of co-ordinating these digital projects. Sub-groups deal with metadata (development of a company-wide data model) and economy (adaptation of workflows and job specifications, rights and licensing strategies).
A project report by Luis Estrada, IBM, on the digital asset management solution for Paramount's domestic television Entertainment Tonight opened the second day. Beginning with the example of Frank Sinatra's death in 1998, when Entertainment Tonight wanted to show a portrait of the artist and all video tapes disintegrated when put into the player, Luis Estrada gave an historic overview from physical archives to asset management. For IBM's digital asset management system of the ET project standard solutions are mostly in use.
Concepción Gomez Alonso, IBM, presented a project report on the digital sound archives at Radio Nacional de España (RNE). The biggest Spanish audio archive owns a collection of 200,000 hours of audio recordings on all types of carriers made since 1937. Using IBM Admira System with IBM 3494 Tape Library scaleable up to 590,000 hours capacity the digitisation process is managed by a Lotus Notes Workflow Application. Costs for the whole project of digitising the whole collection amount to 5,000,000 €.
Lasse Vihonen, YLE, reported on the Digiarchive of Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE). Digitisation of historical material has just started with the oldest of a number of 100,000 hours audio on analogue tapes using Quadriga System. 30,000 hours are stored on DAT. Together with new productions (e.g. audiofiles from Radio 1) the annual growth of the Digiarchive will be approximately 7 TB a year. The audience were astonished to hear that for reasons that are peculiar to copyright laws in Finland a fee of 0.5 € per minute has to be paid to the rights owners' organisation for replaying the programmes during the digitisation process.
The next three items on the agenda dealt with subjects handled by Working Groups of European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Gunnel Joensson from Swedish Broadcasting Resources reported on EBU Working Group P/FRA (Future Radio Archives). By decision of Scandinavian Radio Archives and National Libraries a subgroup on metadata called SAM (Scandinavian Metadata Group) was founded. Their aim is to define a minimum set of metadata for audiofile transfer leading to a P/FRA proposal to EBU. Detailed information can be found on IASA Nordic Branch homepage at http://nrk.no/om_nrk/iasa/metadata [337] and elsewhere in this Bulletin.
Andreas Ebner from German Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) gave an overview of EBU Working Groups P/META and P/FTA. P/META is dealing with metadata in TV-archiving. Three work packages have to be carried out: WP1 - Exchange of metadata; WP2 - Unique identifiers; WP3 - System to system scope. With regard to the reference architecture Andreas Ebner claimed that it represented "a dramatic change in TV-archiving, but also the chance to adopt production library management."
Representing the P/FTA Working Group on future TV-archiving Andreas Ebner reported that content management in future TV-production will have to deal with increased programme volumes, increased format and distribution diversity and increased programme fragmentation. The project is organised in seven work packages of which Content Management and Legacy Television Archives are two examples. More information is given on the EBU website at http://www.ebu.ch/pmc_fta.html [338].
Istar Buscher, Suedwestrundfunk Baden-Baden, presented a paper Changes in Professional Profiles Caused by Digitization, which was much in opposition to the views of industrial possibilities given by the previous speaker. Istar Buscher's examples and experiences on the field of research and development in TV-archiving led to provocative questioning, such as "Has anybody seen an integrated digital workflow?" A lively discussion arose from that "clash between theory and practice", as Buscher called it.
The final discussion on future co-operation between FIAT and IASA was opened by Albrecht Haefner who regretted the poor number of FIAT attendants. Dietrich Schueller emphasised the greater importance of inviting those who are less informed about the matters under discussion rather than 'preaching to the converted'. Crispin Jewitt considered the meeting itself a success and recommended that such co-operation continue for at least another year and this was endorsed by those present.
Natalia Solovieva (Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture) reports:
The first all-Russian conference Echolot on audio culturology, archiving and new technologies took place in Moscow May 22-25, 2001. It was organised by the State Literary Museum of Russia and the State Moscow Conservatoire with the assistance of the Russian Ministry of Culture and the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation - Russia).
The plenary meeting was hosted by the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture, while the other sessions were held at the State Literary Museum. Delegates also had the opportunity to visit various audio archives in Moscow.
Delegates included specialists from archives, museums, libraries, universities and scientific institutes, and representatives from the Russian recording and broadcasting industries and other mass media based in Moscow, St Petersburg and other Russian regions. These were joined by Ukrainian researchers from Kiev and the Kazakh representative of UNESCO from Alma-Ata.
The main topics covered included: audio culturology and mass media, audio psychology and phono-semantics; problems faced by national audio archives (acquisition, preservation, restoration, cataloguing and access); today's audio technology; regional, national and international collaborations. For instance, one of the subjects discussed was the Franco-Russian distance learning project Sonothèque (Encyclopédie Sonore). This is a collaboration between the Fédération Interuniversitaire de l'Enseignement à Distance (FIED), France, and a number of Russian cultural and educational institutions. Further details about this project can be obtained from Christiane Guillard, the President of FIED, guillard@u-paris10.fr [339].
One of the highlights of the Conference was the report by Vyacheslav V. Petrov from Kiev on the digitisation of Edison phonograph cylinders. Ukrainian scientists have developed what some consider to be the best equipment for the digital re-mastering of cylinders and this has enabled the reconstruction of a series of unique Jewish music recordings made during the first half of the 20th century in Ukraine and Belarus. Petrov demonstrated the first CD from a projected set of 20 discs entitled Treasury of Jewish Culture in Ukraine. These recordings include what is probably the only authentic phonograph recording of the famous Jewish writer Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916).
The outcome of the Conference was a set of recommendations to improve state policy governing the audio heritage. Firstly a system of state legal deposit must be established to support acquisitions; secondly, the Russian audio archives should be accessible on the web.
Representatives of the radio archives and the national libraries/archives of the Scandinavian countries met in Århus, Denmark in August 2000. The agenda of the meeting was to establish a structured and effective cooperation within the field of metadata. To best achieve this goal a working group was established. The members of the working group were:
Elsebeth Kirring, State & University Library, Århus
Per Holst, Danish Broadcasting Corporation
Berit Stifjeld, National Library of Norway, Rana Division, later replaced by Hilde Høgås
Gunnel Jönsson, Swedish Broadcasting Resources, Program archive
Olle Johansson, National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images, Stockholm
Marit Grimstad, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation
The meeting in Århus discussed the group's work and agreed on the following mandate for the group:
The Scandinavian Radio Archives and National Libraries has decided to establish a Scandinavian metadata group with the responsibility of developing a minimum standard for metadata within the area of broadcasting material and other AV media. The work is to be co-ordinated with similar work within the EBU and other international organisations
Already at the meeting in Århus it was decided that the group should base its standard on the existing international standard Dublin Core. The Dublin Core is, as the name signifies, a core standard, meaning that a core of data is common while permitting great local diversity.
The group has mainly worked through email. We have had one meeting in Copenhagen in November 2000 and one in Århus in April 2001. The group also spent some time to further detail the mandate as follows:
We are mainly working towards a standard for retrieval and transfer of data files between institutions and on an international level. To achieve this we need a minimum list of data (a core list) that can be exported in a format that can be internationally recognised by computer programmes. Locally within each institution the need for data is greater and more specialised. Each institution has their own local databases with all the archival data needed in that institution's work. All local databases should be able to export data records in the Dublin Core format.
The text of the report can be found at http://nrk.no/om/iasa/metadata/1009552.html [340].
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) is pleased to announce that the 36th annual ARSC conference will be hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara from May 8-11, 2002. This will be ARSC's first West Coast conference since 1985. Papers and Session proposals are now being accepted. Contact David Seubert seubert@library.ucsb.edu [341] for more information or visit http://www.arsc-audio.org/index.php [342].
Compiled with financial support from UNESCO by a working group from the Round Table on Audiovisual Records, a preliminary version of the Glossary of Terms Related to the Archiving of Audiovisual Materials has just been published on the UNESCO website. Edited and compiled by Gerald Gibson, with Sven Allerstrand as translation co-ordinator, the main contributors to the document include specialists from each of the 5 NGOs representing the Round Table (now the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations- CCAAA) in addition to a number of other experts in the audiovisual field.
The Glossary gives definitions of audiovisual and audiovisual-related terms with their equivalents in French, German and Spanish when known. This preliminary version can be consulted at http://www.unesco.org/webworld/audiovis/avarch/glossary.pdf [343] . A more complete version with additional terms and bibliographical references is expected to be available early next year in electronic and hard copy formats. UNESCO hopes to keep the Glossary up to date and invites specialists to contribute to this resource by updating entries or providing terms in other languages.
For additional information, please contact: Joie Springer, Information Society Division,
UNESCO, 1, rue Miollis, 75732 Paris Cedex 15, Fax: +(331) 45 68 55 83
j.springer@unesco.org [344]
Dietrich Schüller writes:
As of September 2001, the Phogrammarchiv has expanded its preservation activities to include video documents.
During the course of recent technical developments, video documents have gained importance as sources for many disciplines, particularly for the natural sciences and the humanities. Consequently, several research institutions, as well as individual scholars, have produced numerous video research documents, which, due to the lack of a specialised Austrian institution, remained without adequate custodial care.
This development was prefigured by a team of evaluators who analysed the work of the Phonogrammachiv in the late 1990s. They recommended expanding the archives' activities into video archiving. A feasibility study conducted by Nadja Wallaszkovits identified over 2000 hours of video research footage that had accumulated in several research institutions over recent decades. It is planned to archive these stocks by applying a selection rate of 50 percent. Parallel to the intake of old holdings, newly produced video recordings will also gradually be incorporated. In a second phase, following the example of audio, the Phonogrammarchiv will also become engaged in videographic field work, actively supporting field workers by giving methodological and technical advice and by loaning suitable equipment.
Technically, the most commonly prevailing source formats are U-matic, VHS, and video8/ Hi8. Newly produced material is partly made on DV. The present challenge is the selection of an appropriate target format for archiving. While the original plan foresaw the use of DigiBeta, most recent development work suggests we try to by-pass proprietary formats and aim at an openly defined video file format.
After two years of preparation and planning, the project was launched with the support of special funding of the Academy by the Federal Ministry of Education, Research and Culture.
Stephen Bury, The British Library, writes:
Domain UK is a pilot project at The British Library to investigate the feasibility of selecting and archiving websites of British 'historical or cultural significance', from political party sites during the General Election to issues such as genetically-modified crops and Foot and Mouth disease. The name, Domain UK, is something of a misnomer as we are not harvesting the whole of .uk and we are also archiving some sites that are hosted abroad but relate to Britain.
As there is currently no Legal Deposit of this electronic resource in the UK, we have to email each webmaster/publisher to ask permission to download. We are using Bluesquirrel software to 'whack' the sites on a three-weekly basis. During the six-month experiment we will not be making these publicly available, but at the end of this period we hope to renegotiate permission to make them available from one of our servers and, eventually, through the British Library's Digital Library Store.
We have decided to select 100 representative sites across the Dewey Decimal classes but avoiding mainstream publishers, databases or individual sites where image, text or sounds might not have been copyright-cleared. Music websites selected include an unofficial Fat Boy Slim and the official Mediaeval Baebes sites. Future plans would involve the public being able to nominate sites which, if they met our selection criteria, would be archived, as in the case of PANDORA, the National Library of Australia's web archiving initiative (http://pandora.nla.gov.au/index.html [345]). Part of the project is to determine what these selection criteria should be.
The downloaded sites are examined each time for authoring environment (html or otherwise), size, number of reciprocal links, number of visitors, Bobby-rating (see http://www.cast.org/bobby [346]) and whether they are archived by the webmaster; only some 5% are archived, which suggests that there is a real danger of losing important sites which might well be needed by future scholars. Two of the original sites selected are already defunct. A by-product of the project is a snapshot of how the web is being used in the UK and this will be of interest to future historians of web design.
The IASA Secretary General recently received a letter from Elisabeth Rohmer, Head of the Cultural Action Division of the Council of Europe, in which IASA is thanked for its "contribution" to the European Convention for the Protection of the Audiovisual Heritage that has been adopted by the Council of Ministers as of 19th September 2001. Reading the text that appears on the Web http://culture.coe.fr/infocentre/txt/eng/econaud.html [347] it is difficult to see what that contribution might have been since by their implicit definition 'audiovisual' is limited to moving image material. IASA has lobbied previously in response to earlier drafts to clarify the scope of the Convention, in the knowledge that sound recordings were excluded, but the term remains in the title and the scope of the Convention could therefore be misinterpreted.
European members of IASA need to be concerned about this. Member States that sign this Convention (the date set for this is November 8th 2001) are obliging themselves to adhere to its articles and to adjust their legislation accordingly. States are, however, not prevented from extending their legislation to other related matters, such as sound and non-film av documents. It is therefore up to the national libraries and audiovisual archives of each member state to lobby accordingly in their respective countries if legal deposit for audiovisual documents is not already in place. Failure to do so may mean that initiatives designed to give legal status to the protection of audiovisual documents, in the sense that IASA uses the term, are rejected on the grounds that, according to this Convention, the audiovisual heritage has already been protected.
IASA will now consider how best to respond to the letter from Elisabeth Rohmer.
The theme of the 20th AES conference, held in Budapest 5-7 October 2001, was Archiving, Restoration, and New Methods of Recording, and attracted more than 100 attendants from all five continents. Joie Springer from UNESCO gave the keynote address on 'Promoting Global Access to the Audiovisual Memory of the World'. Almost 30 contributions were delivered on sub-themes such as carrier degradation, metadata and files, broadcasting systems, mass transfer, and restoration, reflecting the latest state of audiovisual archiving.
The complete conference proceedings are available in print as well as on CD-ROM. Copies can be obtained via http://www.aes.org/publications/conf.cfm [348]
The iasa website, hosted by the National Library of Wales, is about to undergo a major overhaul and will be given a more direct url. The new website is expected to be launched in January 2002 at which time the new url will be announced.
Meanwhile I am pleased to report another substantial annual increase in the number of people who have visited our pages: 126957 visited our site during the twelve months following the Singapore Conference in July 2000. Compare this with the figure of 18000 recorded in 1998: a similar figure (17812) was recorded for just one month (May) this year.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2001 | ||
| November 6 - 11 | 11th AMIA Conference | Portland, U.S. |
| November 23 - 24 | WEDELMUSIC 2001: web delivery of music | Florence, Italy |
| November 19 - 24 | Los Archivos Sonoros y Visuales en American Latina. International seminar and workshops on sound and TV preservation (in association with IASA and FIAT: see above) | Mexico |
| 2002 | ||
| March 14 - 15 | IASA Board mid-year meeting | Aarhus |
| April 17 - 20 | 15th SCECSAL Conference | Johannesburg |
| May 8 -11 | 36th Annual ARSC Conference | Santa Barbara, U.S. |
| May 11 - 12 | 112th AES Convention | Munich |
| June 15 - 17 | 22nd AES International Conference Virtual, synthetic and entertainment media | Espoo, Finland |
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| August 18 - 24 | 68th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries for life |
Glasgow, U.K. |
| September 15 - 19 | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
| October 5 - 8 | 113th AES Convention | Los Angeles, U.S. |
| October 25 - 28 | Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting | Detroit, U.S. |
| November 19 - 23 | AMIA Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| 2003 | ||
| July 6 - 11 | IAML Conference | Tallinn, Estonia |
| August 1 - 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| November 18 - 22 | AMIA Conference | Vancouver, Canada |
| 2004 | ||
| June 20 - 25 | IAML-IASA Annual Conference | Oslo, Norway |
| November 9 - 13 | AMIA Conference | Minneapolis, U.S. |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
© International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA)
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 40 BY 15 DECEMBER 2001
After a long period of illness Helen Harrison, past IASA President, General Secretary and Editor, died at the end of October last year. George Boston and I attended her funeral in Amersham on a bright autumn afternoon. The IASA Board sent a wreath.
Helen supported my nomination in 1996 for the IASA Editorship and presented me with a very clear outline of what the job entailed. She had done the same when I edited the IASA-UK Newsletter in the early 1980s. Her nurturing qualities were devoted to all levels of our organisation.
News of Helen's death was announced by George Boston and many of you wrote to him subsequently. He and I thought that a selection of these messages would make a fitting tribute to our late, highly respected, honorary member. [Ed.]
"When I saw the e-mail title I had the horrible feeling it would contain some sad news. Nevertheless, it is a real shock to learn of Helen's death. She did much to encourage both you [George Boston] and I within IASA and I know we will have both gained much from knowing her - as indeed will be the case for many."
Clifford Harkness, Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Holywood, Northern Ireland
"I have some wonderful videotape of Helen presiding at some meetings. In fact, the tape I have put together of IASA excerpts (but have never been able to show yet) starts with her opening up the 1988 Vienna conference. This was the first one that was independent of IAML, and she said that she was so relieved to see so many people here. It was a defining moment of IASA."
Mike Biel, Morehead State University, Kentucky, USA
"Thank you for letting me know of this sad departure... I hope UNESCO will pay tribute to the international work of Helen in one of their official newsletters and that the professional press in her field will do so as well."
Michelle Aubert, French National Film and Television Archive, Paris
"That is sad news indeed. Helen was an amazing woman."
Bill Storm, Syracuse, New York State, USA
"Beyond all warm personal relations, Helen's role for IASA cannot be estimated enough. Although modest, perhaps over-modest in her personal style, she was the core figure of IASA in the eighties and early nineties. Her consistent input to IASA's internal organisation was an essential move towards professionalism, from which we still profit today (although some of her documents seem to have been forgotten). More important even is her role vis-à-vis UNESCO, which paved the way to that recognition, we enjoy today.
She struggled with Wolfgang Loehner successfully for the acknowledgement of audio-visual archives associations, the AV round table owes much of its existence to her. Had the other NGOs worked to her professional standards, AV Archives at large today would have an even better standing. Her UNESCO AV reader is still a standard reference text. IASA should honour her in updating this essential reference tool... "
Dietrich Schüller, Phonogrammarchiv der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Vienna
"It appears that Helen kept the real facts from all her friends. The person who passed the news to me had known Helen since they were beginners together at the National Film and TV Archive and lived quite close to Helen. Despite visits, she did not know the full story...
She was a good, if at times frustrating 'old stick'. I was fond of her and she was one of those people who embodied the IASA I came to know and respect. She worked tirelessly for the association and knew more about the internecine world of NGO's than most. As such she was an invaluable office bearer for IASA, although not often a happy one. Once she left the Board (after the Perugia conference) she seemed to fade from view. That IASA was her life was clear to us all.
In later years she was semi-reclusive. We had hoped she could have attended the conference in London. Her absence from that event, so close to home, should have sounded warning bells. I am saddened by her passing, and quietly admiring of her stoic resolve to keep her serious condition from general view."
George Boston
"I remember getting to know Helen Harrison in 1981 at the IASA conference in Budapest. Our friendship grew from that time as we both became more and more active in IASA. As she moved from Secretary-General through to President, then to Editor, she kept up a voluminous correspondence. When I culled my own files after my Board tenure, I had over five manila folders full of letters from Helen and all of the following comments in italics are actual excerpts from her letters to me.
She seemed to enjoy writing letters immensely, referring to how she spent a happy day folding, licking and sticking during her term as Editor. She had a special relationship with Australia, having received her undergraduate degree from the University of Sydney. Our letters, which contained a mixture of official business and personal observations, often reflected her fond memories of the land of OZ.
She encouraged me greatly, offering criticisms in an understated tone. When as Editor, my first Phonographic Bulletin came out with a shockingly small typeface, she told me gently that it was a bit difficult for the aged with failing eyesight to read, but she sent a congratulatory telegram anyway.
Helen tirelessly pursued IASA Board members and Committee Chairs, prodding them on to make their contributions to IASA. Various letters spoke of people going to ground and not being easy to get a hold of when her communiqués were not acknowledged. She would regale me regularly, and with some pride, in describing details of how she had put the cat amongst the pigeons when she needed a response in a hurry. She did not seem to mind the resulting impassioned responses that resulted from such activity, but a number of letters contained the typical English phrase mustn't grumble.
One of her proudest moments within our organisation came when, in 1989, IASA achieved Category B status within UNESCO. She had worked tirelessly for this outcome for many years, and, in the process, became one of the most knowledgeable people in IASA about the workings of UNESCO.
In mid-1980's I began to see comments about her health. References to the dreaded lurgi and other ailments were a portent of the things to come. I believe that IASA was one of the most important things in her life. As she said in 1987, work and involvement can be a great boon at times, even if we all moan like fury. As her involvement in IASA diminished, her illness became more acute. She appreciated any contact with IASA friends, especially the menus from IASA conference dinners signed by her comrades.
IASA has lost one of its most devoted and tireless workers. I shall miss her very much. Grace Koch, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Studies
Denis Mbessa, Brazzaville, Congo.
