Information Bulletin no. 61, January 2009
Contemplate the Gods at the 2009 IASA conference in Athens, Greece
When IASA was founded 40 years ago few could imagine the realities with which today’s audiovisual archives are confronted. As we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the digital age for archives, libraries and museums is not an option, but a reality. Huge digitisation projects have been or are being implemented while at the same time the production and distribution of the new content is mostly digital.
What is the role of the audiovisual archives in this new technological environment? How distinct are the roles of the various cultural heritage institutions? What methods and techniques will ensure the accountability and continuity of the audiovisual content? How have users’ expectations been changed and what strategies have been employed to meet them? What is the role of international organisations and of the IASA in this new environment? How can the National Archives of big and the smallest countries cope with this new environment?
These are the questions that will be explored from 20 – 25 September in the ancient city of Athens, Greece, at the 2009 IASA conference.
The conference will be hosted by The Hellenic National Audiovisual Archive (HeNAA) and convened by its managing director, George Bolanis. This relatively new institution, established in 2006, collects, archives, physically safeguards, manages, maintains, preserves, processes, provides access and utilizes audiovisual and born digital material with informational, news, historical, political and in general social and cultural content related to the heritage of Greece and Hellenism in general. See their website at http://www.avarchive.gr/.
The call for papers has already been circulated and by the time you read this bulletin you will hopefully already have met the abstract submission deadline of 20 February.
Please visit the conference website at http://www.iasa2009.comto keep abreast of venue, accommodation and registration details as well as the conference programme.
In the meantime note the conference contact details:
CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT:
Erasmus Conferences Tours & Travel S.A.
1, Kolofontos & Evridikis str. - 161 21 Athens, Greece,
Tel.: +30 210 72.57.693, 72.57.531
Fax: +30 210 72.57.532, 72.59.347
For registration information please contact the Registration Department: register@iasa2009.com
For accommodation information please contact the Hospitality Department: hospitality@iasa2009.com
For information about the abstract submission please contact: abstracts@iasa2009.com
For any general query please contact: info@iasa2009.com
Travel Grants for IASA Members
The deadline for applications for travel grants to attend the IASA Conference in Athens is 31 March 2009.
IASA’spolicy is to encourage members to apply for travel grants to enable their attendance at the annual conference. Normally, 50% of travelling costs (cheapest standard class return air or train fare between the applicant’s home and the conference venue) will be met. These grants are subject to the Association’s financial position, and applications are prioritised according to the following factors:
1. Applicants who are to present a paper at the annual conference will be given higher priority and will have a better chance of receiving a travel grant than other applicants.
2. IASA may, in addition, approach the local conference organiser and request that the grantee’s registration fee be waived. The decision in each case will be up to the conference organiser.
3. Applications must be sent in writing (by letter, fax or e-mail) to the Secretary General in response to the announcement of travel grants as published in the IASA Information Bulletin and on the IASA Listserv. Applications must include the full amount of the travelling costs in US$ or Euros, confirmed e.g. by an official travel agency.
4. Application 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.
5. Accommodation and subsistence costs will not be considered.
6. IASA will not pay grants in advance of travel.
7. The Secretary General will check all the applications received by the appointed deadline, and submit them to the Executive Board for discussion and approval.
8. Applicants will be informed as soon as possible of the result after the Board’s decisions have been reached.
Costs will be reimbursed on presentation of copies of the travel documents by the grantee to the IASA Treasurer during the conference. Otherwise, payment will be made after the conference, and the method of payment will be specified in the application, including to whom monies are to be paid, and how this will be done.
IASA travel grants are intended for members only; accompanying persons are not eligible.
The Board will reply to applications before 30 April 2009. Please fill in the travel grant application form, which can be found on the IASA website. For further information in the meantime contact the IASA Secretary General, Ilse Assmann at e-mail: assmanni@sabc.co.za
Half-price institutional membership for some countries
Many countries now qualify for half-price institutional membership in IASA! See which countries qualify and what the rates are at: http://www.iasa-web.org/membership-rates
IASA expands… IASA welcomes…
Melody Mataranyika is a new individual member from Zimbabwe who explains she has ‘a passion for audiovisual archives so wants to participate and contribute to the field of archiving’. We look forward to her contributions.
