Annual Conference: Como, Italy (with IAML)
President: David G. Lance,Imperial War Museum, United Kingdom. Ulf Scharlau, Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Germany
Editor: Ann Schuursma (formerly Briegleb), Ethnomusicology Archives, Music Dept. UCLA, Los Angeles, USA. Dr. Dietrich Schüller, Phonogrammarchiv der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, Austria
Regular readers of the PHONOGRAPHIC BULLETIN may have noticed that the President's Column" failed to appear in the last issue of the journal. Its absence may be explained—though not justified-- by the demands of a move which have taken me from one side of the world to the other, and from a sound archive to an audio-visual archive. Adjusting to both changes has been preoccupying. The Association has been sustained by other Board members, since the President has not been a very effective contributor to its affairs in recent months.
My move to Australia has been interesting in two respects which may be worth sharing with the readers of this journal. First it has coincided with a fierce attempt to establish an Australian Institute of Recorded Sound or a National Sound Archive. Secondly, the move has presented me personally and directly with the problem of how best to organize a sound archive program within an audio-visual records department.
From the regularity with which it has been raised over the years, at our conferences and in our journal, it seems that the concept of the national sound archive is always with us-- illusory but endlessly enticing. To Patrick Saul, doyen of the concept, the key characteristic of such an institution lies in its autonomy. For a national sound archive to succeed, he has argued, it has to be separate from other types of records, the interest of which might otherwise dominate the medium or at least dilute the priority that would be accorded to sound documents. This fear seems to lie at the heart of current endeavors to separate the sound recordings collection from the National Library of Australia where, it is felt, the neglect which Saul apprehended is all too readily evidenced.
It is paradoxical that the moves towards sound archival autonomy in Australia should coincide with the merger of the British Institute of Recorded Sound into the British Library. Subsequent (to Patrick Saul) managements of BIRS concluded the Institute was not viable as an autonomous body, and sought the patrimony of a national library to sustain it, at more or less the same time that many Australian sound archivists drew the opposite conclusion. Do the national situations in the two countries, I wonder, differ so markedly that a concept which has failed in one can be successful in the other? Is the notion correct that a sound archive simply cannot coexist harmoniously within a library (and, if so, what now are the prospects of the National Sound Archive of the British Library?) or is there stronger evidence from BIRS' quarter of a century of autonomous but ill-resourced existence that a national sound archive is not sufficient unto itself? Why is it that library managements are most commonly presented as unsympathetic or uncomprehending as regards the needs of sound collections, while from audio archives no less subordinate within museums or documentary repositories the same cry is rarely heard?
Perhaps it is timely for IASA to consider and debate these questions once more, as either an encouragement or a warning to other countries that may find the national sound archive concept an attractive one. Alternatively, perhaps Christopher Roads and Peter Burgis may, through the pages of the BULLETIN, present their perspectives from countries where-- on the face of it-- the future of sound archivism is seen very differently.
It is not the place here to present the case for or against the concept of a national sound archive. Both have been argued in detail in previous issues of the BULLETIN and readers interested in the best analysis of each would be well advised to refer to articles by Saul and Schuursma in issues number 15 and 16.
Since my arrival in Australia, what has occupied my attention very much more than the question of autonomous national sound archives is how best to integrate a relatively small, specialized sound archive within a greater parent institution. A glance around the world of sound archives suggests that this is very much more of common concern within our profession. It is therefore, perhaps, even more timely that this subject will be debated within IASA during our conference at Como in September 1984.
I must confess that the subject was not, until very recently, of much more than academic interest to me. In moving from an institution with very large audio-visual collections to another with relatively small ones, questions of structure and organization have taken on a different light. In the former the sound collection and the staff to administer it are more or less large enough for a separate, medium focused archive to be viable (the question of whether it was also the best or the most effective way to run a sound archive within a multi-media institution was, in practice, rarely considered; such an arrangement was simply the status quo). Despite my previous experiences and prejudices, however, practical necessity forced me to reconsider the arrangement I had grown used to over more than a decade and the practices that went with it.
In posing the types of questions I have been reflecting on my new situation, it is tempting to hope that the speakers on this session of our Como conference will come up with answers that either confirm my own conclusions or alter them before it is too late!
One of the things which IASA has achieved during its existence has been to make sound archivists aware of the standards that exist in their profession. The need for an effective technical basis, for rigorous documentation systems and for well organized reference services are central to a professional operation. The skills that these requirements imply, however, are far from easy to secure and it is within the small archives— which are more typical of the world of sound archive activity than the great national institutions— that the greatest difficulty exists in achieving good professional standards. With collections not large enough to justify the appointment of well qualified technicians, specialized catalogers and reference staff with an intimate appreciation of their medium, how may small sound archives operate efficiently and effectively?
In a way it is a paradox that such archives look to the big national institutions for guidance. May it not be argued that the knowledge and experience of, say, the Canadian National Film, Television and Sound Archives (whose Director may be a panel speaker on the Como session) is of little relevance to the archivist responsible for a few thousand discs or some hundreds of hours of oral history recordings? Perhaps an understanding of the small archives' problems is a quantum leap too great for the administrator to make, whose collections are measured in the mill ions of items.