Denis Mbessa works at the Archives de la Radio et de la Television congolaises which is developing an AV collection representative of that country.
Punam Khosla, Toronto, Canada (associate)
Datejie Green, Toronto, Canada.
Ms Green wishes to benefit from IASA's network of contacts for information sharing, especially about technical subjects.
MINGACO (Corporación de Patrimonio Sonoro, Audiovisual y Cinematográfico), Moneda 650, Santiago, Chile.
A welcome addition to our small band of Latin American members, our contact at MINGACO is Vice President Micaela Navarrete, who is also head of the Archivo de Literatura Oral y Tradiciones Populares at the Chilean National Library.
National Public Radio, 635 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington DC 20001.
Robert Robinson is our contact member there and he describes NPR as "a national public radio network, based in Washington, which has a collection of 120,000 hours of programming starting in 1971".
Maureen Webster-Prince, National Library of Jamaica.
Some of you will have met Maureen Webster-Prince at the ARSC-IASA Conference in. She hopes to "benefit from and contribute to the activities of this vibrant and progressive professional body".
Radio Netherlands, PO Box 222, 1200 JG Hilversum, The Netherlands.
Radio Netherlands is Holland's external public broadcaster. The archive includes audio (30,000 items) and TV video (2000 items) and, according to Creative Director Jonathan Marks, "is interested in learning how to preserve this unique record, expressed in nine foreign languages, of Dutch heritage.
It was promoted as the first of its kind: an international audio-visual seminar held in Latin America and attended in equal measure by representatives of the three principal international media associations, IASA, FIAT and FIAF. At the inaugural session of Los Archivos Sonoros y Visuales en América Latina, Lidia Camacho, Director General of the host organisation, Radio Educación, proudly listed the sponsors, including UNESCO, IBM and CONACULTA (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, the Mexican ministry of culture) that had enabled more than three hundred delegates from more than twenty countries to assemble in the impressive Jaime Torres Bodet auditorium, which is housed within the world-famous National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
The seminar lasted three whole days, November 22-24 and was preceded by a series of workshops on a range of topics led by representatives from the three associations. The IASA team consisted of President Crispin Jewitt, Secretary General Albrecht Häfner, Dietrich Schüller, Catherine Lacken and Ray Edmondson. Past President Sven Allerstrand attended courtesy of FIAF and Editor Chris Clark arrived later, just for the seminar. Other IASA delegates included Graciela Dacosta from Montevideo, Nieves Iglesias and Amparo Amat from Madrid and very recent members Maureen Webster-Prince and Elizabeth Watson from Jamaica and Barbados respectively.
Three hundred delegates in a top-class venue: this was not what some of us in IASA had expected. We promoted the seminar during the summer and early autumn and, with UNESCO's support, funded the attendance of our Caribbean colleagues, but a combination of ever-changing messages about who was speaking about what and when, an unreliable host web-site (it was often unavailable during the weeks preceding the seminar) and travellers' tales of the fate that would befall anyone foolish enough to ride in a green Beetle taxi or eat a salad, had led most of us to form low expectations of a successful outcome.
That we were wrong to think in those terms was obvious as soon as the planes landed. We all arrived on different dates and at an assortment of times, yet everyone was met in person almost at the door of the aircraft. These touches are important after long international flights to unfamiliar destinations. Buses ferried us from the hotel to the seminar venue and back again (about three kilometres). If you missed the bus there was usually an obliging green Beetle taxi lying in wait. Those of us on our first day who decided to walk back, intent on heeding those travellers' tales, were much alarmed at finding our deliberations on asset management (this year's IASA theme) side-tracked by concerns for self-preservation as pavements petered out into 12-lane urban motorways.
The conference papers dealt, as usual, with a mixture of challenges, perspectives and investigative projects. Digitisation and automation were major themes but now some realism is beginning to colour the optimism of those visions we have all been hearing about in earlier gatherings as the bills start to arrive and the processes seem to take a lot longer to undertake than some of us imagined. I hope to feature a selection of seminar papers in the IASA Journal - one has already appeared in No.18. My one criticism was that there were too many similar presentations and that some deserved more time: the blanket time limit of fifteen minutes was too severe but was also mostly ignored by speakers and chairs. The seminar was well-supported technically and the simultaneous translations from Spanish into English worked well, though the sound system within the auditorium occasionally created an echo effect that made it almost impossible for panellists to understand what was being asked from the floor.
IASA is not accustomed to recording its conferences visually but FIAT certainly has a tradition in this area, so if you make your way to http://fiatifta.org [349] you will find six pages of snaps, some of them featuring colleagues.
For IASA generally this event was considered a success in terms of its recently stated ambition to hold or participate in regional seminars in addition to an annual conference. The presidents of all three associations are keen to encourage similar events in future. IASA only managed to attract a handful of new members but met and exchanged views with dozens of people from South American countries that have not so far figured in IASA's work (the Editor has recently obtained a list of delegates if anyone is interested in following up connections made). This was a bilingual conference but it was clear that Spanish was the preferred and most useful language and that a body of interesting work is being written in Spanish that is not represented in IASA. Perhaps now is the time to review the language policy of IASA.
The last word on Los Archivos Sonoros y Visuales.. should be left to FIAT's Tedd Johansen: after all, it was Tedd's idea and he spent well over a year helping to organise it. "For me, personally, it was the event of the year". Nobody looked more pleased with the outcome as we danced away the final moments to a college band, our inhibitions and customary European reserve momentarily banished by generous servings of tequila. (Ed.)
This year's joint meeting between the radio committees of IASA and FIAT takes the form of a 3-day workshop hosted by Richard Wright of the BBC to incorporate the work of ECPA (European Commission on Preservation and Access) and PRESTO (Preservation Technology)
The workshop will draw on the combined experience of ten major European broadcast archives, and the new technology developed by PRESTO.
It will cover:
Funding - sources of funding; a model business case; benchmark costs;
Selection - criteria; prioritisation; life expectancy and condition monitoring;
The preservation factory - how to process the most material with the least labour; how to control quality; how to manage metadata; what to include and (exclude) during preservation - to maximise access and future use;
Sustainability - the total cost of ownership of archive material; technology for automation of quality monitoring and data update; media life expectancy; what formats to choose;
Online and Internet - how to build new technology into a preservation project - without going over budget;
The small archive - how to be efficient on small-scale projects; special funding for private and historical collections; sources of support, advice and resources; out-sourcing options;
Commercial resources - information on technology and facility houses specialising in multimedia archive preservation; comparative costs; how to manage quality and cost; do's and don'ts of working with contractors
New technology - advances in mass storage, process automation, automatic quality control, and asset management; what it is, what it really can and cannot do, costs and benefits. Also new technology developed by PRESTO and by related EC projects.
To suggest a topic for a paper that addresses one or more of these themes, please send a title and abstract along with your name and address to
Per Holst PER@dr.dk [350]
or
Richard Wright richard.wright@bbc.co.uk [351]
The closing date for this call for papers is March 1st 2002 (please note that this is a 3-week extension to the deadline previously announced on the iasa website). Speakers will be contacted shortly after that deadline and informed of the organisers' decision.
Further to the announcement in IASA Information Bulletin No.39 [315], the deadline for nominating candidates for an award this year was January 1st 2002. No nominations had been received by that date so in case this announcement went unheeded, the deadline will be extended for a further 6 weeks, until Friday 15th February. If no nominations are received by that date there will be no IASA award in 2002.
Further to the announcement in IASA Information Bulletin No.39, the deadline for applications for IASA travel grants is February 28th 2002. Please refer to the guidelines that appear in the previous Information Bulletin (no.38) and send your application to: IASA Secretary General, Albrecht Häfner, Suedwestrundfunk, Sound Archives, D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany. Fax +49 7221 929 4199 e-mail albrecht-haefner@swr-online.de [263]
Research grants are also available to assist in carrying out specific projects and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project which concerns the interests of IASA and which requires start-up funding or which requires financial support for work already underway is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (see address above). Applications will be considered as and when the Executive Board of IASA meets, so the next opportunity will be at its mid-year meeting in March 2002 and then at Annual Conference the following September.
If you headed eagerly for [www.llgc.org.uk/iasa] [352] in the New Year expecting to savour the delights of a new design and online services at the IASA website, I am sorry to have disappointed you. The text and basic design are all ready but our hosts at the National Library of Wales were not able to keep to our agreed timetable due to higher priority commitments. I now expect the new website to be unveiled by, or soon after, Easter.
Rainer Hubert writes: "On January 1st, 2001, the Österreichische Phonothek changed its status as well as its name. To help you to recognise us in future, let me explain the basics of this change (which is, as you will see, not as profound as it sounds).
In Austria several cultural institutions, like museums and libraries, are no longer part of the federal administration, but got a new standing as scientific institutions in their own right. New staff members will not be part of the civil service The basic funds for these institutions are still given by the government and the holdings remain public property.
For the Phonothek this new development took place with the beginning of the new year 2001. We are now a division of the Technische Museum Wien, an institution with which we have a long-standing co-operation and common interests. The Director of the Technisches Museum Wien is Gabriele Zuna-Kratky, whom many IASA-members will recall from the IASA-conference in Vienna 1999.
The Mediathek will be a functional unity within the museum - and keep its premises and addresses. Our name was enlarged to Österreichische Mediathek - the official name of the whole institution being: Technisches Museum Wien mit Österreichischer Mediathek.
Neither our function nor our working practice will be changed by this. On the contrary, we hope that we will be able to fulfil our tasks even better: administration will be easier; we can make commercial use of our collections; based on fixed funds we can plan our budgets for several years in advance. And, for the first time ,our aim has been defined by law:
to collect, to preserve and to make accessible the audio-visual cultural lore of Austria (excluding film and photography);
producing audio-visual source material (cultural and political events; everyday life etc.).
So our team - we are 25 at the moment - will go on with our work. Digitisation is now the obvious main task, the main components of which are: digitising at a high level (96 kHz, 24 Bit); automatic controlling and migrating of the media files; use of the media files directly out of the catalogue (by intranet and partly also by internet). We hope to be able to put this system in operation next year."
Rainer Hubert, Österreichische Mediathek, Webgasse 2a, A-1060 Wien/Austria/Europe
Tel. +43-1-5973669/35, Fax +43-1-5973669/40, http://www.mediathek.ac.at [353]
e-mail: Rainer.Hubert@mediathek.ac.at [354]
[With apologies to the staff of Osterreichischer Mediathek. This item should have been included in Information Bulletin 38 but was accidentally overlooked - Ed]
As announced in its latest Bulletin (October 2001), the ICTM has moved from Columbia University, New York City, to the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). The Secretary General is IASA member Anthony Seeger. Here is the new address and website:
ICTM Secretariat, UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology, 2539 Schoenberg Hall, Box 957178, Los Angeles, CA 90095-7178, USA. Tel 00 1 310 794 1858, Fax 00 1 310 206 4738, email ictm@arts.ucla.edu [355]. Website: www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/ICTM [356]
Broadcasting: Archaeologies, Histories, Impacts, Futures is the title given to a conference to be held at the Department of Historical and Critical Studies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK, 20 - 22 June 2002
Keynote Speakers will include Professor Jeffrey Richards (University of Lancaster), Professor Michael Tracey (University of Colorado), Professor Manuel Alvarado (University of Luton)
This conference aims to encourage a wide range of papers which contribute to the emerging debate about broadcasting histories, which attempt to excavate what may be only partially retrievable, which examine audience pleasures, which assess the impact of broadcasting in a variety of contexts, and which contribute to speculation about the futures for television and radio in a digital landscape.
Papers are invited which cover all aspects of past, present and future developments in television and radio, from the local to the global. Abstracts should be about 300 words in length, on disc or as an email attachment, listing name, organisation, contact address, telephone and email address, and should include the title of the proposed paper. The closing date for abstracts is the 8th February 2002. Please note that presenters need to register for the conference and pay the registration fee.
Please address all abstracts and enquiries to: Emma Woodward, Conference Assistant, Business Services Office, University of Central Lancashire Preston PR1 2HE, UK. Tel: 00 (44) 1772 892250, Fax: 00 (44) 1772 892938
Email : eawoodward@uclan.ac.uk [357], Website: http://www.uclan.ac.uk/business_services/conf/index.htm [358]
The provisional programme has been published for the 4th ARSAG International Symposium Paris, May 27-30 2002, La Conservation A L'ere Du Numerique / Preservation In The Digital Age. A number of papers will be of interest to IASA members. To see a list of these go to www.crcdg.culture.fr [359]
The main contacts for the symposium are Françoise Flieder and Sibylle Monod, Association pour la recherche scientifique sur les arts graphiques, 36, rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, 75005 Paris.
tel 01 44 08 69 90 fax 01 47 07 62 95 email monod@mnhn.fr [360]
The Research Libraries Group (RLG) announced in December the launch of a new initiative in digital preservation: ERPANET (Electronic Resource Preservation and Access NETwork). This is funded by the European Commission and it will create a European consortium whose role will be "to provide a virtual clearinghouse and knowledge-base on state-of-the-art developments in digital preservation. Additionally, the consortium will transfer expertise among individuals and institutions as well as develop an online and physical community focused on preservation.
The University of Glasgow (Dr Seamus Ross) and its partners the Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv (Switzerland) (Niklaus Bütikofer), Rijksarchiefdienst (Netherlands) (Hans Hofman), and the University of Urbino (Italy) (Maria Guercio) will lead this initiative.
ERPANET has the following specific objectives:
To identify and raise awareness of sources of information about the preservation of digital objects across the broad spectrum of national and regional cultural and scientific heritage activity in Europe.
To appraise and evaluate information sources and documented developments in digital preservation on behalf of the ERPANET user community; and to make available results of research, projects, and best practice.
To provide an enquiry and advisory service on digital preservation issues, practice, technology and developments.
To implement a suite of six thematic workshops to bring together experts from a range of disciplines to address key preservation issues (e.g. integrity and audit requirements, emulation and migration) and to initiate associated thematic discussion.
To build during the EU-sponsored phase a suite of eight training seminars based on best practice, and to identify where and what further practitioner training and staff development is required.
To develop a suite of tools, guidelines, templates for prototype instruments and best practice testbeds and case studies.
To stimulate further research on digital preservation in key areas and encourage the development of standards where gaps and opportunities have been identified.
To build ERPANET step-by-step into a self-sustaining initiative supported by those individuals and organisations which require access to digital preservation resources and information.
To stimulate ICT companies and software developers to incorporate some of the preservation lessons into new generations of software.
For more information, go to the project website at: www.erpanet.org [361]or contact Robin L. Dale, Program Officer, RLG, 100 Villa Street, Mountain View, CA 94041, USA. Email: robin.dale@notes.rlg.org [362], http://www.oclc.org/en-UK/home.html [297]
The Journal of Digital Information (Volume 2, issue 2, January 2002) has published a special metadata issue - Metadata: Selected papers from the Dublin Core 2001 Conference. The papers are freely available online, http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v02/i02/editorial/ [363]
The peer reviewed journal of the internet FirstMonday www.firstmonday.dk [364] has recently published some articles on the impact of MP3 technology and the cultural implications of services such as Napster: Kacper Poblocki "The Napster Network Community" www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6_11/poblocki/index.html [365] looks at the features and implications of virtual communities, while Kostas Kasaras "Music in the age of free distribution: MP3 and society" www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_1/kasaras/index.html [366] is a critical discussion of music piracy on the web and its place in a chain of technological developments that have changed the music industry over the years. Unfortunately this latter article is marred by some poor editing but it makes some interesting and well-researched points.
A new edition of the popular EBLIDA brochure Licensing Digital Resources. How to avoid the legal pitfalls is now available on the ECUP website in html and pdf formats at: www.eblida.org/ecup/docs/ [367] or on request from the EBLIDA secretariat.
A report from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), entitled The Evidence in Hand:Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections Task Force Reports on Saving Historical Evidence aims to addresses the dilemma that archives face in dealing with an increasing range of fragile and obsolescent digital material when resources are already over-stretched. CLIR created a task force of scholars, librarians, and archivists in 1999. Its members were asked to articulate a framework for making or evaluating institutional policies for the retention of published materials and archival or unpublished materials in their original form. The report is available on CLIR's Web site at http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub103/pub103.pdf [368]. Print copies will soon be available for ordering through the Web site.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2002 | ||
| February 19 - 20 | ASRATechnical Conference | Nat. Library of Australia, Canberra |
| March 21 - 22 | IASA Board mid-year meeting | Aarhus |
| April 17 - 20 | 15th SCECSAL Conference | Johannesburg |
| April 21 - 27 | 58th FIAF Congress http://www.fiaf2002.org [369] | Seoul |
| May 8 -11 | 36th Annual ARSC Conference | Santa Barbara, U.S. |
| May 11 - 12 | 112th AES Convention | Munich. |
| May 13 - 18 | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Vientiane, Laos |
| May 22 - 24 | Multimedia Archive Preservation - a practical workshop Organised by IASA, FIAT, PRESTO, ECPA |
London |
| June 15 - 17 | 22nd AES International Conference Virtual, synthetic and entertainment media |
Espoo, Finland |
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| August 18 - 24 | 68th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries for life |
Glasgow, U.K. |
| September 15 - 19 | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
| October 5 - 8 | 113th AES Convention | Los Angeles, U.S. |
| October 25 - 28 | Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting | Detroit, U.S. |
| November 19 - 23 | AMIA Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| 2003 | ||
| July 6 - 11 | IAML Conference | Tallinn, Estonia |
| August 1 - 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| November ? | IASA - ICA joint annual conference | Cape Town, South Africa (tbc) |
| November 18 - 22 | AMIA Conference | Vancouver, Canada |
| 2004 | ||
| August 8 - 13 | IAML-IASA joint Annual Conference | Oslo, Norway |
| November 9 - 13 | AMIA Conference | Minneapolis, U.S. |
This Information Bulletin has been compiled by
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
© International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA)
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO NO 41 BY 15 MARCH 2002
The Conference website is now available at http://www.statsbiblioteket.dk/iasa/iasa2002.html [370]. Meanwhile, here is the second call for papers closing date May 10th 2002.
The theme of the IASA Conference in 2002, to be held in Aarhus, is Digital Asset Management and Preservation. What does Digital Asset Management (DAM) actually mean in the context of audiovisual archives and how does it impact on preservation? DAM is about managing your assets your audio, video, still images and data from creation through to preservation. It incorporates indexing, storage, access, restrictions, rights management, browsing, preservation and reporting, all under the control of a digital asset management system. But, is DAM about managing digital assets or about managing your assets using a digital system? Perhaps it is both.
The conference will explore how we manage the digital assets that are beginning to dominate our collections and the challenges for preservation of the new archive. A number of sub-themes will be explored. These include:
How do we collect material that is created in the digital domain? We would like papers outlining institutions' experiences with digital archiving a broadcaster where archiving is integrated with radio production; a national or research archive which is offered material on a range of digital formats recorded to a range of digital standards.
How do we preserve the digital media? A paper on the particular problems offered by the present range of digital formats how you deal with different standards, maintaining playback equipment, monitoring condition, atmospheric storage conditions.
Digital mass storage. Are you using a digital mass storage system? Papers are welcome from institutions that can explain the process they went through to find the right system, how they implemented the system and how it is working.
Managing the asset. Have you surveyed what digital rights management systems there are? Perhaps your organisation is considering a new system. What involvement has the archive played in planning, reviewing and selecting a system? What copyright issues have emerged now that access to digital sound has become so easy? Have user expectations changed now that they can download so much via the Internet? Is there also an institution that would like to tell their colleagues about their circulation system?
Exploiting the digital domain. How does metadata change the role of the cataloguer? Do those working in broadcast archives still listen to radio programs when cataloguing them or does all necessary cataloguing data arrive via a digital production system? Are the creators of digital files using the technology fully to document the recording or are they still relying on the old-fashioned ways?
To suggest a topic for a paper or poster presentation, please send a title and summary along with your name and address by email to one of the programme committee:
John Spence, IASA Vice-President: email spence.john@a2.abc.net.au [233]
Eva Fonss-Jorgensen, conference organising committee chairperson: email efj@statsbiblioteket.dk [371]
Elsebeth Kirring, local organiser: email ek@statsbiblioteket.dk [265]
Per Holst, local organiser: PER@dr.dk [350]
Once again, the closing date for this second call for papers is 10th of May 2002. Speakers will be contacted shortly after that deadline and informed of the committee's decision.
While working up an appetite for this year's IASA conference theme, digital assets management (DAM), you are recommended to take note of AMIA's 1999 survey of DAM software functionality, which gathered responses from several leading suppliers, including Bulldog, Cinebase, Excalibur, Informix, Mate, PNI and Te@ms [372]: http://www.amianet.org/11_Information/11h1_DigitalQuest.html [373]
Erratum
Information Bulletin no.40 (January 2002) carried a number of tributes from members in response to the death of Helen Harrison. The words attributed to George Boston were, in fact, sent in by former IASA President James McCarthy. The Editor would like to apologise for this error and for any discomfort that this might have caused.