SevaBall is a new full individual member from Knoxville, Tennessee. Seva has been actively archiving for several years, including work funded by The Recording Academy (Grammy Foundation). Recent projects have included the Lewiston Archive (David Lewiston) for the Library of Congress. Seva is also a member of the AES, NARAS, and ASRC.
H. M. Gunderatne Banda Banda joins IASA as an institutional member from the National Institute of Education in Colombo, Sri Lanka, which actively produces audio video programmes on education for the benefit of the schools.
Carla Teixeira, who is a Recorded Sound Archivist for the National Film and Sound Archive (Australia), has become a full individual member of IASA.
Jaekyung Kim, from Seoul in the Republic of Korea, has taken out full individual membership with IASA in order to learn and share knowledge and skills in audio archiving.
Julio Pelosi is a new full individual member based at the Videoson company in Uruguay.
ChitaluNamutowe is a new full individual member from Zambia who works within the TV/Broadcasting sector.
Laura Cristina Torres Martínez is a new full individual member from Mexico based at the Escuela Nacional de Biblioteconomía y Archivonomía (National School of Library and Archive Sciences) where she teaches on an audiovisual archiving course for which she is in need of publications and resources.
Maria Papathanasiou, works as an archivist in the World Trade Organisation, where she is based in Switzerland. She has joined IASA as an associate individual to further her interest in audiovisual archiving.
Paul Turney, of Paul Turney Recording Limited T/A Sirensound based in the UK, has become a full individual member to further his involvement in audiovisual archiving, building on 8 years as an external contractor to the British Library Sound Archive.
XilonenMaría del Carmen Luna Ruíz, from Mexico City, has taken out full institutional membership on behalf of her institution the ComisiónNacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indigenas. The Comisión holds more than 300,000 items (films, videos, sound recordings, photographs) relating to indigenous matters, with the oldest item dating back to 1890. Staff there would like to share experiences and receive training on the most recent advances in conservation issues for audiovisual formats.
JeppeChristensen works with the audiovisual collections at the Københavns Stadsarkiv (Municipal Archive of Copenhagen) in Denmark. He will also act as a consultant for other Municipal Archives on audiovisual matters. He has recently left the Danish National Archive, which he spoke about at the IASA 2008 conference in Sydney.
ZeljkaRadovinovic is a musicologist and librarian at The Academy of Music in Zagreb, Croatia, and also a postgraduate student of information sciences at Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Zagreb. The theme of Zeljka’s thesis is the preservation of Croatian national sound heritage.
Marcus Ó Conaire works in a consultative capacity with the Acadamhna Ollscolaíochta Gaeilge (Ireland), an organization that is in the process of initiating a New Media archive centered around Irish-language material. Marcus has become an associate individual member of IASA.
AkisTriandafillou has become a full individual member of IASA. He works at Atman Media Productions based in Athens, Greece, where he specializes in audio and other recorded media.
Michael Fingerhut is based at IRCAM in Paris. He has been in charge of the sound archives of IRCAM since 1995 (digitization, archival and preservation, distribution) and has been involved in French national projects regarding the digitization of musical heritage since 2004.
Georgia Garbo-Noel is heavily involved in audiovisual archiving in the Caribbean region and is keen to develop professional level training and awareness through IASA. Georgia is the Information Management Officer, Records responsible for the ECM and RIM programme of the National Gas Company in Trinidad and Tobago, which has a growing AV collection; executive council member of the Caribbean Region of the ICA with strong focus on Electronic Records; multimedia archivist for a large religious group; and has a consultancy and conducts training in RIM and ECM.
UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage – ‘field’ reports
Many of us organised events to acknowledge the UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage on 27 October 2008. See some of the events that were planned on the CCAAA website. Other notices in have come from:
1. Judith Gray (American Folklife Center, Library of Congress) who reports that Alec McLane, the curator for Wesleyan’s World Music Archives made an announcement of the World Day at the general membership meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology (The SEM hosted its 53rd annual conference at Wesleyan University, Connecticut from 25 to 28 October. Although only about half the registrants attended the general meeting, this number still represented around 450 individuals.
2. Gunnel Jönsson (Swedish Broadcasting Resources) reports that staff celebrated with chocolate cake and non-alcoholic cider. The customers received candy.
