Information Bulletin no. 41, April 2002

IASA Conference in Aarhus, Denmark: second call for papers

The Conference website is now available at http://www.statsbiblioteket.dk/iasa/iasa2002.html. 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

• Eva Fonss-Jorgensen, conference organising committee chairperson: email efj@statsbiblioteket.dk

• Elsebeth Kirring, local organiser: email ek@statsbiblioteket.dk

• Per Holst, local organiser: PER@dr.dk

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.

DAM survey

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: http://www.amianet.org/11_Information/11h1_DigitalQuest.html

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.

New members

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.

Third CCAAA meeting, in Paris

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.

The IASA Archives needs your papers

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

WIPO Internet treaties come into force

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

Norwegian Jazz Base

Trond Valberg writes:

The Internet portal called the Jazz Base http://www.jazzbasen.no/ 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, National Library of Norway

Preservation symposium 2003

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:

"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

British Library publications

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

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.

Screensound Australia posts online Glossary of Technical Terms

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.

Celebrating country music

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/.

IASA Website

The long-awaited new IASA website is expected to be launched during May. An announcement will be made initially by e-mail.

Calendar of events

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

© International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA)
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 42 BY 15 JUNE 2002