Audiovisual Archives of the National Library of Venezuela
Parroquía Altagracia, Final Avenida Panteón, Edificio Sede, Dirección del Archivo Audiovisual, Cuerpo 2, Nivel AP-3, Foro Libertador, Caracas 1010, Venezuela
The music and sound collection comprises 17,000 titles (61,500 units); the cinema and video collection comprises 49,500 titles (130,500 units).
Larry Appelbaum, Library of Congress, Washington DC.
Larry Appelbaum is Senior Studio Engineer and Supervisor of the Magnetic Recording Laboratory at the Library of Congress.
Lelia Boyd Arnhem, University of Washington, Seattle (associated member)
Lelia Boyd Arnhem is currently a student at the Information School at Washington University and is studying audio collections and sound archives.
Radio Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Radio UNAM).
Adolfo Prieto 133, Col. Del Valle, C.P. 03100 Mexico D.F., Delegación Benito Juárez, Mexico.
Radio UNAM is the first cultural radio station in Mexico and has an archive of 92,000 audio tapes. Director General Fernando Escalante Sobrino is keen to obtain information about new technology and to explore possibilities for cultural exchanges with similar institutions.
The Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CAAA, or C2A3, as some are now calling it) held its third meeting on 8th March in Paris. This is a combination of three reports by the IASA members who were present: Crispin Jewitt, Albrecht Häfner and Catherine Lacken.
The meeting was chaired by IFLA and was hosted by UNESCO at its Paris headquarters. The CCAAA is the successor of the former Round Table of Audiovisual Records and serves as a platform for the most important international audiovisual archive associations to voice collective opinions and exercise influence at international and government level when decisions concerning the audiovisual cultural heritage are being taken.
Two associations were represented for the first time at this year's meeting. SEAPAVAA was accepted as a member last year and was represented by its president Ray Edmondson. The first item of business at this year's meeting was the acceptance of AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) as a member. AMIA was represented by its president Sam Kula. Although largely based in North America, AMIA has members in 23 countries and has been active in promoting archival issues since the late 1960s.
This brings the number of CCAAA member organizations to seven: IASA, ICA, IFLA, FIAF, FIAT, AMIA and SEAPAVAA. UNESCO has observer status at CCAAA meetings. Since last year the CCAAA has a convenor (Kurt Deggeller) and rapporteur (Catherine Lacken) both elected for a three-year period and both IASA members. Their appointment was designed to give continuity to the organization whose presiding members change every time a member association elects a new president or general secretary. There was some discussion about the optimal size of the CCAAA and the Convenor agreed to draw up and circulate a list of potential applicants that can be reviewed against the current rules for admission of new members.
Topics discussed at this year's meeting included members' participation in important UNESCO projects, such as the Information for All Programme and Memory of the World, and training. CCAAA members are committed to co-operation in the training of audiovisual archivists at both advanced and basic levels. A series of AV archiving manuals for non-specialists, with input from each member's area of expertise, is currently being planned. Co-operation on organizing training seminars in developing countries is seen as another way of furthering this aim. There are plans to follow up last November's very successful Mexico seminar, which was jointly hosted by FIAT, IASA and FIAF, with regional training seminars in other areas.
IASA's proposal that other CCAAA members co-operate on a re-survey of endangered carriers to update the 1995 survey undertaken by IASA with support from UNESCO was well received and ICA asked to have some other institutions added to the list of those surveyed. The executive boards of individual associations are to be consulted on sharing the costs of this enterprise. The need to apply pressure on manufacturers of audio and video equipment and carriers has been recognised and this is an area where the CCAAA intends to play an active part.
AMIA offered to take on the task of organising a Joint Technical Symposium. This will probably be held in Montreal during the first half of 2003. AMIA will prepare a written proposal outlining the level of commitment necessary to finance this venture and once support has been secured the technical committees of the various organizations involved will work together on planning the input of this symposium.
Joie Springer said that the Information for All Programme meeting, which was due to take place at UNESCO from 15th-17th April, would be a good opportunity to speak for the AV interest and to profile the CCAAA. It seemed clear enough that none of the CCAAA members who were likely to attend this meeting, apart from Kurt Deggeller, would be likely to mention CCAAA rather than their own organisations, so the question arose whether IASA should be there, and if so, whether it should speak for IASA or CCAAA.
A third area of UNESCO activity has emerged alongside the safeguarding and preservation of the built heritage and written and recorded heritage. This is the so-called "intangible heritage". This overlaps with what we regard as the AV heritage (oral traditions, folk music and dance, etc.) but is outside the scope of the Information For All Programme with which CCAAA is currently operating.
Other business was presented by Ray Edmondson, who is asking for volunteers to form an advisory committee to prepare the revised edition of A philosophy of audiovisual archiving, for which he apparently has funding from UNESCO, at least in the form of an agreement to publish it. He also spoke for the Memory of the World project, asking those present to do all they could to encourage more audiovisual nominations (there have been very few so far). Crispin Jewitt said he needed to understand better the actual benefits to nominees before selling the idea to IASA members effectively.
Since the formation of the CCAAA, the members' attitude has been very business-like, supportive and co-operative, and the harmonious atmosphere of the recent meeting gave evidence that everyone has understood the various challenges of the future and that only by combined effort will the archival community achieve wider recognition and political awareness. Each of the last three meetings has dealt with more substantial business than the previous one. It probably does not need any new members for the time being, and it needs to be very clear about why it aspires to recognition by UNESCO alongside IFLA, ICA and ICOM. But it is doing some useful work. An extra meeting has been scheduled for this year on 12th and 13th September, again at UNESCO in Paris.
A CCAAA website will be launched and UNESCO has offered to host this.
If you have served on the IASA Executive Board in the past or on any of the committees, sections or task forces, you will certainly have produced or received papers that may be of interest to the history of IASA. Ulf Scharlau is the appointed archivist for IASA. At present the collection consists of Ulf's personal collection of papers since he started to become active in IASA in 1977. This collection has been augmented by Dietrich Lotichius, Rolf Schuursma and Claes Cnattingius and now covers the period ca. 1968-1992 reasonably well.
Ulf adds: "Contributions of all members - not only of those who once served on the Board - are welcome. Most important would be the minutes of all internal Board meetings (winter meetings and those held during the conferences) since the Ottawa conference in 1990 when I left the Board."
So you are urged to look back through any official files, in hard copy or electronic format and to forward them to Prof. Dr. Ulf Scharlau at:
Südwestrundfunk, Dokumentation und Archive, D - 70150 Stuttgart, Germany
Tel.: +49 711 929 3270; Fax: +49 711 929 4049; e-mail: Ulf.Scharlau@swr.de [374]
From Theresa Hackett, Director EBLIDA to the ECUP list: "With the adoption of the EU copyright Directive in June 2001, EU member states signed up to the WIPO copyright treaty. Gabon's accession on 6 December 2001 meant that WIPO had the required 30 signatories for it to come into force on 6 March 2002.
On 20 February 2002, Honduras became the 30th country to join the sister treaty, the WIPO Phonograms and Performances Treaty (WPPT) which will come into force on 20 May 2002.
Both treaties represent important developments in the history of international copyright law, updating it for the digital age. They require countries to provide a basic framework of rights for creators, performers, etc. and/or to be compensated for the different ways in which their work is used.
But in order to achieve a balance of interests, the treaties also make clear that countries have flexibility in establishing exceptions and limitations to rights in the digital environment, and may either extend existing exceptions to the digital environment or adopt new ones.
The treaties also stipulate that rightowners can use technology to protect their rights and to license their works online. In this context, the European Commission has initiated discussions on the use of digital rights management systems. EBLIDA is involved in these discussions."
For more information, go to: http://www.wipo.int/treaties/ip/index.html [375]
Trond Valberg writes:
The Internet portal called the Jazz Base http://www.jazzbasen.no/ [376] was launched last October. For the first time, users in and outside Norway can access information about a century of Norwegian jazz. The Jazz Base is first of all a comprehensive discography about Norwegian musicians from 1905 up to today. You can search the discography in many ways, and in some cases even listen to sound clips. In addition you will find biographies, historical overviews, photographs and a set of links.
The starting point in 1999 was the book by Johs Bergh: Norwegian Jazz Discography 1905-1998. The portal has been developed in co-operation with the Norwegian Jazz Archives. It is the first time that we have used the Australian database Mavis to make a web catalogue. The National Library of Norway developed the web interface (in Norwegian and English versions) and recently the database was updated with the latest jazz releases.
Jazz is performed on an international scene, so a narrow national definition might seem misleading. International musicians meet at jazz festivals and other events, and they create music without national borders. The influence of American traditions is strong, related to jazz in Norway as well as in most countries. The first foreign jazz orchestra came to Norway in January 1921 and very soon the domestic bands picked up this new musical trend. Some of the early recordings have a link to Norwegian traditions, e g the Kristian Hauger sound clip from 1929 (Norsk jazz fantasi) that is based on a well-known traditional children's song. Although there was no jazz played in Norway back in 1905, we have included some of the pre-jazz ragtime music that also took place in Norway.
Something is going on today in Europe. "New European Jazz" is a term relating to a trend of developing new formulas as alternatives to the established, and in some sense conservative American tradition. Last summer the English music journalist Stuart Nicholson wrote an article, which was prominently featured in the New York Times. Nicholson writes about Norwegian pioneers in the New European Jazz like Bugge Wesseltoft, Eivind Aarset and Nils Petter Molvaer. It is possible to trace elements from Swedish folk-influenced jazz in the 50s and "The Nordic Sound" of the record label ECM in the late 60s and early 70s. The definition of this new musical hybrid as jazz is probably a philosophical matter. Today's most famous Norwegian jazz player, Jan Garbarek, says that he doesn't play jazz any more...
Check out the play list (click on "sound clips") and you can listen to full-length versions of recorded sound tracks listed chronologically. Thanks to the record companies, and an agreement with Norway's Performing Rights Society, we are able to publish the sound on the web free of charge to everyone. For those of you not too familiar with Norwegian jazz, I recommend you checking out performers like Karin Krog, Radka Toneff, Masqualero, Laila Dalseth and of course the already mentioned Jan Garbarek - just to list a few examples. Personally, I love to listen to the talented singer Radka Toneff, who unfortunately died at the age of 30. No discography is correct or complete. You are welcome to send any comments.
Trond.Valberg@nb.no [377], National Library of Norway
We are already very close to the call for abstracts deadline (April 30, 2002) but members may wish to make a note of this all-embracing symposium devoted to preservation in the digital domain.
This symposium, Preservation of Electronic Records: New Knowledge and Decision-making will be hosted by the Canadian Conservation Institute, the National Archives of Canada, and the National Library of Canada in Ottawa, September 15-18, 2003. Quoting from their promotional material, which recently appeared in D-Lib (February 2002) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february02/02clips.html#CCI [378]:
"During the last quarter of the 20th century, heritage collections have included increasing amounts of information stored on magnetic and optical media (videotapes, audiotapes, computer tapes and disks, CDs, and DVDs). Although archives and libraries have the largest amounts of this material, much is also found in museums and even galleries (e.g. oral histories, documentation of relevant recent events or performances, and contemporary artworks).
Leading archives and libraries are increasingly aware of the challenges of preserving these materials and the information stored on them. The purpose of the symposium is to expand this awareness by bringing expert and leading edge opinions to a larger audience including small and medium-sized archives, libraries, and museums. The focus will be on making decisions and finding practical solutions that can be implemented immediately, especially for the materials that are at risk of being lost within the next 10 to 20 years. Participation is encouraged from experts in larger archives who are knowledgeable of the preservation of such collections, as well as collection managers and conservators who have the responsibility for this sort of material but may not be as well informed about the issues and approaches.
Contact: Symposium 2003 Program Co-ordinator, Canadian Conservation Institute
1030 Innes Road, Ottawa ON K1A 0M5, Canada
e-mail: cci-icc_publications@pch.gc.ca [379]
British Library publications, including those by the National Sound Archive, can now be ordered online through the British Library bookshop at http://www.bl.uk/services/publications/onlineshop.html [380]
The most recent items from the Sound Archive include Richard Fairman's very popular compilation The Royal Story on CD. This was published to mark this year's Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It tells the story of the House of Windsor in words and music (forty tracks) with a narration by Dame Judi Dench.
Also available is Aural History: Essays on Recorded Sound, edited by Andy Linehan. This was given free to delegates at ARSC-IASA 2002 and has recently picked up an ARSC award. Aural History is available from The British Library Bookshop, price £40.00. Postage is free in the UK, but will be charged at cost for overseas orders. The British Library Bookshop accepts telephone orders with payment by Access, Visa and American Express. The telephone number for orders is: +44 (0)20 7412 7735.
A Glossary of Technical Terms relating to audiovisual archiving was recently posted by Screensound Australia on its website. The online glossary covers more than 640 entries.
According to David Boden, acting deputy director, Collections Group, Screensound Australia, the web-based glossary is complemented by an online helpdesk where visitors can ask questions which will be answered by technical experts. Consult the online glossary at http://screensound.gov.au/glossary.nsf/Main/Glossary+Index?OpenDocument [381].
Celebrations are planned for this summer by the Birthplace Of Country Music Alliance (BCMA) to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Ralph Peer's 1927 Bristol (Tennessee) recording sessions for the Victor Talking Machine Company.
Here is an excerpt from an article by John Maeder re-produced here with permission.
"This summer, country music will achieve a major milestone. July 25th through August 3rd 2002 will mark the 75th anniversary of the historic 1927 'Bristol Sessions': literally, the "big bang" of country music. Over that twelve-day period, the three most important acts in early country music - the Stonemans, Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family - were discovered and recorded, and the country music industry was born. According to Johnny Cash: "These recordings in Bristol in 1927 are the single most important event in the history of country music". The 75th anniversary will be celebrated this summer with a series of appropriate regional musical events and the organizers hope that you can join them in the beautiful mountains of Appalachia at the friendly town of Bristol, which straddles the Tennessee-Virginia state line.
In early 1927, thirty-five year old record producer Ralph Peer was contracted by the Victor Talking Machine Co. of Camden, New Jersey to travel throughout the south to scout and record local musical talent for possible commercial release. Peer, the president of Okeh records, had previous experience producing the earliest recording by Fiddlin' John Carson in Atlanta in the spring of 1924. Peer had made the recordings as part of a test of Okeh's newly developed portable acoustic recording equipment at the behest of the phonograph and record department manager of an Atlanta furniture store, Polk Brockman. Peer had pronounced the recordings "… awful", but consented to press five-hundred white label sample copies for Brockman, a small-time music promoter and publisher who was also Carson's manager. Carson pushed the records at his live performances, and when they sold out within a matter of weeks, a surprised Peer quickly brought Carson to New York to wax twelve additional sides in the controlled environment of the Okeh studio. While Brockman was one of the first to put together a music promotion system of recording, radio, touring, song publishing and songwriting, he failed to integrate the individual aspects of the business, and his enterprise did not prosper. The Atlanta experience sparked a life-long fascination with rural music in Peer.
The Columbia Phonograph Co. had recorded folk musicians as early as 1923 in Louisiana, Texas and Georgia, but these -- as well as Peer's Okeh recordings of Carson were only distributed regionally and achieved no national market penetration. The phonograph division of Thomas Edison's laboratories had also recorded and released 4-minute Blue Amberol cylinders and one-quarter inch thick Diamond Discs of rural artists such as Ernest Stoneman and the Fiddlin' Powers Family in 1924. Although Edison maintained a strong sales presence in the rural market, these records also had little national impact, since Edison's vertical groove recording technologies were largely obsolete as early as World War I. To further marginalise rural white musicians - and black musicians both in the city and country - a membership ban on rural, blues, jazz and other 'semi-professional' musicians by ASCAP and the American Federation of Musicians prevented them from performing or publishing their works professionally. Most rural performers were unable to make a living strictly playing music, and performed when they could at barn dances, medicine shows, fairs, contests, political rallies, etc. The market for rural music remained limited to itself, and was forced to remain localised.
In 1924, an operatically-trained singer of popular vocals who recorded under the pseudonym of Vernon Dalhart, sang a version of The Wreck Of The Old 97, backed with The Prisoner's Song on the flip side, which went on to sell over one million copies on the Victor company's label the first 'country' record to do so (although Dalhart was not actually a 'country' singer). Victor had long positioned itself as the phonograph of choice for the wealthy and cultured -- primarily in urban areas, and had cultivated that image by heavily promoting its 'Red Seal' catalog of classical and operatic recordings and signing the stars of the Metropolitan, London and Milan opera companies to exclusive contracts. Victor's popular music catalog displayed similarly conservative musical tastes. The unexpected success of Dalhart's proto-country train wreck ballad certainly got their attention. Having no comparable material in the Victor catalog, they contacted Ralph Peer, who had the rural recording experience and contacts that the haughty Victor Co. lacked, and asked him to bring them more.
Fortunately, this coincided with the introduction of electrical recording processes. Through the use of microphones, the voice or instrument of the artist no longer had to be particularly suited to overcome the technical limitations of the acoustical recording process. By simply adjusting the gain of the microphone and output level of the pre-amplifier, consistent and predictable recordings could be easily produced without all the complications of the older process. The resulting records played on the new Victor Orthophonic Victrolas were astoundingly life-like and spurred Victor's sales to the second highest single-year sales level in the company's history in 1927 alone, over one-million Orthophonic Victrolas were sold. Both popular and classical music catalogs swelled with the new electrical recordings.
An added bonus was that the new recording equipment could be transported, set-up and operated in the field with comparative ease, eliminating the need for impoverished musicians to travel at great personal expense, to large cities from remote areas to record.
It was electrical recording equipment that Ralph Peer brought with him to Bristol, Tennessee in July of 1927. Accompanying him were his wife, Anita, and two assistants, Messrs. Eckhart and Lynch. Peer had already been in touch with Ernest Stoneman, the carpenter/musician from nearby Galax, Virginia and Cecil McLister of the Clark-Jones-Sheeley music store -- the Bristol Victor dealer, and these men had been spreading the word about Peer's sessions and helping to arrange talent. It was Stoneman, who had previously recorded for Peer for Okeh in 1924, who suggested using Bristol as a recording location because of its accessibility (being on a major railroad line) and its central location to what Stoneman knew was a wealth of untapped talent. Peer rented the top two floors over the Taylor-Christian hat factory at 410 State Street on the Tennessee side of town, and set up a makeshift studio. He spent most of the first week recording acts that were already booked for him by Stoneman and McLister. The second week schedule was largely open, and an ad placed in the Sunday paper asking for talent had generated little response.
On the session's third day, Peer arranged for a reporter from the Bristol newspaper to witness the Stonemans and fiddler 'Uncle' Eck Dunford record 'Skip To My Lou'. In the article appearing in the next day's paper, the reporter quoted Stoneman (who had already recorded over 100 sides for other labels) as saying he was being paid $100 per day and that his accompanists each received $25 per day, and that he had received a total of $3600 in recording royalties in 1926. That was all it took. Bristol was flooded with aspiring musicians arriving by car, truck, train, buggy, horseback and on foot. Peer found it necessary to add evening hours to audition all who came. Over the twelve days of the sessions, Peer recorded a veritable cross-section of rural American mountain music, both popular and sacred 76 recordings by 19 different artists.
Records made at the sessions were on sale at record shops all across America less than a month after they were recorded. Musicians who had never left the counties of their birth were being heard in living rooms on the other side of the continent. Songs from the deepest hollows of southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee were being snapped up and sung in New York City. A shrewd businessman, Peer reasoned that the money lay in owning the publishing rights to the songs he was recording. His contract with Victor paid him only one dollar a year, but he was allowed to retain the publishing rights to all songs he recorded. Determined to improve on Polk Brockman's flawed and fragile system of music production and promotion he had observed in Atlanta three years earlier, Peer's genius lay in structuring his publishing company based on royalties, making copyrights profitable for the artist as well as himself the financial model of the modern music industry. In a three month span a year after the recordings from the Bristol sessions first went on sale, Peer's Southern Music publishing company earned a quarter-of-a-million dollars in royalties. As a result of the recordings made in Bristol, the cross-pollination of American culture with rural music began, and the country music industry was born. Seventy-five years later, the influence of the Bristol Sessions is global."
Bluegrass and mountain music is still vibrant in Bristol. In 1994, the Birthplace Of Country Music Alliance (BCMA) was formed. The BCMA is a non-profit organization dedicated to the commemoration of these sessions and promotion of the region's unique musical heritage. The BCMA is a Smithsonian Affiliate and you can find out more about it at http://www.birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/ [382].