Harvard Sound Directions Toolkit available for download
Go to http://www.hcl.harvard.edu
The Harvard Sound Directions Toolkit, a suite of nearly 50 software tools with the potential to revolutionize the work of audio preservationists by automating their most time consuming and repetitive tasks is now available for download.
Created by Loeb Music Library’s Audio Preservation Services at Harvard University, the toolkit was developed as part of Sound Directions, a joint project undertaken by Harvard and Indiana University with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Toolkit follows the publication of “Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation,” an internationally acclaimed report on audio preservation techniques. Most of the work automated by the Toolkit “would normally be done by hand,” HCL Audio Engineer David Ackerman said. “You can spend 15-20 minutes manually interleaving two channels of a large sound file into a new file. With the toolkit the function is performed in the background and you can continue to work on other things, which is great for productivity.”
Ackerman developed the Toolkit with programmer Robert La Ferla. The program they produced works through a command line interface, in which users enter specific commands. The Toolkit also allows users to write scripts – essentially small programs – that string several commands together, freeing up engineers to perform other tasks. “While the idea of automating repetitive tasks is not new, the ability to have some concise, targeted command line applications that can easily be scripted was something that seemed pretty fresh,” Ackerman said, of the Toolkit. The ability to write programs that mix and match the various tools, he added, gives users the ability to configure the software in thousands of possible ways.
Ackerman uses the tools himself, and said they’ve had a dramatic impact on his group’s work. “I’d say it’s probably doubled our throughput,” he said. As an example, he pulled up an audio file which had earlier been transferred from audio tape into digital format. In total, 86 processes had been run on the tape, but just four were carried out manually. The rest were completely automated by the Toolkit.
While Harvard engineers created the Toolkit, Indiana staff produced the Field Audio Collection and Evaluation Tool, or FACET, a software package which ranks audio field collections based on preservation condition and level of deterioration.
Download the Sound Directions Toolkit from the Harvard College Library Audio Preservations Services website:
http://www.hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/
loebmusic/aps/sound_directions.html
or through the Sound Directions website:
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/sounddirections/
Vietnam Film Institute’s Film-In-School project – request for assistance
Since 2006, IASA members, the Vietnam Film Institute (VFI), in collaboration with the Swedish Film Institute (SFI), have conducted the Film-in-School project in schools at the primary level in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam. Within the framework of the project, they have arranged screenings, analysis and drawings after films, using film as an educational tool in the school.
The project is about to finish and one of the main concerns for continuation of the program is to locate proper film resources for the children / pupils (at primary level) to make use of.
If anyone is able to recommend any partners who may be able to support the program with suitable films (feature and animation films) for this non-commercial purpose, please contact Nguyen Thi Lan (Director, VFI). The VFI will follow up any requirements from the producers.
Nguyen Thi Lan (Director)
Vietnam Film Institute
523 Kim Ma Street- Ba Dinh - Hanoi - Vietnam
Tel.: (84-4) 38343451
Fax: (84-4)37719193
Email: yen_vfi@yahoo.com
The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images (SLBA) merges with the National Library of Sweden (KB)
The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images (SLBA) ceased to exist as a public authority in its own right at the end of 2008. As of 1 January 2009, it began to operate as the Department of Audiovisual Media under the National Library of Sweden (KB). It can also be announced that Sven Allerstrand has retired as of December 2008 from his position as Director General of the SLBA.
The merger of KB and the SLBA was announced by the Government last spring. The two public authorities have similar remits and face considerable challenges, especially on the technical front.
“The merger is a natural consequence of the changing media world,” said Sven Allerstrand, former Director General of the SLBA. “Moving images, sound and text are today woven into new forms of media that make it impossible to uphold the former institutional boundaries. Gathering, archiving and making accessible our digital cultural heritage entails huge challenges, which are best met with a common organisation. The SLBA has maintained a user-perspective for many years, and this move will definitely be of benefit to researchers. [The SLBA is] looking forward to developing the close relationship with KB that we’ve been nurturing for the past few years.”
Press and information officer: Göran Konstenius, +46 (0)8 783 37 76
Email: goran.konstenius@slba.se
Homepage: www.slba.se
CCAAA news
1st Meeting of the International NGOs on Convergence of Libraries Archives and Museums
International NGOs bonding for convergence of Libraries, Archives and Museums.