In principle, do small archives really have any choice in how they organize their activities? They must make the best use of the resources they have, a process in which flexibility and compromise are the key words. For them it is not so much the philosophic question of whether, for example, a book librarian is best suited to deal with the documentation problems of sound archive collections; it is more likely to be the situation that an information specialist has to operate across many and differing collections for lack of any other practical institutional alternative. If the sound researcher has to work in a book orientated institution, the sound archivist's problem is not really the procurement of specialized medium reference facilities; rather it is how his "reader" may study with maximum convenience to himself and the minimum disruption to users of other collections. To cite another example of choice, the small archive's "technician" role may fall, for example, to the film projectionist or the gramophone record librarian because they are the alternatives available in a given circumstance. Thus the human and physical resources that are available actually dictate the organizational methods that are used. In the end there are no options; only the obvious course to be recognized and accepted.
What common threads run between the need for proper standards in sound archivism, to which IASA educates us, and the utility which characterizes the practices of small archives? In leaving the question open I am anticipating the debate to come at Como during the session "Sound Archives: From Separation to Integration". Will the session, I wonder, address the problems of the small sound archives or-- under another guise-- be a continuation of the national sound archive story?
DGL
PRESIDENT'S COLUMN
The formal establishment of a Radio Archives Committee during the 1983 Washington conference should be seen as an important development, in our Association. Although recent conference programmes and issues of the PHONOGRAPHIC BULLETIN have included topics devoted to the interests of our radio colleagues, there has not been for some time any special forum for their deliberations. The radio archives sub-committee of IAML's Record Libraries Commission has not functioned for several years and the radio archivists group of the European Broadcasting Union has become similarly inactive. It is, therefore, very satisfying that our Association— with IAML's active collaboration and support—has been able to repair this gap.
In addition to the professional broadcasting issues which the new Committee may be expected to take up, it is my personal hope that the group will also serve as a bridge between their industry and the many research sound archives that have an interest in radio recordings and broadcasts. There being no editorial restrictions on what the "President's Column" may cover, I can permit myself the self-indulgence of suggesting some problems in this relationship which the Committee might care to consider.
There are many, practical working examples throughout the world of radio recordings being made available to non-broadcasters through research sound archives. These arrangements reflect a mutuality of interest whereby research archives carry out a public service role that most broadcasting organizations are neither constituted, financed nor interested in providing. In many countries, however, there are limitations to what the research archives can acquire. Frequently the response from the radio archive administrator to the research sound archivist is that the broadcasting organization has only contracted rights to broadcast and any other uses are, therefore, necessarily excluded. Frequently also, the follow-up request for names and addresses through which the research archive might itself seek clearances for acquisition and use is also denied.
While not wishing to diminish in any way the great lengths that many broadcasting organizations go to in order to facilitate the widest possible use of the recordings they produce, there may be a role for the Radio Sound Archives Committee to encourage the extension and systematization of this practice.
Too often, I suspect, a negative response to requests for the identification of rights owners is based on one or the other of the assumptions that they would not wish to be bothered by the research archive or that any such approach would be unfruitful. The former seems to diminish the importance of a wider access; the latter may be to abrogate the decision (my personal experience with spoken - word recordings is that more than eighty percent of rights owners are flattered by the request for wider research access and gladly accede to it). On the question of contracts many research archivists, of whom the late Harold Spivacke (Library of Congress) was among the most forceful, have argued that broadcasting organizations have a wider duty than programming that should be served by the recognition of a public interest in their material through contracts formulated at least to present their contributors with the question of research use in recognized non-broadcasting centres.
In this debate control is of the essence. Here IASA might usefully take note of the tight control which the International Federation of Film Archives has managed effectively to achieve, whereby the distribution of a much more commercially valuable commodity than sound recordings has been possible through an exclusive and tightly knit international organization. The notion of "recognized" research repositories may combine security with wider dissemination.
A further refinement in the relationship between radio and research archives, that might with advantage exercise our new Committee, is to consider encouraging among broadcasting organizations the more extensive authorization of off-air copying by non-broadcasting archives. It is a paradox that while this right is widely denied to archives that would undoubtedly exercise it with scrupulous responsibility, it remains open by pirating to individuals and companies that extensively abuse it. In the context of my present arguments, however, the main point is that the needs of scholars and educators are not the best served, even where public access to radio recordings is possible, by the availability only of material that is preserved by broadcasting criteria mainly for programming purposes. The research archivist undoubtedly has a contribution to make in the field of selection which would probably be most effectively exercised by the controlled extension of off-air copying.