The long-awaited new IASA website is expected to be launched during May. An announcement will be made initially by e-mail.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2002 | ||
| May 8 - 11 | 36th Annual ARSC Conference | Santa Barbara, U.S. |
| May 11 - 12 | 112th AES Convention | Munich |
| May 13 - 18 | SEAPAVAA Annual Conference | Vientiane, Laos |
| May 22 - 24 | Multimedia Archive Preservation a practical workshop organised by IASA, FIAT, PRESTO, ECPA |
London |
| June 15 - 17 | 22nd AES International Conference Virtual, synthetic and entertainment media |
Espoo, Finland |
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| August 18 - 24 | 68th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries for life |
Glasgow, U.K. |
| September 12 - 13 | CCAAA meeting | Paris |
| September 15 - 19 | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
| September 25 - 27 | ASRA annual conference | Canberra, Australia |
| October 5 - 8 | 113th AES Convention | Los Angeles, U.S. |
| October 12 - 16 | FIAT-IFTA Annual Conference | Antalya, Turkey |
| October 25 - 28 | Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting | Detroit, U.S. |
| November 19 - 23 | AMIA Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| 2003 | ||
| January - June ? | Joint Technical Symposium | Montreal, Canada |
| July 6 - 11 | IAML Conference | Tallinn, Estonia |
| August 1 - 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| September 23 - 26[to be confirmed] | IASA annual conference | Pretoria, South Africa |
| November 18 - 22 | AMIA Conference | Vancouver, Canada |
| 2004 | ||
| August 8 - 13 | IAML-IASA joint Annual Conference | Oslo, Norway |
| November 9 - 13 | AMIA Conference | Minneapolis, U.S. |
| 2005 | ||
| September (2nd half) | IASA Annual Conference | Barcelona, Spain |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
© International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA)
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 42 BY 15 JUNE 2002
The printed invitation to attend the 2002 IASA Conference in Aarhus (September 16th 19th) has now been sent to all members. The invitation also includes the preliminary programme and registration form.
Please note that the deadline for registration is 1st September. You can mail or fax your registration. It is also possible to register via the conference website on http://www.statsbiblioteket.dk/iasa/iasa2002.html [370]
An important announcement about payment: many members have asked about the possibility of paying by credit card. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide this service, so please use bank transfer as specified in the invitation and on the website.
The preliminary programme presented in the invitation is now being elaborated. We will adapt the programme gradually on the website, so keep an eye on that.
We are looking forward so much to welcoming all of you!
Eva Fønss-Jørgensen, State and University Library, Aarhus, Denmark
http://www.iasa-web.org/ [121] was launched early in June. There are a few refinements to be made but the structure and content are already well-settled and, as you can see from the number of new members below, helping the process of recruitment to our association.
If you spot any errors or wish to make an addition, please contact the IASA Editor.
Please note that the dates of the IASA Conference in Aarhus are as stated above, September 16th 19th. My apologies, especially to the organisers, for confusing everyone last April by printing incorrect dates in the Information Bulletin.
IASA Directory 2002. Please not that the email address for IASA member Grace Koch is grace.koch@aiatsis.gov.au [383]
Tom A Adami, UN - ICTR, AICC Bldg, PO Box 6016, Arusha Tanzania
Tom Adami is Chief Archivist at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda which has a large audio-visual collection.
Maxwell Agyei Addo, International Centre for African Music & Dance, School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, PO Box LG 19, Legon, Ghana
Maxwell Addo is an audiovisual archivist and is eager to get involved in IASA's emerging African branch.
Jill Cassidy, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Wellington Street, Launceston, Tasmania TAS 7250
Jill (Jill.Cassidy@qvmag.tas.gov.au [384]) runs an oral history archive in the Tasmanian state capital.
Shubha Chaudhuri, Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology, New Delhi, India
Shubha Chaudhuri is the Director of the ARCE, which has developed since 1982 into a professional archive to support training and ethnomusicological research.
Département de l'Audiovisuel, Bibliothèque nationale de France, T3 N3 Quai François Mauriac
F-75706 Paris cedex 13
A long-time IASA Journal subscriber becomes a full institutional member. The Director is Isabelle Giannattasio, and you can find out about this major international collection at http://www.bnf.fr/pages/zNavigat/frame/collections.htm [385]
Eva Fønss-Jørgensen. Aarhus, Denmark
As Director of the audiovisual archives at the Statsbiblioteket in Aarhus, a long-time IASA Institutional member, Eva Fønss-Jørgensen, soon to take over as IASA Secretary General, is now active also as an individual member.
Gramophone Records Museum And Research Centre Of Ghana, P.O. Box UC 35
University of Cape Coast Post Office, Cape Coast, Ghana
Our contact is Kwame Sarpong (sarpongkwame@yahoo.com [386]) who describes his organisation as follows: "The Gramophone Records Museum and Research Centre of Ghana was established in 1994 as a non-profit organization. It has in its collection to date 18,000 Ghanaian Highlife Music Recordings from the beginning of the last century to the mid-1960s . These recordings are on 78-rpm shellac discs and represent the works of over 700 Ghanaian vintage recording artists. There are also 2,500 recordings on vinyl."
Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research, c/o Fonogramenheten
Box 135, SE-751 04 UPPSALA, Sweden
Our contact at the Institute, Lars Bleckert: "the Institute is the central Swedish governmental organisation within the field of spoken dialects and onomastics. The institute has archives/working groups in four different places in Sweden. Since 1936, the Institute has made some 15,000 hours of dialect recordings on various media."
Museum and Archive Project, The Government Public Relations Dept., 9 Soi Areesamphan, Rama VI, Phayathai, Bangkok 10400, Thailand.
Kannika Chivapakdee is establishing an AV archive at the Government Public Relations Department (PRD) which operates Radio Thailand and Channel 11 of Thailand Television under the name National Broadcasting Services of Thailand.Its museum and archive will serve as a local centre for knowledge about the history of early Thai broadcasting, audiovisual recordings and broadcasting technology.
Pakistan Television Corporation Ltd, Constitution Avenue, Post Box No. 1221 F-5/1, Agha Khan
Road, Islamabad, Pakistan
PTV operates 3 channels with a staff of around 5000 professional and non-professional staff. It transmits 115 hours daily and production time amounts to 23 hours daily.
Members of the IASA Technical Committee will want to join the Editor in wishing Peter Copeland, Conservation Manager at the British Library National Sound Archive (BLNSA) and regular contributor to IASA's technical debates, a happy retirement. Peter is expected to be available to BLNSA on a consultancy basis for some time yet so it's au revoir rather than farewell. Nevertheless his extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the history of sound recording and the technical specifications of all known audiovisual formats will be difficult to match. His successor in the post is Nigel Bewley.
George Boston reports:
A Consultation between Manufacturers and Archivists on the Long Term Preservation of Audiovisual Recordings was held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on June 14th. The meeting discussed ways of improving co-operation between archivists and the makers of the current main carriers for audiovisual recordings - magnetic tape and recordable optical discs. This was the second Consultation that the IASA Technical Committee (IASA TC) has organised in c
o-operation with UNESCO. The Sub-Committee on Technology for the Memory of the World Programme (SCoT) also assisted with the arrangements.
IASA members present included Lars Gaustad (Chair of the IASA TC), Dietrich Schüller (former Chair of the IASA TC and Chair of SCoT), George Boston (IASA TC Secretary and SCoT Rapporteur), Jean-Marc Fontaine, Ian Gilmour and Albrecht Haefner.
Also present from archives were Denis Frambourt, representing FIAT/IFTA, and the members of SCoT - Lourdes Feria from Colima University, Mexico, Julian Bescos from Informática El Corte Ingles, Spain, Adolf Knoll of the Czech National Library and Jonas Palm from the Danish Royal Library.
The manufacturing companies represented included Verbatim, Quantegy, EMTEC, Fuji Magnetics, Waitec and Lyrec.
It was agreed that detailed talks should be held to arrange a system of early warning of defects in tapes. There was some nervousness about disclosing such information as it could affect the reputation of companies. These fears were eased when Joie Springer suggested that UNESCO could act as a clearing-house for the information.
The provision of an archival standard recordable CD was agreed to be necessary. The race for faster speed discs and the commercial pressure to reduce costs and, therefore, the price in the market place has led to problems with reliability of blank discs. It was said that a higher reliability disc can be supplied for about 25% extra cost. It would be slower than the 50X discs that are currently favoured and may require the co-operation of a drive manufacturer to produce burners able to run at slower speeds. These would not be new designs or specifications but resurrectiona of older standards that would be more reliable.
Verbatim are already marketing such a disc under the name Ultra Life Plus. It is possible that Mitsui are also marketing a CD blank of a higher reliability than normal but this was not confirmed at the meeting. The representative from Waitec said that, subject to demand, slower burners would not be a problem.
The Oman Centre for Traditional Music, an IASA institutional member (and host to IASA's first Middle-East conference in 1997) has been awarded the coveted International Music Music Council / UNESCO music prize for 2002. The Centre was a co-winner with acclaimed Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. Instigated by the International Music Council in 1975, the Prize rewards musicians and musical institutions whose work or activities have contributed to the enrichment and development of music and have served peace, understanding between people, international co-operation and other purposes proclaimed by the United Nations Charter and the UNESCO Act.
http://www.unesco.org/imc/projframe.html [387]
IASA President, Crispin Jewitt, reports:
This was SEAPAVAA's 7th annual Conference and General Assembly, and I attended as IASA President for the 3rd consecutive year following the two associations' joint conference in Singapore in 2000. The conference theme was Mapping tomorrow: a reality check for archives and the venue was the Lane Xang Hotel, in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos.
Travelling from Bangkok via the provincial Thai towns of Udon Thani and Nong Khai, one was struck by the relatively quiet, and the relaxed pace of life in Vientiane. Although the regular, nightly torrential downpour, accompanied by thunder and lightning, posed the occasional problem in moving about, during the day the sun shone and the city was a pleasant place to walk. This is the capital of a poor and underdeveloped country, and although it seemed a pleasant environment by comparison with Bangkok, I have no doubt that the Laotians wouldn't mind a bit more noise and traffic as the consequence of some sustained economic development. The surprising number of European faces (and eating and drinking places catering for their preferences) indicated the significant presence of United Nations and other international aid agencies, and of course this part of the world is very much on the back-packers' itinerary. The Lao People's Democratic Republic combines a Leninist system of government with Buddhist religious observance and small-scale private enterprise. Our accommodation in the conference hotel was interesting. Physically, it reminded me of a large hotel I stayed in during a short trip to Leningrad in the 1970s, but the climate outside was warmer, and the people running the hotel were pleasant and friendly.
The conference followed the established pattern. Monday and Tuesday was for papers and presentations, Thursday and Friday for the General Assembly, with the week punctuated by an excursion on Wednesday. The conference theme was explored by a comprehensive set of presentations by speakers from archives from the various countries in the region expressing their visions and hopes for the future. There were some familiar aspirations regarding training for specialist professionals and modernised services, and also some timely reminders of the realities of building and maintaining audiovisual archives in a hostile natural environment, and in some cases an unsympathetic political environment, in others a recent experience of social conflict. I chaired a session looking at some current issues from the perspective of national AV archives, broadcasting archives, and specialist research archives, and had the opportunity in a later session to present IASA's policies on copyright and legal deposit. During the General Assembly I bade farewell to SEAPAVAA as IASA President, but said that that the imminent change of President should not alter the continuing supportive relationship between the two associations. Next year SEAPAVAA plan to meet in Brunei, and in 2004 in Hanoi, jointly with FIAF.
The excursion to the Nam Ngum dam and reservoir was notable for the cramped conditions inside the minibuses. The visitors from outside the region tended to be disadvantaged in this respect, but I found some compensation in the regular sight of small family groups of the most charming small brown cattle, often wandering freely across the road. Without exception they looked in perfect condition, which I attributed to living out of doors and enjoying a daily shower. My wife Mary, had meanwhile quite independently arranged for herself a day with the National Library's mobile van. This included a trip to a village to exchange storybooks for the children. The librarian read them stories and a picnic lunch was provided. Some people have all the luck!
Overall I found it a rewarding week with a nice group of people who I am honoured to regard as professional colleagues. I am now saving my pennies for Brunei.
Kurt Deggeller reports:
"The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is organised by the United Nations and aims to establish a common vision of the information society. The first meetings of the WSIS will take place in December 2003 in Geneva and in 2005 in Tunis.
UNESCO, with its mandate to promote the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, has a key role in the preparation of WSIS. Stakeholder NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations), among them IASA, have been invited to contribute and formulate proposals on what, in their opinion, should appear in the Declaration of Principles and in the Plan of Action of WSIS. This year IASA participated at preparatory meetings in Paris and Geneva.
The participants of WSIS can be divided into three different groups: governments, NGOs and other representatives of the civil society and the private sector. During the preparatory meetings it became obvious that NGOs are not the most powerful group in that process and that within the NGO group the interests of IASA are again a very small minority. Hence we have not yet found the right channel to obtain a hearing.
What are the proposals we should bring to the WSIS? At present the discussions are dominated by access and digital technology. Preservation has, as far as I know, never been seriously mentioned and information in non-digital form seems to be treated as if it does not exist. Herein lie our main concerns. We should therefore try to raise the awareness of the three groups mentioned above about the following issues:
governments must bear the responsibility for creating and maintaining robust and independent information repositories;
NGOs working in the field of archives, libraries and museums must improve their knowledge of preservation issues relating to all kinds of materials and must bring obsolescence problems under control through sustained contact with manufacturers;
the private sector, namely the manufacturers of information systems, should be made aware of the preservation problem and participate actively in providing solutions for long-time storage at a reasonable price.
More information about WSIS can be found at http://www.itu.int/wsis/ [388]
IASA President, Crispin Jewitt, reports on his travels last October:
Last October I was fortunate in having the opportunity to travel to Australia to visit national cultural organisations in Canberra. I broke my journey with stopovers in Hong Kong and Singapore where I also visited archive institutions. This was very much a journey with a professional focus, so I thought I would share my experience with the readers of the Information Bulletin.
At the Hong Kong Film Archive, I was welcomed by Angela Tong, Acting Head of the Archive, and we were later joined by Edward Tse, Assistant Curator Conservation, whom I had met at IASA-SEAPAVAA 2000 in Singapore.
The Archive (http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/CulturalService/HKFA/english/eindex.html [389]) moved to purpose-built premises in Sai Wan Ho on Hong Kong Island in January 2001, having previously occupied inadequate split accommodation in Mongkok, in Kowloon. The multi-storey building includes a 150-seat screening theatre, collections storage areas with a variety of appropriate environmental conditions, conservation laboratory and office space, a research centre comprising a library and viewing booths, and public exhibition area.
Collecting policy reflects the basic aspiration to function as the legal deposit repository for the rich heritage of Hong Kong film production. As in the UK, the existing legal deposit arrangements do not cover film or recorded media so material is acquired by voluntary deposit, purchase, and (in the case of film originals) patient negotiation. Holdings include film, video, posters and stills, sound recordings, and books and periodicals for the Research Centre. The majority of original film holdings are positive prints, some negative originals are held but the Archive's experience is that producers are reluctant to part with these until they have become degraded through over-use or poor storage conditions. Local published production on VHS, Laser Disc, and currently VCD and DVD is acquired comprehensively. Film-related published phonograms are acquired: these holding include some 3,000 LPs. Relevant broadcast material is dubbed by RTHK on to audio cassette for the Archive. Material comes into the archive faster than current rates of processing permit, so although holdings are listed in the catalogue, film originals awaiting preservation treatment are not routinely available for viewing. I was asked for advice on preservation of their sound recordings, particularly the LPs and coarse-groove discs. We discussed strategies appropriate to these specific carriers and I agreed to follow up with more specific advice, in particular with information on transcription turntables, styli and pick-up arms, and on staff training in the area of transfer digitisation of these carriers.
The Research Centre provides public access to written sources of reference supporting the study of film and includes access to the Archive's on-line catalogue. As well as the normal resource discovery functions this also includes about 100 film clips and numerous still images, all accessible through the online catalogue interface. This facility includes seven viewing booths for personal study and a small group viewing space. The viewing theatre is extensively used by school parties and runs a programme of showings for community groups. At the time of my visit the public exhibition space had a multi-screen installation featuring experimental film work by local independent producers.
From Hong Kong I flew to Canberra, where my principal objective was to visit Ron Brent and colleagues at ScreenSound Australia, the National Screen and Sound Archive (http://www.screensound.gov.au/index.html [390]). ScreenSound is a substantial organisation with a collecting remit covering film, video, and sound, and a full range of archival and service activities supported by some 200 staff. Established as a separate institution in 1984, it has recently completed a major building extension on two floors, which includes new studio facilities for audio work, a conference room and much needed office space. I spent an enjoyable three days learning about all aspects of ScreenSound audio operations, and had the honour of launching their lunchtime lecture series with a talk "Sound & audiovisual archives, the world-wide scene: yesterday, today, and tomorrow".
At the National Library of Australia I was met by Kevin Bradley, Head of Digital Preservation, who had been in London for the IASA conference a couple of weeks previously. The Library (http://www.nla.gov.au/ [391]) has active oral history and live music recording programmes, and is at an advanced stage of implementing digital collection management systems to support these collections, with metadata being automatically extracted from an Access database as CD-Rs are ingested into a server from a multi-disc magazine. The requirements are on a relatively small scale, but the technical solution seems elegant and well thought out. Other digitisation programmes looked at included maps, and a recently approved project to digitise holdings of out-of-copyright sheet music on the basis of local Australian interest (The Woy Woy Waltz, 1912, etc.). I also met David Toll, Acting Director General, and had coffee with Pamela Gatenby, Assistant Director General for Collections Management.
The Australian War Memorial (http://www.nma.gov.au/ [392]) is comparable with the UK's Imperial War Museum, including in its holdings rich collections of oral history and archival film material. It has a strong national role as the custodian and focus of the national memory of the historical events that established a strong sense of Australian nationhood, particularly the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli in 1915. I met Bill Fogerty, Head of Preservation, and George Imashev, Curator of Film and Sound, over lunch, after visiting the extensive galleries.
My visit to the National Museum of Australia was squeezed into the beginning of the day I had reserved for rest & recreation (which was to include a most enjoyable visit to the National Botanic Gardens). The National Museum (http://www.nma.gov.au/ [392]) opened to the public in its new building on ANZAC day, February 2001. A startling architectural design, with red and black the prominent colours, it is set on a peninsula next to the lake around which Canberra has been built. My guide was Darren Peacock, Manager of Technology Integration & Delivery. The content of the museum reflected a mixture of traditional static interpretative presentation with a variety of interactive and audiovisual experiences. The static displays in the First Australians gallery were excellent. There is also an extensive area for children (heavily interactive), and a limited access gallery/store where the rich holdings of aboriginal artefacts not currently selected for display can be seen, impressively housed, but with minimal labelling. The National Museum shares both a site and an architectural style with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/ [393]), whose AV curator is IASA member Grace Koch.
With only five full days in Australia, my return journey began all too quickly. However, on my way home to England I made a stopover in Singapore which provided a welcome opportunity for a return visit to the National Archives, our conference host in 2000. I met with Mr Pitt Kuan-wah, Director, Irene Lim, Senior Assistant Director responsible for AV holdings and exhibitions, and Mrs Kwek-Chew Kim-gek, to catch up with news and professional developments.
Manuel d'analyse documentaire des documents sonores inédits pour la mise en place de banques de données (A guidebook to documentary analysis of unpublished sound recordings for databanks) by Bénédicte Bonnemason, Véronique Ginouvès, Véronique Pérennou. 2nd edition revised, enlarged and updated. Parthenay ; Paris: FAMDT : AFAS, 2001. 186 p.
The Gutenberg Galaxy shouldn't have the last say. Oral expression too is leaving a deep mark on our Western societies. One should be able to retrieve, analyze and compare oral archives with other documents such as pictures and written texts. A tool specially made for analyzing unpublished phonograms was a necessity. Back in 1994, the Fédération des Associations des Musiques et Danses Traditionnelles (FAMDT) had already published a guidebook to set up databanks of unpublished sound recordings. Now this guidebook has been republished with the help of the Association Française des détenteurs d'Archives Sonores et audiovisuelles (AFAS). The experience of sound archives has been taken into account. The purpose of this guidebook is to provide a practical tool, which respects the specificity of the oral source while following the librarians' rules and formats. A large appendix and concrete examples will be of good help in processing unpublished sound archives in documentary databanks, including specific problems linked to folk literature and traditional musics.
For more information contact: Veronique Ginouves ginouves@MMSH.UNIV-AIX.FR [394] http://afas.mmsh.univ-aix.fr/vie_pub.htm [395] or http://www.famdt.com [396]
Rod Hamilton (The British Library National Sound Archive - BLNSA) reports on the conference Visions: Broadcasting archaeologies, histories, impacts, futures which took place in Preston, UK in June.
The conference was concerned almost exclusively with academic studies in radio and television and, apart from Matt Holland from Bournemouth University and John Riley from BUFVC (TRILT) there were no other librarians or archivists in attendance. However, there were some interesting papers on radio. David Hendy from Westminster, is writing a history of BBC Radio 4 and what it can tell us about British society during the 1960s and 1970s (he attempted, wittily, to use Radio 4's coverage of gardening as a metaphor for the station itself which is currently being accused of dumbing down its programme content); Hugh Chignell, from Bournemouth University, talked about their digitisation projects including their work on the BL NSA's Independent Local Radio Programme Sharing Scheme collection; Matt Holland discussed metadata and access to archives and highlighted the Archives Hub http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/index.html [397]; John Riley demonstrated the TRILT database; Prof. Jeffrey Richards from Lancaster talked about Hollywood and American radio 1930-50 and in particular the Lux Radio Theatre, the popularity of particular stars and the films that were recreated for listeners; Philip Rayner from Gloucestershire looked at the BBC Light Programme in the post-war period and notions of radio listening as a secondary activity or 'soundtrack for living'; Deborah Wilson from Lincoln looked at the BBC Overseas Service during World War 2 and the conflict between government and the BBC over presentation of news; Guy Starkey from Sunderland talked about the Israeli pirate radio station the Voice of Peace; and Prof. Andrew Crisell, also from Sunderland, discussed 'Public Broadcasting: past, present and future', looking at the original Reithian vision of 'Something for Everyone' and how this has been affected by different trends through generations.
I had to miss the final presentation, by Prof. Michael Tracey from the University of Colorado, entitled Broadcasting and the future. Fortunately, the organisers are planning to publish the papers.
All in all it was a useful conference to attend and it was generally agreed that radio studies was beginning to flourish and was less in the shadow of television studies.
Emile Berliner and the birth of the recording industry http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/berlhtml/ [398] is a recent addition to the famed American Memory digital library hosted by the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. At first the resource seems limited to just seven items but these are "headline" items each of which provides access to a wealth of related items. For instance, item no.1, cut-away of a Berliner acoustic tile, is linked to dozens of related items including key texts and images connected with acoustical engineering in the United States.
A recent CLIR report Digital video archives: managing through metadata by Howard Wactlar and Michael G Christel (Carnegie Mellon University) http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub106/video.html [399] provides a useful rallying point for those interested in the progress of AV metadata 'standards' such as MPEG 7 and MPEG 21. The authors also describe the Informedia Project that pioneered the use of speech recognition, image processing, and natural language understanding to automatically produce metadata for video libraries and make special mention of the new National Institute of Standards and Technology Text Retrieval Conference (NIST TREC) Video Retrieval Track (http://trec.nist.gov/ [400]), which is investigating content-based retrieval from digital video.
Clifford Lynch, Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (http://www.cni.org/ [401]) recently published an excellent state of the art piece in the Danish review FirstMonday. Digital collections, digital libraries and the digitization of cultural heritage information http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/lynch/index.html [402] is based on his largely extemporized keynote address to the Web-Wise 2002 Conference last April and manages to convey (for this reader anyway, Ed.) a clear-sited view of the field (in particular the crucial difference between a digital "library" and a digital "collection") and provides some stimulating and informed forecasts for our profession.
http://theses.mit.edu/ [402] MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has a well-developed and exemplary digital library including selected masters and doctoral theses. A quick search for "audio" in early July revealed nine theses all of which would repay closer investigation even though the research fields seem at first sight fairly remote from core IASA concerns, e.g. 3D-audio, hiding data in audio files, audio browsing. Also keep an eye on MIT's DSpace http://web.mit.edu/dspace/live/home.html [403] a repository for the intellectual output of MIT.
If your work relates in any way to web delivery or interfacing, a daily dose of Lawrence Lee's vertical portal Tomalak's Realm http://www.tomalak.org/ [404] comes highly recommended. A current favourite site of web usability guru Jakob Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/ [405] - note the similarity of display layouts) Tomalak's Realm has been providing a "daily source of links to strategic Web design stories" since November 1998. Naturally, the entire backlist of daily links is indexed. Regular subjects covered include e-commerce, intellectual property, consumer electronics and technology.
Music to their ears? A flurry of media interest (e.g. UK Guardian http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,751054,00.html [406]) has greeted the announcement that Shazam http://www.shazamentertainment.com/ [407] is poised to launch a new music identification service (they call it "tagging") that may also be a timely boost for the mobile phone industry. For a small fee (GBP 0.50 per transaction), and fifteen seconds exposure to a sound source (music played over a radio, television, in a restaurant, or in your local store) Shazam will identify the music for you from its reference database of more than 1.5 million items and enable you to then purchase the CD or send a 30-second personalised message to a friend's mobile.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2002 | ||
| August 4 - 9 | IAML Annual Conference | Berkeley, U.S. |
| August 18 - 24 | 68th IFLA Council and General Conference Libraries for life |
Glasgow, U.K. |
| September 12 13 | CCAAA meeting | Paris |
| September 15 - 19 | IASA Annual Conference | Aarhus, Denmark |
| September 25 - 27 | ASRA annual conference | Canberra, Australia |
| October 5 8 | 113th AES Convention | Los Angeles, U.S. |
| October 12 - 16 | FIAT-IFTA Annual Conference | Antalya, Turkey |
| October 25 28 | Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting | Detroit, U.S. |
| November 19 23 | AMIA Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| 2003 | ||
| January June? | Joint Technical Symposium | Montreal, Canada |
| March 22 25 | 114th AES Convention | Amsterdam |
| April 4 5 | IASA FIAT meeting on digitisation | Helsinki, Finland (YLE) |
| July 6 - 11 | IAML Conference | Tallinn, Estonia |
| August 1 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| September 23 26 [to be confirmed] | IASA annual conference | Pretoria, South Africa |
| November 18 22 | AMIA Conference | Vancouver, Canada |
| 2004 | ||
| August 8 - 13 | IAML-IASA joint Annual Conference | Oslo, Norway |
| November 9 13 | AMIA Conference | Minneapolis, U.S. |
| 2005 | ||
| September (2nd half) | IASA Annual Conference | Barcelona, Spain |
This Information Bulletin was compiled by:
The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413,e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk [14]
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 43 BY 30 SEPTEMBER 2002
During the recent IASA conference, held in Aarhus, Denmark (September 16th 19th) the new Board was elected and introduced:
|
President: |
Kurt Deggeller, Memoriav, Switzerland |
|
Past President: |
Crispin Jewitt, British Library National Sound Archive, UK |
|
Vice Presidents: |
Magdalena Cséve, Radio Archives, Hungarian Radio, Hungary |
|
Shubha Chaudhuri, Archives & Research Centre for Ethnomusicology, India |
|
|
Richard Green, National Library of Canada, Canada |
|
|
Secretary-General: |
Eva Fønss-Jørgensen, State and University Library, Aarhus, Denmark |
|
Treasurer: |
Anke Leenings, Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, Frankfurt, Germany |
|
Editor: |
Ilse Assmann, SABC Sound Archives, South Africa |
Elections also took place within a number of committees and sections. Herewith an update on all the committees and sections:
|
Chair: |
Olle Johansson, Sweden |
|
Vice Chair: |
Danièle Branger, France |
|
Secretary: |
Elsebeth Kirring, Denmark |
|
Chair: |
Dr. Rainer E. Lotz, Germany |
|
Vice Chair: |
Pio Pellizzari, Switzerland |
|
Secretary: |
Dr. Giorgina Gilardi, Italy |
|
Chair: |
Isabelle Giannattasio, France |
|
Secretary: |
Gila Flam, Israel |
|
Chair: |
Per Holst, Denmark |
|
Vice Chair: |
Ilse Assmann, South Africa |
|
Secretary: |
Detlef Humbert, Germany |
|
Chair: |
Prof. Anthony Seeger, USA |
|
Vice Chair: |
Dr Shubha Chaudhuri, India |
|
Secretary: |
Grace Koch, Australia |
|
Chair: |
Lars Gaustad, Norway |
|
Vice Chair: |
Kevin Bradley, Australia |
|
Secretary: |
George Boston, UK |
They say that an editor's first and foremost responsibility is to the readers. And having to step into the shoes of previous editors such as Helen Harrison, Grace Koch and Chris Clark, our outgoing editor, I am well aware that the task of keeping you informed of IASA's activities is a daunting one. However, I am looking forward to taking up the challenge, and trust that I will be able to serve you well over the next three years.
I should like to express my sincere gratitude to Chris Clark. His hard work is evident in the new, modern design that marks all the IASA publications; he left us with a new, very attractive web site, and set high standards in the selection of articles for the Journal and the Bulletin.
On behalf of all the IASA members, a very warm thank you to you, Chris.
The IASA conference 2002, Digital Asset Management and Preservation, hosted by the State and University Library, Aarhus, Denmark, was a most successful event, highlighting new directions in archiving as we all move into the digital era. Of course new directions bring challenges and it was encouraging to see how our colleagues are dealing with these most successfully. The conference content was extremely dense, causing us to take copious notes as we reduced digital issues to handwriting so that we can submit reports to our institutions upon our return!
The Program
After gracious welcomes by Niels Mark, the Director of the State and University Library in Aarhus and by Eva Fønss-Jørgensen, the new Secretary-General of IASA, Chris Clark, our outgoing Editor, presented the keynote speech. This encapsulated the major issues we are now facing with digitisation, capturing our imagination and making us want to explore the many web sites he gave us. He brought a fresh approach to the process of digitisation based upon some of the latest philosophical and managerial thinking. He began by describing how the importance of the development of production equipment in the 20th century has shifted emphasis to the importance of knowledge workers and their productivity. In this age of having to look at archives generating their own income, the importance of contributions of individuals is not to be overlooked. Outcomes are not to be measured simply by inputs and outputs, but by the contributions of the knowledge workers in establishing networks and ensuring that corporate memory is passed on. He then outlined the process he used in managing the digitisation of the British National Sound Archive collections, showing how material is prepared for Web use. This address set a perfect tone for all of the following papers.
After the General Assembly and lunch, came the two sessions on Selection for Preservation and Prioritising before Digitising. All speakers agreed that degree of physical degradation, uniqueness of material and potential demand, are the most important factors in selection and prioritising. In the first session chaired by Per Holst, Lars Gaustad outlined the types of audio carriers and how they stood on a scale of stable to endangered formats. Majella Breen traced some of the criteria used in prioritising digitisation projects in Radio Telefis Eireann. Isabelle Gianattasio alerted us to the importance of keeping institutional programs and directions in mind when we select. Pio Pellizzari gave some of the results from the IASA Task Force on Selection and we look forward to the final report. Harald von Hielmcrone described the Danish experience in establishing selection criteria for radio and television programs, finding that for serials, the flow of context needs to be preserved as well as important individual items and that 'cultural hypertext' or references to publications citing the characters or the serials expands the information in a most useful way.
In the session on prioritising, George Brock-Nannestad highlighted the importance of depositors giving as much documentation as possible when they lodge their collections with archives. Matthew Davies, in showing the prioritisation system used at ScreenSound Australia, put forth a number of terms that seemed to find their way into other presentations. How many times did we hear the terms, 'crown jewels' or 'gems' used to describe some of our precious holdings? Finally, John Spence, one of our outgoing Vice-Presidents, presented the results of the IASA Survey on DAMs and Digital Preparedness in a most graphic and interesting way.
The second day of the conference began with a session on Planning for Digitisation. Three case studies from the National Archives of Canada, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation focussed on the importance of dissemination of materials, requirements for digitisation of various kinds of carriers, and need for adequate metadata. Jean-Paul Moreau showed how the concept of 'fonds', or description and arrangement of all records generated by a single person, family or corporate entity, is the organising principle of records at the National Archives of Canada, and we saw an example of a project that combines audio and visual media using the theme of wartime records. Alain Carou described the digitisation system at the Bibliothèque Nationale, mentioning the work of the French organisation, ARISTOTE, which explores the use of multi-media on the Internet. Finally, Björn Blomberg presented a case study on the way Swedish Radio is planning for asset management, ensuring that there is a component of a digital rights system within the process. With digitisation comes major format change, and he questioned what will happen to the 'soul' of the archive once all holdings are digital.
Sessions 4, DAM in Broadcast Archives and 5, Research Archives in the Digital World, were held at the same time. In Session 4, integrated systems structures for radio and television archives were described from the viewpoint of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (Torben Lundberg), Suedwestrundfunk in Baden-Baden (Robert Fischer), and Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich (Mary Ellen Kitchen). This important session, demonstrating cutting-edge technology and management, was of interest to most delegates, and it was unfortunate that they had to choose between it and Session 5. The newly-constituted Research Archives Section of IASA presented three papers, the first of which included a performance by Anthony Seeger of the rarely-heard second verse of the song, 'This Land is Your Land.'! A definition of research archives and an tracing of the complexity of intellectual property rights amongst performers were explored along with a description of the Global Sound Project, which seeks to disseminate recordings of traditional music and to ensure remuneration to the performers. In the next paper, Shubha Chaudhuri, one of the new IASA Vice-Presidents, emphasised the importance of supplementary documentation in the form of field notes, photographs and other media. This presentation fit well with the demonstration given by the National Archives of Canada given earlier in the morning, where the primacy of context was discussed. The final paper of the session, by Virginia Danielson, gave a most exemplary and practical study of how research archives can initiate and plan projects, taking into account existing constraints when the archive is part of a larger institution.
That afternoon delegates were treated to two excursions- one to the Aarhus State and University Library, and the other to the European Film College and town of Ebeltoft. This reviewer, who went on the latter tour, was assured by several delegates that the Library trip was most informative and enjoyable, especially due to the entertaining narration given by the Librarian! The tour of the European Film College included views of students filming in the surrounding countryside as well as a screening of one production. Ebeltoft offered many charms with its ancient buildings, tales of the intellectual limitations of former inhabitants (read most dramatically by Elsebeth Kirring) and artwork of glass. Some delegates has the pleasure of sampling freshly-baked pastry as it came out of the oven!
On Wednesday, Session 6 on DAM in Heritage Archives covered a broad scope of topics. Wolfgang Bender began with a cautionary tale of the necessity of keeping backups of recordings in secure environments. If the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service had not arranged for copies of its holdings to be kept in Germany, all recordings would have been irretrievably lost when rebels destroyed their record library. As IASA membership extends to countries outside Europe and the U.S.A., protection of collections becomes a most vital issue for archives. Next, Judith Gray traced the history of and digitisation plans for the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Funding in the form of bequests usually means that entire collections will be digitised. Finally, Rainer Hubert, Peter Levenitschnig, and Hermann Lewetz gave a most impressive description of the processes used to establish the DAM system at the Österreichische Mediathek in Vienna and a series of demonstrations. This presentation bridged both Session 6 and Session 7, explaining their system of long-term preservation, optimal access and security and integration of the catalogue, mass storage and on-line player. Afterwards, this dynamic team persuaded various IASA delegates to record their "statements for eternity" and we should be able to hear ourselves on their web site sometime in November.
Preservation and technical issues were covered in sessions 7 and 8. Vienna again held centre stage as Nadja Wallszkovits told, in careful detail, how the world's oldest sound archive, the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is dealing with the complexities of the video medium. This paper gives encouragement to those of us struggling with how to manage the multiplicity of formats in video and how to handle compression. As IASA has extended its brief to all audiovisual media, hopefully there will be more offerings on topics of visual media. In the final paper, Matthew Davies' use of the word, 'forever', matching the Austrian use of 'eternity', figured largely as we followed how audio digitisation is being implemented at ScreenSound Australia. The business aspects of our roles were highlighted as well as the planning structures and technical specifications.
After lunch, Nadja Wallszkovits gave a most comprehensive session on signal retrieval from analogue magnetic tape. A version of this paper would make an excellent small monograph for IASA members. This session was described, perhaps inaccurately, as a 'tutorial', where a more apt title might be an 'information session.' Because of the specialisation of this paper, a parallel session might have fit in comfortably.
The last session of the day examined the nexus between archives and the role of industry in archive preservation. Firstly, George Boston gave us the history of IASA's involvement with Unesco along with an enumeration of the frightening speed of which our analogue playback equipment and our audio formats are becoming obsolescent. He then updated delegates on the actions being taken to ensure that parts for machinery will still be available, including a Memorandum of Understanding that he and Albrecht Häfner have drawn up between archivists and the industry. Next, Christophe Kummer gave a most creative case study tracing the strategies used by the Red Bull Drink Company of how audio tracks are used for marketing purposes. Finally, Richard Wright from the BBC challenged delegates as to whether or not they, as archivists, or industrial partners who specialise in preservation should be in charge of our digitisation processes as we heard about the PRESTO Project. We heard that 'on-demand' preservation, while seeming most easy to achieve and less costly, is actually three times more expensive than an efficient mass transfer project. Also, we were advised that 16 bit audio seems to be adequate for mass transfer.
The last day of the conference began with a valuable series of lessons learned about three projects aimed at Internet access. As Maria Sotgiu was unable to present her paper, Crispin Jewitt described 'A Sense of Britain', which offers 'learning journeys' through various areas of the country with an interactive map and a time line. He ended the talk with some managerial issues to consider, cautioning delegates to ensure that all parts of such a project be securely funded before proceeding. Richard Green, one of our new Vice-Presidents, presented a set of lessons learned and most enjoyable examples (which delegates will remember well) from the 'Virtual Grammophone' project of the National Library of Canada. His observations linked well with Crispin's cautionary comments on the need to update the site regularly and to count the human and financial cost before undertaking such a project. The excerpts played of La Bolduc had won IASA member Gilles St-Laurent a prize for audio restoration using the CEDAR system. Elsebeth Kirring gave the last paper in this session, describing how the State and University Library at Aarhus has dealt with Internet access to unpublished Danish sound recordings from 1913-1940. She described the how the work of the Scandinavian Audiovisual Metadata group provided the standard for description, and how the Internet was used to locate information not available on the in-house cataloguing records.
Session 11, Metadata and Rights, brought delegates up-to-date on some of the most recent developments in rights management, security and contents-based technologies. Walter Plaschzug outlined the Recognition and Analysis of Audio (RAA) project based in Graz, where 'audio DNA' is used to produce and effective identifier for music and commercial recordings. This identifier is automatically generated from analysis of a sample lasting approximately 5 seconds. We were shown how the data could be merged with rights information for efficient management of audio files. The next paper, by Sven Aaquist, showed a Danish application of the Norwegian Phonofile project that clears usage rights for audio files in the Internet. An alliance of authors, performers, producers and national archives worked together to ensure that the audio cultural heritage could be made available over the Internet completely, easily and legally. One feature is that audio files downloaded from CDs will self-destruct after a period of 14 days. The final paper of the conference, by Dagfinn Bach, outlined the CUIDADO project, which maps automatically- extracted MPEG-7 descriptors with more traditional fields of metadata. The mapping of cognitive, perceptual and semantic data means that users can generate sophisticated playlists and can detect pirate recordings. Discussion revolved around the taxonomies used for the data.
Postscript
There were papers of interest to all delegates, with much practical guidance being offered to archivists in digitising their collections. The morning and afternoon teas were a delight with delicious pastries awaiting our sampling. The venue accommodated our needs well, and it was easy to find good lunch places nearby so that we could get back to the conference on time. One of the highlights was the conference dinner with the brief tour of Aarhus by night and the lively dancing. Also, the number of delegates from Central America, Africa and Asia show that IASA is successfully widening its membership. The attendance of representatives from 14 countries at the inaugural Research Archives Section meeting was most encouraging.
There are benefits and problems when a conference is held to a theme. Also, it may be useful for organisers to consider pre-conference workshops rather than tutorials or information sessions within the main part of the conference. And the holding of parallel sessions should be avoided wherever possible.
Some probing questions were raised. To reiterate:
What will happen to the 'soul of the archive' when everything becomes digital? How effective will the Memorandum of Understanding be between equipment manufacturers and archivists as formats and standards change rapidly? And finally, as our Viennese colleagues have said, will we think of Digital Archives (Asset) Management as DAM or DAMN?
Grace Koch
Florian Çanga (associate) Rr \"Ymer Kurti\" P 2/1 Ap 5, Tirana, Albania.
Our first member in Albania intends “to help the National Folk Institute of Albania to build a sound Archive Department.”
Bill Klinger
13532 Bass Lake Rd., Chardon, OH 44024-8324, USA
Andy Kolovos, Archivist Vermont Folklife Center, Vermont, USA
He wrote: “I am the archivist in charge of a collection of approximately 4,500 audio recordings of oral history, folklife and traditional music documentation in the state of Vermont. We are about to begin a large digital project.”
Paul Lihoma, National Archives of Malawi
"As an Archivist managing audiovisual archives, I feel joining IASA will greatly assist me to perform efficiently and effectively in my job while maintaining the international standards. IASA gatherings and materials will also help me to sharpen my skills and acquire new knowledge."