Traditionally the dialogue between radio and research archives has focused on what the latter seeks to acquire from the former. While the broadcaster may acknowledge in principle that he also can benefit from the relationship in production terms, the inclination let alone the practice of doing so is underdeveloped. There is, it seems, a professional disinclination among radio producers to use material they have not themselves spawned. My belief in the shortsightedness of this attitude is based on the direct experience of having many times heard broadcasts based on material of an inferior quality to that held in my own collection. The reality is that recording by research archives is often based on more careful preparation and more extensive fieldwork than the broadcaster has the time or the budget to indulge. Equally, the research recordist will frequently have had access to more authentic, authoritative or contemporary sources than are available to his radio counterpart.
Relevance and accessibility are, of course, major concerns to the producer but, even where these criteria can be met, research archives remain under exploited in programming. It is too much to hope that our Radio Archives Committee may re-educate its present generation of producers. However, it might be instrumental in drawing to their attention the richness of material that exists outside the radio archive collections.
As I confessed earlier, these thoughts are a self-indulgence. In its new existence I wish the radio archivists' group a rewarding and successful future and look forward to the contributions it can undoubtedly make to the international sound archive community as a whole.
DGL
PRESIDENT'S COLUMN
The joint meeting of IASA and the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML), which took place in Como/ Italy from September 2 to 7, is now over. Fortunately many members of IASA were able to take part in this years' conference. We met a number of colleagues from abroad, especially from the USA, Australia, Japan and New Zealand, and naturally many European colleagues.
The most important event for IASA in Como was the election of the new Executive Board. It consists of:
PRESIDENT: Dr. Ulf Scharlau, Head of the Archives of Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Stuttgart, Germany,
VICE PRESIDENTS: Peter Burgis, Director of the Sound Radio Archives in the Australian Film and Sound Archives, Canberra, Australia, David Lance, past President of IASA and Curator of Audiovisual Records in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia, and Dietrich Lotichius, Head of the Sound Archives of Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Hamburg, Germany
EDITOR: Dr. Dietrich Schüller, Head of the Phonogrammarchiv der Ősterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, Austria
SECRETARY GENERAL: Helen P. Harrison, Media Librarian of the Open University Library, Milton Keynes, England,
TREASURER: Anna Maria Foyer, Head of the Grammophone Library of the Swedish Radio, Stockholm, Sweden.
The new Board includes experienced "oldtimers" as well as new members, a combination which may guarantee continuity for IASA as well as the ability to face new challenges.
At this point I should like to thank all those members who have left the Board after years of work for IASA. This means especially thanks to Ann Schuursma, the former Editor, to Dr. Rolf Schuursma, who has been Secretary, Editor, President and Vice President of IASA, and to Poul von Linstow, Membership Secretary. By unanimous decision of the Executive Board and the General Assembly Rolf Schuursmy was awarded an Honorary Member of IASA. I should also like to thank my predecessor David Lance, whose effort for IASA was great.
In Como the election of IASA officers was for the first time based on the revised constitution of 1983. There is one difficulty of our constitution: there are no definite regulations about the election procedure when there is only one candidate for a given office. Therefore the present constitution allows different interpretations. The new Board will make suggestions for a constitutional change before the next elections.
During the Como conference IASA was very busy. Numerous open sessions, meetings of committees and two general assemblies were held. We heard a lot about the work of committees and about the work of the National and Affiliated Branches. Two new IASA committees were established: one dealing with discographic problems, the other revealing its purpose in its name: History of IASA Committee (chairman: Dietrich Lotichius). The aim of this committee is to collect documents of all kinds concerning IASA history. Although IASA is only 15 years old, there may already be difficulty in finding and keeping appropriate documents. I would therefore like to encourage those of you who have received letters, photos, minutes, programmes of meetings, articles in newspapers, etc., which deal with IASA matters, to send either the original or copies to the new chairman.
The Association Francaise des Archives Sonores (AFAS), until now a national branch of IASA, asked the Executive Board for a change of status to an Affiliated Organisation. The IASA Board and the General Assembly have consented. IASA is strongly interested in good cooperation with AFAS. We assume that AFAS will continue its work within France and will work cooperatively with IASA in the same friendly manner as before. Official talks about an affiliation were also held between IASA and the American Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC). The Executive Board has discussed and consented to these agreements at the final session in Como, and it remains for the General Assembly 1985 to ratify the decision.
During the past year IASA has taken part in many international meetings. Meanwhile the cooperation of IASA with other associations in the field of libraries and audio visual media (such as IAML, IFLA, FIAT, FIAF and UNESCO) has become very close.
Finally I would like to talk to you about a problem which begins to worry me- a problem which is not only typical for IASA but for other associations as well. There is a small group of members who take responsibility for the association, who do the work, who push things forward, and who deliver talks at the annual meeting. These people are the people who form IASA's image. It seems as if our constitution puts the whole responsibility into the hands of few. I encourage all members to support IASA with their ideas, their imagination and their activity especially within the committees. Don't you think that your archival problem might interest your colleagues? Perhaps we could help you to solve your problems. We encourage you to be active members, to bring forth your ideas for IASA's programmes and planning. Take care that IASA does not become an academic debating club, but will stay as lively as the association presented itself in Como.
Ulf Scharlau