National Archives of Malawi, Nkulichi Road, P.O. Box 62, Zomba, Malawi
The National Archives of Malawi has a staff complement of 65 country wide, with a mandate to collect, arrange, control and preserve for research and posterity, the country's documentary heritage. We therefore keep paper records, gramophone records, films, audio and videotapes, CDs etc.
Ronda L. Sewald (associate) 2627 E. 2nd St., Apt. #11, Bloomington, IN 47401 United States.
Ms Sewald is currently a graduate student at Indiana State University, Bloomington, and is pursuing a double Masters in library science and ethnomusicology. After graduation, she plans to work in an academic library or archive that specialises in sound and audiovisual recordings of ethnographic materials. She says “I feel that knowledge of current preservation and digitisation issues are key if I am to properly take care of these priceless collections and I feel that IASA is leading the way in both of these areas. I am particularly impressed by the organisation's efforts to establish a preservation standard for storage and handling of early sound materials.”
Tommy Sjöberg, c/o DCM Sweden AB
Reasons for joining: Currently working on a digitisation project for Universal music, including cataloguing and, possibly, distribution.
Marcos Vera (associate) 10a Whitney Ridge Road apt. 2 Fairport. NY. 14450, USA
“I am very interested in the sound and audiovisual archives. I had written a proposal for last years conference. I was unable to make the conference last year due to the attacks on the US…. All of my course work, while completing my masters' degree focused on sound and audio-visual archives.”
WNYC Radio
1 Centre Street 26th Floor
New York, NY 10007 USA
Andy Lanset, Archivist wrote “WNYC AM and FM are flagship stations for the National Public Radio and Public Radio International networks in the United States. WNYC AM has been on the broadcasting continuously since 1924. WNYC FM has been on the air since 1943. The WNYC Archives collection includes more than 40,000 broadcast programs of every genre on disc and tape from 1931 to the present.”
IASA's next annual conference will be held in Pretoria, South Africa, September 22-26, 2003. The theme of the conference will be Audiovisual Archives: Memory and Society.
The conference aims to encourage a wide range of papers which will look at the role audiovisual archives play in preserving the collective memories of societies; issues relating interesting collections and projects with societies and communities; the way audiovisual archives reflects society and its memories with regard to oral histories and oral traditions; and how researchers make use of these audiovisual collections.
Papers are invited which will contribute to the theme of the conference. Abstracts should be about 300 words in length, on disc or as an email attachment, listing name, organisation, contact address, telephone and email address, and should include the title of the proposed paper. The closing date for abstracts is the 31st December 2002. Please note that presenters need to register for the conference and pay the registration fee.
Please address all abstracts and enquiries to: Shubha Chaudhuri, IASA Vice-President: eMail: shubha@arce.ernet.in [408]
Diana, who was the wife of Patrick Saul, the founder of the British Institute of Recorded Sound, which subsequently became the British Library National Sound Archive, and who was for many years Head of its Cataloguing Department and Chair of the IASA Cataloguing Committee, died peacefully on Sunday morning 26th July after a long illness.
Her funeral took place at Putney Vale Cemetery in London and was attended by former colleagues at the British Library National Sound Archive.
Chris Clark worked for Diana when he first came to the British Institute of Recorded Sound, that is now the British Library National Sound Archive (NSA). "Diana was Chief Cataloguer at that time and had strong views about how sound recordings should be catalogued. She had devised a structure for individual catalogue records that cleverly merged discographic and cataloguing principles. While adhering to AACR rules for the formation of names and titles she replaced the statement of responsibility element with an ordered arrangement of performer(s), recording date and location that would ensure a more useful filing order where there were many recordings of the same work. As it is common for a large national collection to hold hundreds of recordings of the same title (e.g. Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony or Johnny Green's "Body and soul") and often more than one recording of the same work by the same artist, her invention has proved invaluable and has been retained as part of the structure the NSA's catalogue, CADENSA.
Many of us who work in libraries and archives have additional interests. Diana's was the theatre. When she left the NSA in 1994 she quickly resumed the career that she clearly preferred, appearing in a number of London stage productions.
She always described her working methods as those of a "pack rat" (an American rodent that carries as much food as it can in mouth pouches) and never threw anything away. I now have her old job and eight years after her departure I am still coming across old folders full of hastily written notes to agenda of meetings long forgotten. I doubt anyone who worked with Diana will ever forget her."
Quoting more or less verbatim from the RLG website:
“The Working Group on Preservation Metadata, an initiative jointly sponsored by OCLC and RLG, has released A Metadata Framework to Support the Preservation of Digital Objects, a new report available on the OCLC Web site at http://www.oclc.org/research/pmwg/pm_framework.pdf [409].
The report is a comprehensive guide to preservation metadata that is applicable to a broad range of digital preservation activities. Preservation metadata is the information infrastructure necessary to support processes associated with the long-term retention of digital resources and is an essential component of most digital preservation systems.
The report represents the consensus of leading experts and practitioners [including IASA Technical Committee members Kevin Bradley (National Library of Australia) and Michael Alexander (The British Library)] and is intended for use by organizations and institutions managing, or planning to manage, the long-term retention of digital resources.”
Here's a happy follow-up to Dietrich Schueller's "Re: Studer A 807 - last orders" message of July 31, 2001 to the AV Media Matters list:
In talking to Sam Lum, Studer North America, about some A807 parts, I learned that, due to popular demand, the A807 production line is not shutting down this summer as planned. Studer will accept orders for 200 additional A807 MKIIs in various configurations.
I inquired about Herr Schueller's desirable "archivist" configuration, "replay-only version with a half-track plus a quarter-track head, switchable". Sam said he had a warehouse full of pre-owned A807-0.75 VUK (half-track butterfly heads, meter bridge) play-only machines that he would re-condition, relap, and offer at very reasonable prices. He said he could easily add quarter-track heads and switches. (Toll-free Canada/US: 866-269-0000).
Glad to be the bearer of good analog news,
Gary Sprung
Carmel, CA USA
And for those of you who are interested in the AV Media Matters listserve, please contact Jim Lindner at AV-Media-Matters@topica.com [410]
Pat Kellogg (CBC) announces “Timed to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of television in Canada, the Museum of Television & Radio in New York and its west-coast site in Los Angeles, is launching O Canada! A Salute to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a radio and television screening series featuring CBC/Radio-Canada's distinctive, high-quality Canadian programming.
Approximately 40 CBC/Radio-Canada television and radio programs (French and English) have been selected for inclusion in this celebration. Television programming has been grouped into program strands of approx. 2 ½ hours featuring the following themes: Troubadours; The Boys of St. Vincent; Auteur, Auteur, Auteurs; Teen Angst; Four by Finkleman; The Coroner's Report; Performing Arts; Canadian Comedy; Comedy on the Edge; News/Public Affairs: Benchmarks; Documentaries: A Storied Tradition; La Belle Province; Popular Arts: Infinite Variety; and A Sense of History. There will also be radio program strands. Their themes will concentrate on how Canadians cover the news, arts and culture of the U.S. and Americans in general while reflecting the Canadian world-view.
The series runs from October 18 to February 2, 2003, kicking off with a special public seminar on Thursday, October 17 at 6:30 p.m. in New York that will feature some of Canada's most distinguished creators. For more information log on to www.mtr.org [411] and follow the links, or call 212-621-6800 in New York, or 310-786-1025 in Los Angeles.
Multimedia Archive Preservation Projects. A practical Workshop, London 22-24 May 2002 Per Holst, Radio Sound Archives Section, reports:
The annual joint IASA/FIAT meeting this year on digitisation was held together with PRESTO. The meeting took place on May 22nd 24th in London and was hosted by the BBC and PRESTO. The participants represented broadcasting companies as well as audio, film and video collections. The meeting was very well attended. About 130 people participated and approximately 20 members represented IASA.
Papers were given on technical solutions for audio, film and video preservation and included names of organisations for assistance on preservation projects: the European Commission, ERPANET and the Digital Preservation Coalition. Papers on planning, funding and managing of preservation projects and PRESTO “new technology” key links were presented, as well as papers on the EC projects BRAVA and DIAMANT. From IASA Dietrich Schueller, Phonogrammarchiv, gave a presentation on Analogue to Digital Transfer: The Specific Problems of Heritage Collections and Rainer Hubert, Austrian Mediathek, presented The New Digital Storage Equipment of the Mediathek and its Access via Internet. Two workshops on specialist and broadcast archives gave the participants the possibility for more informal discussions on preservation issues.
Professional visits were arranged to the BBC's Windmill Road and Maida Vale facilities for storage and digitisation respectively , the storage and technical facility for the British Film Institute, and the British Library National Sound Archive, all involved in preservation projects.
The meeting was well organised, very interesting and will certainly serve as inspiration for next year's joint IASA/FIAT meeting which will take place 4-5 April 2003 at YLE, Helsinki, Finland.
Silke Breslau (Deutsches Musik Archiv) reports that the music section of the German National Bibliography is now on the Internet.
The catalogue of the Deutsches Musikarchiv Berlin, containing nearly 20 years of German music publications, is available on the Internet at http://www.ddb.de/ [412].
The catalogue offers searching by interpreter, composer, title, track name, publisher, label name, edition number, and ISMN.
The catalogue includes entries for over 125,000 scores and 260,000 CDs and LPs. The catalogue offers a comprehensive view of German music production, and through it users can find essential information on music titles. The catalogue is based on the collection of the Deutsches Musikarchiv Berlin, a part of the Deutsche Bibliothek (the German National Library). Music producers and publishers are required to deposit two copies of each of their publications in the archive, and for that reason the collection covers every type of music. Every company is represented, not only major record companies and publishing houses, but also independent labels and smaller publishers. The annual receipt of 20,000 CDs and 7,000 titles of printed music allows the Deutsches Musikarchiv to maintain a complete record of Germany's musical output.
Quest for sound http://www.npr.org/programs/Infsound/quest/ [413] is an excellent audio site on the Web that has evolved by NPR (US National Public Radio) producer Jay Allison in response to a call to listeners to send in home recordings from the last 100 years. The outcome is a series of stories that have captured “the rituals and sounds of everyday life” in America.
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2002 | ||
| October 25 28 | Society of Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting | Detroit, U.S. |
| November 19 23 | AMIA Conference | Boston, U.S. |
| 2003 | ||
| FIAT-IFTA? | ||
| March 14 - 15 | IASA Mid-year Board meeting | Pretoria, South Africa |
| March 22 - 25 | 114th AES Convention | Amsterdam |
| April 4 - 5 | IASA FIAT meeting on digitisation | Helsinki, Finland (YLE) |
| May 19 - 23 | Second National Sound Archive Seminar | Mexico City |
| July 6 - 11 | IAML Conference | Tallinn, Estonia |
| August 1 - 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| September 22 - 26 | IASA annual conference | Pretoria, South Africa |
| November | Caribbean Seminar | Jamaica |
| November 18 - 22 | AMIA Conference | Vancouver, Canada |
| 2004 | ||
| January - June (to be confirmed) |
Joint Technical Symposium | Montreal, Canada |
| August 8 - 13 | IAML-IASA joint Annual Conference | Oslo, Norway |
| August 23 - 28 | ICA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| November 9 - 13 | AMIA Conference | Minneapolis, U.S. |
| 2005 | ||
| September (2nd half) | IASA Annual Conference | Barcelona, Spain |
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 [260].
Language editor: Dorothy van Tonder, SABC
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 44 BY 15 DECEMBER 2002
Printed and produced in South Africa by Heypenni Gold
Arrangements for the IASA Conference in Pretoria are at an advanced stage and invitations will be going out shortly.
This will be the first time the annual conference is held in this part of Africa, and in particular South Africa. The theme of the conference is Audiovisual Archiving: Memory and Society. The venue is the Music Department at the University of Pretoria, in the heart of the city.
The university commenced its activities in 1908 with a staff of four professors and three lecturers as the Transvaalse Universiteitskollege (Transvaal University College). Thirty-two students enrolled for courses at the first campus, Kya Rosa, a house in the centre of the Pretoria. The University of Pretoria became a fully-fledged university in 1930.
Pretoria is the capital of South Africa and the Jacaranda Capital of the world, and is a place full of culture and history. It is a mix of ultramodern architecture and stately old buildings dating from its days as the capital of the Transvaal Republic. It is a picturesque city - its gardens and trees flourish in the fertile, well-watered soil of the Apies River valley - and springtime brings the spectacle of tens of thousands of flowering jacaranda trees. The mix of modern and historical is also found in many places of interest in the city. A variety of museums that preserve relics of days gone by and fascinating glimpses of up-to-minute scientific and industrial developments are to be seen.
A reminder of the conference dates: September 22 - 26.
Consultations with Manufacturers - George Boston reports
Originally, this was to have been a report to the IASA Conference in Aarhus of the Consultation with Manufacturers of Magnetic Tapes and Recordable Optical Disks held at UNESCO's Headquarters in Paris in June 2002. I quickly realised that such a limited report would be very short. Accordingly, I added to the subject matter by including a summary of the three previous Consultations that the IASA Technical Committee have taken part in. While drafting the paper, I realised that UNESCO was also represented at all the meetings and that the Consultations mirrored the development of the relationship between the two organisations.
The three earlier Consultations were held in Berlin in 1987, in Vienna in 1989, and in Paris in 1998. The Berlin Consultation was organised by Carlos Arnaldo, then the UNESCO Officer responsible for AV Archives, and Eva Orbanz of the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. The Consultation was one of two parallel meetings, the other being on training for AV archivists held after the second Joint Technical Symposium which, in turn, was held after that year's FIAF Congress.
The idea of links with industry was not new to UNESCO. Indeed, in the world of sound, a Mr Kudelski had approached UNESCO in their early days for funding to assist him in developing his new portable tape recorder, the NAGRA. It was a new idea to IASA, though. The members of the Technical Committee had, of course, had links with industry for many years but as individuals. Likewise they were recognised by the various salesmen, but again as individuals. There was no concept of the potential for archives to form an important group market for industry.
The response of the manufacturers represented at the Consultation was encouraging. They grasped the potential size of the market offered to them by the archive world. The problem facing them, however, was that the market was fragmented. For once, a strong recommendation came from industry to archives: set up some form of organisation to speak on behalf of AV archives on technical matters. Carlos Arnaldo took this cue and within 15 minutes of the end of the meeting had formed a group that became the Technical Co-ordinating Committee. The TCC was made up of representatives of the technical bodies in IASA, FIAF and FIAT, as well as the AV section of the ICA. IFLA was invited to participate but, although remaining very supportive, declined to take up their places.
The members of the TCC swiftly began work on a number of cross-NGO projects. It soon became clear, however, that the TCC could not work in isolation from its parent NGOs. Accordingly, the TCC was repositioned as a subcommittee of the Round Table of Audiovisual Records, the predecessor of the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archive Associations (the CCAAA).
With this repositioning came requests. The second Consultation was held in Vienna in 1989, partly as a result of suggestions from some members of the Round Table. The meeting was organised with support from UNESCO, IASA, and the International Council of Archives. The debate at the Consultation centred on magnetic tape. The problems we are now only too familiar with - sticky binders, vinegar syndrome etc - were then quite new to many technicians in IASA. The TCC had exposed sound and video technicians to the problems film technicians were faced with, and through them to the world of chemistry. This, in turn, had opened many new areas of concern for those normally concerned only with the problems of replaying mechanical disks and magnetic tapes. In addition, the advent of digital tape and optical discs in the form of the commercial CD and what was then the new recordable CD was leading to a major debate about the whole future of analogue tape. Increasing realisation of the need to move from a preservation strategy that concentrated on survival of the carrier to one that concentrated on survival of the information was also beginning to strike the collective consciousness.
The tape manufacturers were uncertain about the future of their market. One thing we were able to assure them about was that, in addition to the sale of some form of media for the continuing process of making new recordings of sounds and images, additional supplies of carriers would be needed for the transfer of old analogue recordings to new digital formats. When estimates were presented of the amount of material in stock that would need to be transferred, the manufacturers became very interested. What we were all uncertain about, however, was which carrier would be dominant. In some respects, we remain uncertain.
In 1989 the leading candidates for digital sound recordings were R-DAT and recordable CD. There were a few digital tape formats from companies such as Studer and Nagra but, compared with the various forms of recordable CD and R-DAT tapes, they were very expensive. The leading candidates were not problem free, though. Both R-DAT and CD-R were aimed primarily at the domestic market with its big sales figures. This meant that although the machines were noticeably cheaper than professional analogue machines and offered comparable quality, they were not as robust. In addition, many archive technicians were concerned about the possible sudden demise of the R-DAT format, as it was not selling well, and the life expectancy of the dyes used on recordable CDs was unknown.
One possible solution offering a long life for digital recordings was being marketed vigorously at the time. This was the Century Disc, a form of CD. It used a glass base with a gold reflective layer, the pits that carry the information being etched into the glass by a factory. This was not adopted, because of cost (around US$100) and manufacturing time (about a month for each disk).
The results of the second Consultation were, therefore, rather mixed. On one hand, the archives reinforced their collective links with industry: practical hints were exchanged, such as the idea of heating sticky tapes to make them playable. On the other hand, there were no great leaps forward in solving the problems of the day.
A number of years passed before the third Consultation was held. During that time, the TCC became defunct through lack of support. The AV archives were moved to a different section of UNESCO and Joie Springer replaced Carlos Arnaldo as the officer responsible. The Memory of the World Programme was begun, and with it the Subcommittee on Technology (SCoT). SCoT began to take over the co-ordinating role previously undertaken by the TCC, but with the addition of textual materials. The way forward for AV archives was becoming clearer, even if the cost of equipment was not yet within reach for all the collections.
The third Consultation was arranged at the Paris Headquarters of UNESCO in 1998 by the IASA TC with the support of SCoT and UNESCO. The topic was specifically quarter-inch analogue sound magnetic tape recorders. The Survey of Endangered Audio Carriers carried out by the IASA Technical Committee in 1995 had made clear the speed of withdrawal from the market of makers of audiotape machines. Accordingly, representatives of five of the remaining seven companies (from a peak of over 25) agreed to meet with members of IASA to explore ways of easing the problems facing archives.
The Survey had indicated that there were over 20 million hours of audio recordings held world wide on quarter-inch tape. (Later estimates give even greater quantities of material that will require transfer to new formats.) The vast majority of these recordings were unique. Faced with these figures, the manufacturers accepted that they had a moral obligation to help ensure the survival of the sounds. Nevertheless, they could not do this on a non-commercial basis. Sufficient return on their investment was needed to ensure the survival of the companies.
The discussions showed that the manufacture of a very small range of new machines would continue for perhaps ten years, with another five years' guaranteed supply of spare parts. Note that we are now five years into these time-scales. No spares would be discarded, but after the fifteen years (ten for making machines, five for guaranteed supply of spare parts the manufacture of new parts would probably cease.
This was a harsh message for the archives. In a limited survey done for the Consultation, many archives expected the transfer of their tapes to take at least fifteen years. Some larger archives, notably the Library of Congress, expected the work to take fifty years. In the case of the Library of Congress, fifty years - after they decide what to do. Last time I asked, they were still thinking about it.
At least archives had a clear understanding of the time scale they had to work to, before the cost of maintaining quarter-inch tape machines became increasingly expensive. What was not clear was how long the tapes in stock, and the CD-Rs and DVDs being used as the target medium for many of the transfers, would last. This was the cue for the fourth Consultation, held in Paris in June this year. Since this was to include video material and texts as well as sound, the lead organiser was the Subcommittee on Technology. FIAF and FIAT were invited to send technical representatives and we were joined by Denis Frambourt of INA and FIAT. Relations during the planning stages of the Consultation were very good between the officers of the SCoT and the IASA Technical Committees as they were the same people, Dietrich Schüller, and myself as Chair and Secretary respectively of both committees!
The topics were magnetic tapes and recordable optical disks; tapes of all types because there were increasing numbers of reports of problems in transferring the content of old tapes to new carriers: problems such as sticky shed of the oxide layer, fragile base polymers, even vinegar syndrome on acetate tapes. The archive technicians sought an exchange of information with tape manufacturers about problems. The industry admitted that they kept 'libraries' of old tapes and had information about suspect batches of tapes. However, they were concerned about causing the companies commercial embarrassment, if this information were to be made freely available. UNESCO stepped in to break the impasse by offering to act as a confidential channel for distribution of information.
Recordable optical disks are an increasing cause for concern, as the reliability is dropping as production levels of blank disks increase. The reliability of modern disks is not what it was when the format was new. In addition, the increase in reading and writing speeds has not helped to make burning of information onto the disks more reliable.
The manufacturers acknowledged the problem. They said it would not be difficult to make a more reliable disk tailored to a slower reading and writing speed. It was a question of demand and price. Verbatim are making a more reliable disk, the Ultra Life Plus, aimed at institutions such as banks. Mitsui also market a similar disk. Neither has been very successful commercially because, unlike archives, financial institutions do not require disks to last very long before they are superseded. The message to the marketing divisions of the company has, therefore, to be 'Look at the archives!'
In parallel with the need for a slower, more reliable disk is the need for a matched slower drive. Technically, this is not difficult. It requires retrieval of older design drawings from the archives and recreating the production line. It may be more difficult to achieve for commercial reasons, though. The market for these machines is likely to be relatively small so the price will be higher than most models in the shops. This may deter smaller institutions from buying them, which would result in smaller sales volumes and yet higher prices.
The result of the fourth Consultation is, like the second, rather mixed. The success of an exchange of information about suspect batches of tape may hinge on acceptance by the manufacturers of assurances about commercial confidentiality. Improvement in the reliability of blank CD-Rs is possible now by paying a little more for blank disks - about 20% more; very little compared with the other costs of transferring sounds. The supply of slower CD drives may be more difficult to achieve.
It was agreed at this Consultation that a Memorandum of Understanding should be drawn up and circulated for comment. This was drafted by Albrecht Haefner and circulated to all the manufacturers and archivists who attended the Consultation. Comments have been received and incorporated into the Memorandum. The revised document has been reissued with an invitation to the participants to sign and take part in future exchanges etc. The first signatures on the Memorandum are expected soon.
As you will have seen, these Consultations have helped to build bridges between archivists as a community and manufacturers of the equipment that we rely on to do our work. More Consultations will be held in the future. The Technical Committee has been discussing revisiting quarter inch tape machines, the discussion (with our colleagues in FIAF and FIAT) of the obsolescence of video recorders, and even - perhaps in the not too distant future - the obsolescence of computer storage systems.
Underlying all the words is the realisation that archives cannot work alone. We are symbiotically bound to the industry that both feeds from us and supports us. We have to work together, or we both are liable to fail.
Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, Chichiri House, Blantyre 3, Malawi
Mr Brighton Matewere, Director of Programmes, wrote: “As the national Broadcaster with 600 staff and the sole custodian of our audio archives collected over 40 years, we urgently need to gain knowledge on preservation.”
National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes ACT 2600, Australia
Chris Mertin says: “The National Library of Australia has the largest and most comprehensive Oral History and Folklore collection in Australia (35'000 hours). There are also important sound recordings associated with its Manuscripts collections and a small number of published sound recordings associated with particular print publications. However, for the majority of its audio collection the NLA holds the only copies of unique, unpublished material. The NLA is also responsible for PANDORA, a major initiative in the archiving and preservation of online digital materials which includes audiovisual material.”
There is still time to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the Pretoria Conference in September.
The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation at the IASA annual conferences by those who have no other funding, and to encourage continuing participation in the work of IASA.
Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.
IASA Committees may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences.
Funding for grants is limited, and they will cover only part of the costs involved.
Proposals for travel grants to attend the Vienna conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of April 2003 in order to be considered.
Please send your application to:
IASA Secretary General, Eva Fønss-Jørgensen, State and University Library, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Fax: +45 8946 2022. eMail: efj@statsbiblioteket.dk [371]
Research grants are also available to assist in special projects, and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project that concerns the interests of IASA and requires start-up funding, or that requires financial support for work already under way, is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (see address above). Applications will be considered when the Board of IASA meets, so the next chance will be at its mid-year meeting in May, and then at the Annual Conference in September.
The Musik-Almanach 2003-04 has been issued.
Since 1986 the Musik-Almanach has been faced with the challenge of covering the whole of Germany's music life in all its breadth and variety. Now the German Council of Music has issued the sixth edition of this standard Reference work with more than 1,400 pages of facts, statistics and objective accounts of music in Germany. The country's highly ramified musical infrastructure is reflected in more than 10,000 entries on musical institutions and facilities. Included in the basic information presented are details on activities, achievements and organisational structure as well as mailing addresses, telephone numbers and web sites.
The data has been provided by the German Music Information Center, a division of the German Council of Music. The project's sponsors include the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States (with funds provided by the Federal Commissioner for Cultural and Media Affairs), the City of Bonn, the German Musical Life Foundation, the German Copyright Society (GEMA), the Germany Performing Rights Society (GVL), and the Cultural Foundation of the Deutsche Bank.
The Musik-Almanach is a co-production of the Bärenreiter and Gustav Bosse publishing houses. The hardcopy and CD-Rom editions cost € 39.90 each or € 69.80 altogether.
For further information contact:
Deutsches Musikinformationszentrum
Tel.: ++49 (0)228/2091-180 (Mrs Schmidt)
Fax: ++49 (0) 228/2091-280
E-mail: info@miz.org [414]
This year the annual joint IASA/FIAT meeting on digitisation will include DELOS. DELOS is a network of excellence on digital libraries. The meeting, hosted by YLE, will take place in Helsinki from April 35, 2003.
DELOS will arrange a workshop on 3 April on the theme “Preservation”, and on 4 and 5 April IASA and FIAT will arrange the meeting on digitisation of primarily radio and TV archives.
Please send your registration to Pekka Gronow, YLE, Helsinki, e-mail: pekka.gronow@yle.fi [57] by 14 March 2003 at the latest.
For more information please contact:
Per Holst, Chairman, Radio Sound Archives Section, c/o Danish Broadcasting Corp., Radio Archive Islands Brygge 81, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark, Phone: 45 3520 5554, Fax: 45 3520 5568, per@dr.dk [286]
Kurt.Deggeller: Kurt.Deggeller@swissinfo.ch [415]
Annemieke Jong: adjong@beeldengeluid.nl [416]
Richard Wright: richard.wright@bbc.co.uk [351]
Vittore Casarosa: casarosa@iei.pi.cnr.it [417]
Seamus Ross: S.Ross@hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk [418]
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2003 | ||
| March 14-15 | IASA Mid-year Board meeting | Pretoria, South Africa |
| March 22 25 | 114th AES Convention | Amsterdam |
| April 3 5 | Joint IASA/FIAT/DELOS meeting on digitisation | Helsinki, Finland (YLE) |
| May 19-23 | Second National Sound Archive Seminar | Mexico City |
| May 28-31, 2003 | 37th Annual ARSC Conference | Philadelphia, PA |
| July 6 - 11 | IAML Conference | Tallinn, Estonia |
| August 1 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| September 6-10 | FIAT/IFTA annual conference | Brussels, Belgium |
| September 22-26 | IASA annual conference | Pretoria, South Africa |
| November | Caribbean Seminar | Jamaica |
| November 18 22 | AMIA Conference | Vancouver, Canada |
| 2004 | ||
| January June (to be confirmed) | Joint Technical Symposium | Montreal, Canada |
| August 8 - 13 | IAML-IASA joint Annual Conference | Oslo, Norway |
| August 23 28 | ICA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| November 9 13 | AMIA Conference | Minneapolis, U.S. |
| 2005 | ||
| September (2nd half) | IASA Annual Conference | Barcelona, Spain |
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 [260].
Language editor: Dorothy van Tonder, SABC
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 45 BY 15 MARCH 2003
Printed and produced in South Africa by Heypenni Gold
At its recent mid-term meeting in March in Pretoria, South Africa, IASA's Executive Board planned its strategy for the next three years. The following objectives were identified:
To increase the number of IASA members considerably through better presentation of IASA as a pool of competence for audiovisual archiving
To build up a consistent and continuous training policy for IASA on the CCAAA platform (together with the other NGOs)
To improve IASA's image as a pool of competence in audiovisual archiving
IASA wants to increase its membership and improve member's identification with the association towards recruiting active members for the board the committees and sections. IASA now has a membership of over 400 from more than 60 countries. Closer collaboration with the various heritage sectors through membership would be a means of getting a stronger public voice, which would be possible if IASA embraced a wider scope of audiovisual activities.
The IASA Executive has undertaken to:
Plan carefully for the 2004 ICA event and to take a leadership role in it.
To take leadership in setting up a common training strategy of CCAAA-members
To seek for partnership for funding in training activities and common research
Refresh the promotion material for IASA and create specific tools for events like the ICA-workshop
Seek contact with other NGOs potentially interested in the competencies represented by IASA and its members, mainly IFLA.
Please note that the dates of the IASA Conference in Pretoria are September 21-25, not 22-26 as given in the last Information Bulletin.
Also note that the following statement was printed in the last Information Bulletin:
Proposals for travel grants to attend the Vienna conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of April 2003 in order to be considered... Applications will be considered when the Board of IASA meets, so the next chance will be at its mid-year meeting in May.
This statement should read:
Proposals for travel grants to attend the Pretoria conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of May 2003 in order to be considered... Applications will be considered when the Board of IASA meets, so the next chance will be at Annual Conference in September.
My apologies for confusing everyone by publishing this incorrect information in the Information Bulletin
The strategy study for the UK audiovisual archive sector was announced at the conference 'Hidden Treasures: The Impact of Moving Image and Sound Archives in the 21st Century', held at the British Library Conference Centre on 7 October 2002
The British Library Sound Archive, the Film Archive Forum, and Resource are supporting the initiative, and have announced that ABL Cultural Consulting have been appointed as the consultants for this project. ABL is an independent management consultancy specialising in the arts, museums and heritage, entertainment, media and crafts www.ablconsulting.com [419].
The study's terms of reference are to:
produce a document for audiovisual archival development across the UK
provide information on the strengths and weaknesses of audiovisual archival provision across the UK
recognise the important strategic benefits to be gained from the audiovisual sector working closely with the wider museums, libraries and archives sector
do the above within the broader context of changing national and regional policy making and structures
inform public and private funding bodies on the priorities for capital and revenue investment in audiovisual archives sector
The completed strategy will be launched in London in June 2003.
'Hidden Treasures' was organised by the British Library National Sound Archive, British Universities Film & Video Council, the Film Archive Forum and the National Council on Archives. Top experts gathered at the British Library for the 'Hidden Treasures' conference. Keynote speaker Sir Christopher Frayling highlighted some of the problems he has encountered - such as the difficulty of obtaining a definitive version of the film classic Battleship Potemkin and the trials of tracking down uncatalogued archive footage on the historic opening of Tutankhamen's tomb.
The conference discussed how to collect, store and make these materials available for future generations, examined how archives should be funded and started developing a strategy for audiovisual archival development across the UK. Themes included the BE-ME Project, using audio and video oral history to record and preserve the histories of African-Caribbean and Asian communities who have settled in Wolverhampton since the 1940s; an initiative to improve the experience of disabled visitors to film archives from Full Circle Arts and the North West Film Archive; and Northern Ireland's revolutionary - and portable - digital film archive.
The British Library's Head of the Sound Archive, Crispin Jewitt, who also spoke at Hidden Treasures, commented: "This conference was a major shaping event for the pattern of archival provision in the UK. Sound and moving image is a great untapped resource for all kinds of researchers and users: it's vital that we develop strategies for improving the availability of access to this rich heritage and for ensuring its survival for future generations."
The event was supported by the British Film Institute, the British Library, the Heritage Lottery Fund and Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries:
The British Film Institute is the UK's national agency with responsibility for encouraging the arts of film and television, and conserving them in the national interest.
The British Library Sound Archive is one of the largest sound archives in the world. Opened in 1955 as the British Institute of Recorded Sound, it became part of the British Library in 1983. www.bl.uk/soundarchive [420]
The British Universities Film & Video Council is a representative body which promotes the production, study and use of film and related media in higher education and research.
The Film Archive Forum represents all of the public sector film and television archives which care for the UK's moving image heritage. www.bufvc.ac.uk/faf [421]
The Heritage Lottery Fund uses money from the National Lottery. It gives grants to support a wide range of projects involving the local, regional and national heritage of the United Kingdom.
The National Council Archives brings together the major bodies and organisations concerned with the care, custody and use of archives and provide a forum for the regular exchange.
Resource is the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries. Resource provides the strategic leadership, advocacy and advice to enable museums, archives and libraries to touch people's lives and inspire their imagination, learning and creativity. www.resource.gov.uk [422]
For further information, contact:
Frank Gray, Director, South East Film & Video Archive
[w.f.gray@bton.ac.uk [423]]
Crispin Jewitt, Head of the Sound Archive, The British Library
[crispin.jewitt@bl.uk [424]]
James Patterson, Director, Media Archive for Central England
[james.patterson@nottingham.ac.uk [425]]
Rachel Martin and Nick Dixon, ABL Cultural Consulting
[info@ablconsulting.com [426]]
Judith A Gray, Quebec St NW, Washington DC
who is joining on behalf of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
Rhys Beetham, High Street, Berwick St James, Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK
Rhys, who works for Surroundscape Media Ltd, says his reason for joining IASA is to find out more 'about the organisations, trends and uses for content in this industry.'
Dr Rosemary Firman, Chief Librarian, Jerwood Library of Performing Arts, Trinity College of Music, London, England
The performing arts library holds the Music Preserved collection of historical live sound recordings. Music Preserved is a separate charitable trust and its collection is available only at the Jerwood Library and the Barbican Library of the Corporation of London. The recorded sound collections include a good jazz collection and an archive of Trinity's own performances. Its current concerns are digital preservation of analogue recordings, and cataloguing.
Artspages International AS, Sogndal, Norway
Artspages represents a network of archives of independent music producers, and is involved in an interchange project between record producers and with other archives, as well as a technological development project.
Jonathan Morgan, Elia Street, Islington, London, England
who was a member formerly, but has now retired.
It is almost September and time for IASA's annual conference. This year the conference will be held in Pretoria, South Africa (21-25 September 2003) and if you haven't booked your flights and hotel accommodation yet, you should do so as soon as possible. Booking details are available on the IASA website.
There is still time to apply for travel grants for assistance in attending the Pretoria Conference in September.
Proposals for travel grants to attend the Pretoria conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of May 2003 in order to be considered. Please send your application to:
Secretary General: Eva Fønss-Jørgensen, State and University Library, Universitetsparken, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Fax: +45 8946 2022. E-mail: efj@statsbiblioteket.dk [371]
Apart from the normal IASA Travel Grant, the Conference Local Organising Committee will be able to help delegates with accommodation and subsistence costs, owing to the generosity of the National Archives of South Africa.
Please apply in writing (by letter, fax or e-mail) to the IASA Local Organising Committee,
Prof. Chris Walton, Music Department, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002
Tel.: ++27-12-420 3747
Fax: ++27-12-420 2248
Email: walton@postino.up.ac.za [427]
(please mark your e-mail 'IASA 2003')
Deadline: 31 May 2003
Realizing the growing need for a forum on audio preservation, the Preservation and Conservation Studies program of the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin, the Library of Congress Preservation Directorate, the National Recording Preservation Board, and the Association of Research Libraries are co-sponsoring Sound Savings: Preserving Audio Collections. The symposium will be held in Austin, Texas, from 24-26 July 2003 in the newly renovated Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center on the UT-Austin campus. Sound Savings will feature talks by experts in the field of audio preservation on topics ranging from assessing the preservation needs of audio collections to creating, preserving, and making publicly available digitally reformatted audio recordings.
For more information, please visit http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~soundsavings [428]. To register for the symposium, please use the online registration form.
We look forward to seeing you in July!
For more information, contact
Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa
[e.cunnk@mail.utexas.edu [429]]
A survey conducted for UNESCO by Esther B Williams.
The libraries and archives in the Pacific suffer from poor perception and lack of awareness of their importance for education and sustainable development. Therefore, their situation in the emerging Knowledge Society is still unclear. This is one of the conclusions from a survey of "Digital Community Services in Pacific Libraries and Archives", conducted by Esther Williams (Fiji) for the UNESCO Office of the Pacific States. According to the survey, the state of libraries and archives has not improved in the past five years. In fact, in some countries the situation has deteriorated. The support given to these institutions has been poor.
Many libraries and archives are not able to purchase ICT equipment, and do not have appropriate facilities, space, staff, operational budget, adequate collections, and Internet access. The cost of equipment and telecommunication is also an obstacle. Despite these obstacles, some libraries and archives are finding creative ways of responding to the new technologies, supported by leaders, who have recognised the importance of information to education, development, good governance and alleviation of poverty. On the question of telecentres, many libraries agreed that it is a good way of providing information to the community. "Instead of developing new structures, existing institutions should be identified to perform as a telecentre, as well as continue their other role of library, archive or museum", the survey concludes. Further findings are that it will be imperative for funding to be found to support libraries and archives, and projects to be implemented, if the Pacific peoples at large are to be part of the global information age.
For many libraries and archives all over the world, the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are already having an impact. In the Pacific, the situation is still unclear. There is the view that it is now only a matter of time before many Pacific libraries and archives move into the digital age. This study, commissioned by UNESCO as part of the Pacific Pathway project, seeks to establish a clearer situation for the Pacific. The primary focus of the Pacific Pathway project is promotion of digital access to the Pacific culture represented in the documentary holdings of libraries and archives, or wider access for the community to information in the public domain.
This study, therefore, aims specifically to collect feedback on:
the situation of Pacific libraries and archives in respect of access to computers and the Internet
digital access for the community at large to information services and collections
any plans there may be to promote a wider range of communication and information services for the community
the major obstacles to these developments
A questionnaire was prepared and sent to libraries, archives and museums in the fifteen UNESCO Pacific member states. The survey attracted little response. Those who responded gave useful information, but limited in some sections of the questionnaire. It was clear that those who completed the questionnaire were unable to provide all the information required. This raises the question of appropriateness of the survey method. It would be more efficient and useful if focus group discussions and face to face interviews in-country were conducted to ensure more inclusive and reliable results.
Despite the shortcomings, there were a number of interesting findings. It was clear that the state of libraries, archives and museums had not improved in the five years since the study on Information Needs in the Pacific Islands had been done. In fact, in some countries, for example in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, the situation in many of the libraries had deteriorated. Some of the blame could be put on the political situation in the countries in the past five years, but from the findings it is clear that the commitment and support given to libraries by governments in these three countries, and others as well, has been poor.
Since governments do not provide the financial support libraries and archives and museums need, many are unable to purchase the required ICT equipment. Many do not have appropriate facilities, space, staff, operational budget, adequate collections, and Internet access. Libraries and archives continue to suffer from poor perception and lack of awareness of the role of libraries in education and development. Also, despite the ICT Regional Policy adopted by Forum Communication Ministers in April 2002, this has had little effect in terms of reducing the cost of telecommunications in the region, or of equipment and related computer technology.
Work to reduce costs is being spearheaded by the Pacific Forum. Despite the lack of support, developments in ICT-related projects in a number of countries in the region are moving fast. Some are related to education; others to government good governance programmes; and yet others to trade and investment. In all the recent developments, it would seem that the libraries and archives are not being supported as they should be. Instead, developments are taking place mainly in government departments, which is a concern if we regard access as the priority of this Pacific Pathway project. Government departments have established various policies that may
restrict the public's access to information. Which bodies, then, could act as effective information gateways? Despite the obstacles and challenges, some of the libraries, archives and museums are finding creative ways of responding to new technology, users' demand for information, and changes taking place. Each of the libraries that responded to the survey has access to a computer. Some now have Internet access and e-mail. Others have digitisation programmes and plans, and are pushing ahead regardless. Those in this category are largely the institutions and libraries that have special collections. Leaders in these institutions recognise the importance of information to education, development, good governance and alleviation of poverty, and provide the necessary support. Libraries and archives could, therefore, be gateways to global information services as well as providing access to local information. Libraries and archives could allow the public to access the Internet and e-mail services. Other services could include photocopying, use of the telephone, radio broadcasting, and films.
There are other institutions and community centres that could act as effective information gateways. These include schools, local community centres and telecentres. On the question of telecentres as a development in the region to provide the community with information for development, many of the libraries agreed that this was a good development and one that needed to be supported. Instead of developing new structures, existing institutions should be identified to perform the functions of a telecentre, as well as continuing their role of library, archive, school library, community centre or museum.
In such a centre, the use of ICTs, and access to computers, the Internet, e-mail, fax and telephone would be necessary. The infrastructure for these services are available, but the financial resources to put these structures and services in place would have to be found. It would be imperative for some serious commitment to be given to the development of telecentres or digital community services in the Pacific, to allow the public access to information.
This survey aims to ensure that the people in the Pacific participate and take advantage of the developments in ICTs. Based on the results of the survey, a group of experts will devise a number of model projects for possible submission to UNESCO PP-fund in 2004-5 and other sources of funding. It will be imperative for funding to be found and projects implemented, if the Pacific peoples are to be part of the global information age and participate in developmental activities. It will also be important to co-ordinate all the work and developments already taking place in this field.
For more information, contact:
Tarja Virtanen, Adviser for Communication and Information (CI), UNESCO Asia-Pacific Bureau for CI, Safdarjung Enclave B5-29, NEW DELHI 110029.
Tel: 91-11-2671 3000
Fax: 91-11-267-13001/3002
(PLEASE NOTE THE NUMBERS, WHICH CHANGED EARLY IN DECEMBER)
t.virtanen@unesco.org [430]
www.unesco.org/webworld/ [77]
or
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=6607&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1041529756 [431]
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) to meet in Philadelphia, May 28-31 2003.
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections will be holding its 37th annual conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 28-31 May 2003. Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, the conference will bring together many of the world's experts in recorded sound history and technology for three days of lectures, demonstrations, and workshops on the history of recorded sound from its very beginnings to the most recent developments of the 21st century.
Philadelphia, famous for both its classical and its popular music, will be featured in many of the sessions. Two of Philadelphia's most renowned recording luminaries, Sigma Sound Studio owner Joe Tarsia, and Cameo/Parkway Records producer-songwriter Dave Appell, will be speaking at the conference. Cameo/Parkway, where Mr Tarsia was a chief engineer, was the center of Philadelphia popular music recording in the 1960s. The independent record company was the home of Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, and the Orlons. The great rhythm & blues hits of the 1970s, such as those by the Stylistics, the O'Jays, and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, were created at Tarsia's Sigma Sound Studios. It was at Sigma that The Sound of Philadelphia was born and bred.
Dr Carole Nowicke will review the work of the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble. The group, made up of members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, recorded a number of important albums in the 1960s, including one that was surpressed by music director Eugene Ormandy. Dr Nowicke will be joined by members of the ensemble.
Millions of Americans collect records for fun and profit, and two sessions will address the arcane world of record collecting and record collectors. Kurt Nauck, owner of one of the world's foremost auction houses for historical recordings, will discuss the value of vintage records and the economics of record collecting. Francis Davis, a Contributing Editor to the Atlantic Magazine, will give a talk titled "Record Collecting: The Mundane Obsession." Record collectors of all sorts will find their talks enlightening and informative. Noted author and producer Dick Spottiswood will talk on the widely acclaimed book Country Music Sources: A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music, which he co-authored with the late Guthrie Meade and his son Douglas S Meade. Called "this generation's most important reference book" by Charles Wolfe of the Institute for the Study of American Music, the session will look at the genesis of this new book that promises to change the study of vernacular American music.
Closing the conference will be the 13th annual ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. The awards honor the best research for the previous year and recognize the contribution these authors have made to documenting and preserving our cultural heritage. A pre-conference audio preservation workshop will address technological issues confronting recorded sound collections, offer advice on designing and managing an audio preservation program, and explain the permission process for sound recordings.
Early registration fees are US$100 for ARSC members and US$125 for non-members.
Registration materials, program schedule, and information on local arrangements are available on the conference web site at http://www.library.upenn.edu/ARSC/ [432]
ARSC, a non-profit professional and scholarly association, has been at the forefront of research into the history of recorded sound for nearly 40 years. The annual ARSC conference brings together leaders in the history and technology of recorded sound from all over the United States and the world. Information on ARSC is available on the web site at http://www.arsc-audio.org/index.php [342]
For more information contact:
General Information: Marjorie Hassen: (215) 898-2817,
hassen@pobox.upenn.edu [433]
Program Information: Samuel Brylawski: (202) 707-8465,
sbry@loc.gov [434]
This year's SEAPAVAA 8th Conference and General Assembly in Brunei Darussalam will be held from 19-23 May 2003 at the SEAMEO VOCTECH Conference Centre in Bandar Seri Begawan a self-contained complex offering a variety of well appointed hotel style accommodation, restaurant, library, and Internet facilities, and symposium and meeting venues. The conference will be hosted by Radio Television Brunei, the National Radio and Television Network in Brunei and a founding member of SEAPAVAA.
The conference theme this year, "Towards the Complete Archive: Practical Steps for Permanent Results", will explore the reality of the gap between theoretical ideal and pragmatic reality, and how archives can work overtime to narrow the gap. Topics include a discussion of the types of archives, the intellectual, strategic and managerial underpinnings necessary for long-term growth and survival, the four pillars of archiving, the challenges posed by technological change, issues in the profession, and some practical strategies that could be employed to narrow the gap.
Aside from the symposium, institutional visits and sightseeing excursions, and the opportunities to network and socialise, the conference will feature the SEAPAVAA Inaugural Screenings Evening where archives showcase important and interesting items from their own collections.
More information and the registration form are available on the SEAPAVAA web site:
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/9772/ [435]
There is a new round of European Commission Funding -- the Sixth Framework -- and it had its first Call for Proposals last December, with an April deadline. Successful applicants will be notified in June, and projects are likely to begin next December, says Richard Wright, Technology Manager for Projects at BBC Finance, Property & Business Affairs.
Within the Cultural Heritage Sector, there will probably be three or four large projects, in Digitisation/Restoration, Digital Library technology, and Museum Technology.
Three broadcasters ran a project on Preservation Technology under the 5th Framework: Presto, headed by BBC (UK), INA (France) and RAI (Italy). That project developed new technology for automatic signal monitoring in a 'preservation factory', allowing one operator to transfer four (or more!) audio or video formats simultaneously. This approach may sound like heresy, but it is the only way to reduce preservation costs significantly -- and the computer monitoring, if well done, could still keep quality high. PRESTO technology is now being adopted by the Library of Congress in their major audiovisual digitisation project.
But, who can afford a Preservation Factory? Only medium and large audio archives, and only quite large video archives -- and PRESTO really didn't provide a factory approach for film.
The objective of the new project is to provide affordable preservation technology for the entire audiovisual sector. There are two main approaches:
1) establishing pay-as-you-use preservation services, where small institutions can rent time on somebody else's factory
2) linking preservation to access, and developing a full package of "preservation, documentation, coding, website development" -- to open up collections for web access, for educational or commercial use.
PRESTO-SPACE will emphasise film. Audio is seen as the area where archives already know what to do and how to do it, where there are sophisticated vendors of technology specialised for audio archives, and where digitisation progress is already well established. Video is an area where the mass-production approach is known, but not widely taken because it means digitising to a server as a first stage (where the automatic monitoring takes place), and far too much video preservation remains tape-to-tape rather than using a server. Film is the weakest link: the cultural sector hasn't accepted digitisation as anything but an intermediate step, with "writing back to film" as the final step.
Unfortunately film will not be made forever, and could go out of production in as little as a decade (whenever Hollywood switches to 'digital cinema'). So PRESTO-SPACE will promote a cost-effective digital solution for actual preservation of at least 16mm B&W film, including developing an 'archive special' telecine specifically for this purpose. By preservation, we mean digitisation at sufficiently good quality that archives can throw away the old film.
Again, this is heresy, but in our view film-to-film preservation is not a long-term solution (because sooner or later blank film will go out of production), and not a cost-effective solution.
So, what's in it for IASA? The work we do linking preservation and access may be of interest, particularly linking preservation metadata with web site production, and whatever progress we can make on rights issues. We would like to promote common European policy on educational access and cultural institution access to audiovisual material. Part of using access to fund preservation is a general campaign to extend access, and eliminate artificial barriers (as has been done so effectively by the Mediathek in Vienna, for instance).
We will keep the Bulletin posted on our progress.
September 15-18, 2003
Library and Archives of Canada, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
Hosted by the Canadian Conservation Institute, the Library and Archives of Canada, and the Canadian Heritage Information Network, this symposium is intended to increase awareness of the issues surrounding electronic records by bringing expert and leading-edge opinions to a large audience including small and medium-sized archives, libraries, and museums. The program will be based on the chronological decisions that need to be made as electronic records come into heritage institutions. The focus will be on making decisions and finding practical solutions that can be implemented immediately. In addition to formal papers there will be a poster session and trade show. Tours, receptions, and a banquet are also planned. The symposium will appeal to anyone interested in the preservation of electronic records.
In conjunction with Symposium 2003, the organizers are planning a special event for the general public. Preservation Quest: How to preserve your home movies, CDs, videos, and more will take place Sunday, September 14, 2003 from 1 to 5 p.m. Designed to raise public awareness about the conservation issues surrounding their own personal electronic records, this fun, interactive, and informative afternoon will include short information sessions, tours of a state-of-the-art music studio, films, and booths were the public can talk to the experts.
For further information and/or to register for the symposium, visit CCI's Web site (www.cci-icc.gc.ca [436]) or contact:
Christine Bradley
Canadian Conservation Institute
1030 Innes Road
Ottawa ON K1A 0M5
tel.: (613) 998-3721
fax: (613) 998-4721
e-mail: symposium_2003@pch.gc.ca [437]
For a high-level presentation by Barbara Tillett at the Library of Congress on the Virtual International Authority File project, with a strong recommendation that cataloguers acquaint themselves with this new development, the likes of which have been in the dreams of cataloguers for decades (according to Chris Clark), have a look at www.iccu.sbn.it/TillettAF.ppt [438]
| Date | Event | Location |
| 2003 | ||
| March 14-15 | IASA Mid-year Board meeting | Pretoria, South Africa |
| March 22 25 | 114th AES Convention | Amsterdam |
| April 3 5 | Joint IASA/FIAT/DELOS meeting on digitisation | Helsinki, Finland (YLE) |
| May 19-23 | Second National Sound Archive Seminar | Mexico City |
| May 19-23 | SEAPAVAA 8th Conference and General Assembly | Brunei Darussalam |
| May 28-31 | 37th Annual ARSC Conference | Philadelphia, PA |
| July 6 - 11 | IAML Conference | Tallinn, Estonia |
| July 24-26 | Symposium: Sound Savings: Preserving Audio Collections | Austin, Texas |
| August 1 9 | 69th IFLA Council and General Conference Access point library |
Berlin |
| September 6-10 | FIAT/IFTA annual conference | Brussels, Belgium |
| September 21 25 | IASA ANNUAL CONFERENCE | Pretoria, South Africa |
| November | Caribbean Seminar | Jamaica |
| November 18 22 | AMIA Conference | Vancouver, Canada |
| 2004 | ||
| January June (to be confirmed) |
Joint Technical Symposium | Montreal, Canada |
| August 8 - 13 | IAML-IASA joint Annual Conference | Oslo, Norway |
| August 23 28 | ICA Annual Conference | Vienna |
| November 9 13 | AMIA Conference | Minneapolis, U.S. |
| 2005 | ||
| September (2nd half) | IASA Annual Conference | Barcelona, Spain |
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 [260].
Language editor: Dorothy van Tonder, SABC
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 46 BY 15 MAY 2003
Printed and produced in South Africa by Heypenni Gold
This is an important message from the local organising committee of the forthcoming annual conference in Pretoria in September:
PAYMENT FOR THE PRETORIA CONFERENCE
Please note that the payment details have changed. The revised procedure is as follows:
Payment can be made by electronic international bank transfer, or by simply sending a cheque.
Deposits by delegates in South Africa:
ABSA Hatfield
Bank Code: 3355-4515
Account no: 21400 00038
ACCOUNT REFERENCE: AD717 IASA Conference
Deposits by International delegates:
SWIFT ABSAZAJJCPT (one word)
Sort Code: 335545
Account no: 204388-USD-1051-01
ACCOUNT REFERENCE: AD717 IASA Conference
Contact person for all payments:
Leonie van Wyk
eMail: lvanwyk@postino.up.ac.za [439]
Tel No: +27 12 420-3651
Fax No: +27 12 420-2248
You need to specify that the transfer concerns the IASA 2003 Conference and include your name, address and institution. Please fax a copy of your deposit slip so that we can trace your payment.
No credit card transactions are possible.
This revised information has been updated on the web:
[http://www.iasa-web.org/iasa0009.htm] [440]
We look forward to seeing you in Pretoria!
In order to improve communication among the members, IASA has now set up a list server, kindly hosted by the National Library of Norway. By joining the list, you automatically receive e-mails with news from IASA, and the list makes it possible for members to ask and answer questions, and discuss items of relevance to our work.
Don't miss this opportunity to get in touch with colleagues all over the world. The IASA Listserv has been announced on our website - so far it has about 100 subscribers, and we hope all of the more than 400 members will join.
It is easy to subscribe to the IASA list by following these instructions carefully:
Send the message Subscribe Iasalist@nb.no [441] + your Full Name (Example: Subscribe Iasalist@nb.no [441] name surname) to Listserv@nb.no [442]
Only write Subscribe Iasalist@nb.no [441] + your Full Name in the body of the text. Don't add anything else. Leave the subject field blank.
You will receive a message to confirm your subscription. Just follow the instructions.
After a few seconds, you will receive a welcome message that begins
You have been added to the IASALIST mailing list (IASA-list) by Meg administrator@NB.NO [443]... .
You should save this message for future reference, especially if you are subscribing for the first time.
You are then subscribed and can start sending messages, questions, answers, etc to the listserv.
The rights of broadcasting organisations was the subject of a meeting Crispin Jewitt, past president of IASA, attended at WIPO in June. He was there as Convenor of CCAAA to bring some visibility to the concerns of audiovisual archives at an inter-governmental organisation that sets the agenda for national legislation in the field of intellectual property rights. Apart from governmental delegations, the back rows of the meeting chamber were populated by numerous accredited observers comprising mainly NGOs such as CCAAA, but also including a number of other inter-governmental organisations such as UNESCO. Prominent among the interests represented by the NGOs were musicians, actors, journalists, film producers, actors' and writers' agents, collection societies, music publishers, phonogram publishers, and broadcasters. IASA, together with the other AV archive associations and federations, was represented by CCAAA.
The principal business of the meeting was updating of the current regime of protection for broadcasters to take account of developments such as cable delivery and webcasting. The main issue in contention was whether to include webcasting in the scope of broadcasting for purposes of the business in hand. The Japanese delegation were prominent opponents of inclusion, whereas the USA felt strongly that it would be absurd to exclude webcasting from the first treaty of the 21st Century. A third group took the position that legislation should be framed only in response to demonstrable need, and that the need for legal protection of webcasters' rights had not yet been demonstrated.
So, where did the interests of audiovisual archive professionals figure in this debate? The Chairman's daily assessment of progress provided an opportunity to intervene on the subject of rights to restrict copying. CCAAA was able to present a short statement on the public interest in granting an exemption from this restriction for archival repositories that undertake preservation and collection management activities. Future progress will culminate in a diplomatic conference at which serious horse-trading will deliver a treaty for the due process of ratification by WIPO member national governments. A separate meeting on audiovisual issues in particular will be convened in November and CCAAA is looking forward to representing IASA's interests again on that occasion.
Joyce Jenje, 18 Wessex Drive, Box M 163, Mabelreign, HARARE, Zimbabwe.
Joyce says: 'I am a researcher in music/gender issues and media and I have collected a lot of material in the form of newspaper cuttings, interviews on audio and video and I feel I have to be a member of this organisation and meet with other archivists. I would also like to contribute stories in the IASA Journal'
District Six Museum, PO Box 10178, Caledon Square, 7905 Cape Town, South Africa who joins IASA because it would enable them to receive information that 'keeps our organisation up to date with what we consider to be very important archival practices. We would like to see how other similar institutions deal with their collections, how they overcome whatever problems they are faced with.'
Daniel Sbardella from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023
Monsieur Djama Amareh Meidal, Director General from the Direction nationale des Archives, présidence de la République, BP 387, Djibouti, République de Djibouti
Angeles del Río Campi, Calle Porvenir 1A -BjoB- Colmenarejo 28270, Madrid, Spain joins IASA because 'I am a documentary filmmaker'.
Shai Drori, pob 3733, 91036 Jerusalem, Israel
Shai is a sound engineer who specialises in restoration and conservation of archives. He would like to be informed of new information and studies about the subject.
Albrecht Gasteiner, Omniphon Music Production & Recording Studio, P O Box 323, CH- 4007 Basel, Switzerland
When asked why he would like to join IASA, Albrecht replied: 'Well, I transfer some 200 to 300 hours of archive-material per year from acetate, shellac, LP and tape of every possible and impossible flavour to digital data-carriers. To me, the determination to combine the best of musical and historical experience with cutting-edge technology is reason enough to join IASA.'
Albrecht Haefner writes that IASA's involvement in the Segundo Seminario Nacional de Archivos Sonoros y Audiovisuales, which was held from 19 to 23 May 2003 in Mexico City, Mexico, was quite successful.
At the 1st International Seminar Los Archivos Sonoros y Visuales en América Latina, 22-24 November 2001 in Mexico City, which was organised by Radio Educacion, one of Mexico's few public service radio stations, IASA already proved its competence through the participation of a wide range of experts who contributed either by reading a paper or holding a workshop. Just 18 months later, it was again Radio Educacion, with its Director-General Lidia Camacho as "spiritual mother" and driving force, that organized and hosted a 5-day follow-up event, this time aimed mainly at local attendance.
The Centro Nacional de las Artes was chosen as the venue, an ideal place for the seminar, a really lovely and quiet oasis amid the noisy and frenetic melée of Mexico City (which, with about 20 million residents, is said to be the biggest of the world's big cities). Concentrated on this spot you find a cinema, a conservatory, the national dance college, the national painting college, theatres, the national theatre college, a library, lecture halls, forums and more. These are surrounded by a palm-lined park, housed in separate modern buildings of different appearance but designed, quite obviously, by a single outstanding architect who, it seems, was allowed to have his or her artistic fling.
Thanks to Lidia Camacho, the visionary and energetic Directora General of Radio Educacion, Mexico is among the first in Latin America to become so actively aware, and to raise awareness, of the country's rich audiovisual heritage and its constant threat of deterioration and obsolescence. It was recognized that the need to take immediate preservation measures would be successful only if close co-operation between as many as possible of the local organisations such as fonotecas and other archival institutions could be initiated and realised. A long-term objective might be to establish a Fonoteca Nacional de Mexico.
As to the seminar proper: keynote speeches were delivered, including one by Joie Springer from UNESCO, who is well know to the AV archival community around the world, and introduced the Memory of the World programme to the auditory. The course of the daily programme was arranged in a very interesting way: paper sessions in the morning (9am - 2pm) and workshops in the afternoon (4pm - 8pm). Of course, digitisation was the main topic among all the seminar participants as well as the speakers.
IASA President Kurt Deggeller conveyed IASA greetings and presented the latest version of the IASA TC-03 document (announced as Código de ética de IASA), a Spanish version of which was launched thanks to our diligent Mexican colleague Fernando Osorio, who did the translation. Moreover, IASA's experience was excellently represented by the contributions of four experts, each of them reading a paper as well as leading a 4-hour workshop: Rainer Hubert, Austrian Mediathek in Vienna, dealt in his paper with the structure of, and the workflow in, his institution which has been using a digital mass storage system for the past few years. After defining the most basic terms used, his workshop repeated the subject in detail, concentrating on the problems arising from, and aiming at explaining the complexity of, such a system. Documentation specialist Olle Johannson, from the Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images in Stockholm, introduced the IASA Cataloguing Rules and gave examples of catalogue records. In his workshop, the participants had to do exercises in cataloguing sound and video, using copies of sleeves, covers and containers, and discussing solutions, problems, options, and variants. Dietrich Schueller's paper treated The Analogue-to-Digital Transfer - A Key Element of Digital Preservation. In his workshop, he went further into the matter by giving a lot of practical considerations. Albrecht Haefner read a paper on The bridge from Analogue to Digital: Challenges and Tendencies for the Digitization of Sound Archives. My workshop included two subjects: "The broadcast archive today and requirements of tomorrow" and "Content management and work flow in future radio sound archives". All the speakers confirmed that a surprisingly large number of workshop attendants had been listening attentively to the expositions (which were, according to Albrecht, sometimes not easy to follow).
Whereas the first three days of the seminar focused on audio matters, the fourth day was dedicated to video, taking a closer look at the actual situation of the TV archives in Mexico. The final day was devoted to the issue of how a standardized audiovisual documentation system could be achieved in Mexico. On this occasion, FIAT/IFTA member Annemieke de Jong from the Netherland's Institute for Sound and Vision presented the Spanish version of her book Metadata in the Audiovisual Production Environment. And Tedd Urnes from Norway (better known as Tedd Johanson, he was the FIAT Secretary-General and FIAT President in the 90s) presented a film on digitization of the sound archives of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
The seminar was perfectly organized down to the last detail, directed by Perla Olivia Resendiz (affectionately called Perlita owing to her tirelessness in seeing to everything).
Will there be a third Mexican seminar? It certainly looks as though there could be, if one talks with those responsible for maintaining the current direction, which might lead eventually in the far future to a Mediateca Nacional de Mexico. These activities will, beyond the Mexican borders, have positive effects on the archival situation in the Caribbean and Latin America region.
From Paris, Catherine Lacken, rapporteur at the fourth CCAAA annual meeting, reports that the CCAAA (Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archive Associations) held its fourth annual meeting in Paris on 21 March.
Subjects discussed at the meeting included the Joint Technical Symposium that is due to take place in Canada in the early summer of next year. AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) is organising this event with the support of the other CCAAA members. The venue and date are to be finalised shortly. Meanwhile the planning committee, which comprises representatives of all sev