On November 21st 2008 in Paris the International Federation of Library Institutions and Associations (IFLA) and the Bibliothèque national de France co-hosted the 1st meeting of international associations for the cultural heritage sector to advance the convergence agenda from within the Libraries, Archives, Museums, Monuments and Sites community at non-government organizations (NGO) level. This meeting was initiated by IFLA President, Prof. Dr. Claudia Lux following initial discussions at the 2008 IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Quebec City, Canada, in August.
IFLA, together with the International Council on Archives (ICA), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA) have a longstanding relationship of cooperation and now agreed to intensify possibilities of cooperation between their organisations in those areas where libraries, archives and museums have mutual interests and activities.
All parties recognized the mutual benefits of stronger cooperation on the theme of convergence from a strategic, financial and political point of view, and underlined the importance of moving towards a mutual agenda to strengthen advocacy for the role and position of libraries, archives and museums in the knowledge society of today and tomorrow, and to safeguard the world’s cultural written, visual, and built heritage.
Areas explored to intensify international cross-sectoral cooperation are: advocating on copyright and intellectual property rights issues; the protection and recovery of cultural heritage worldwide (Blue Shield); preservation and collection security and digitisation (including the aspects of digital continuity, the development of global digital libraries and standards) and information literacy. Improving knowledge dissemination and knowledge sharing, especially in the framework of WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) and UNESCO are considered important mutual goals. The practical agenda for 2009 that was drawn up during this meeting further indicates the need to define priorities and practical strategies and to set a time frame for future years.
For the coming two years, the Secretariat will be hosted by IFLA, at IFLA Headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. The International NGO Working Group on Convergence is strongly supported by several stakeholders, such as the Conference of Directors of National Libraries (CDNL) and the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI).
Founding Conference of the Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield – ANCBS
This meeting took place on December 7th and 8th in The Hague. ICBS, the International Committee of the Blue Shield of which IASA is a member through CCAAA (the other members are IFLA, ICA ICOM and ICOMOS) will think over its role in the new constellation during a meeting in January.
Catherine Lacken, Rapporteur
(catherine.lacken@swr.de)
Kurt Deggeller, Convener
(kurt.deggeller@memoriav.ch)
IASA member from Zambia at the British Library
Naomi Chisali, from the National Archives of Zambia in Lusaka, began her 10 week internship at the British Library on 5 January 2009. Naomi attended the IASA conference in Riga in 2007 but was not able to attend in Sydney due to lack of funds. She is hoping to attend in Athens in September, where perhaps we shall hear more about her experiences in London and catch up on work being done on audiovisual collections in Africa.
Go to the British Library’s internship programme website to find out more.
IASA Research Archive Section – report to the General Assembly II, Sydney 2008
44 people attended the Research Archive Section meeting in Sydney on Monday 15th September. After the opening paper on archiving challenges in post-conflict Liberia (a paper by Proscovia Svärd, presented in her absence by Grace Koch), section chair Tony Seeger asked everyone to introduce themselves and to identify the 2nd and 3rd most pressing needs of their institutions (the 1st need presumably being financial support in all cases). Needs identified (among others) included staffing (technicians with analog expertise, cataloguers with subject expertise); equipment (esp. due to format obsolescence); adequate handling of increasing access, user expectations or repatriation; more guidance for intellectual property issues (esp. for online materials); institutional support, and advocacy for the long term. The problem most frequently addressed might be summed up in one phrase: “How to work efficiently with the very large amounts of (manifold) material being acquired by our institutions?”
Under “old business”, we described the current status of the statement of ethical principles. The current draft of the ethics report (March 2008) had been sent by Secretary General Gunnel Jönsson to all committee and section officers prior to the annual conference (via email, July 25, 2008). As agreed during the meeting of the Executive Board with the officers of committees, sections and branches (on September 19), comments are still welcome and should be sent to Christiane Fennesz-Juhasz (christiane.fennesz-juhasz@oeaw.ac.at) by February 15, 2009. The members of the original subcommittee will continue their work, and will highlight potential changes in the next draft of the ethics statement.
Under “new business” of our section meeting, we discussed the possibilities of sponsoring a workshop in Athens on legal and ethical issues. Knowing that we cannot create one-size-fits-all training, we may be able to solicit case studies, possibly invite a speaker from an organization like WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), and ask for suggested solutions.
We then held elections for section officers, since Anthony Seeger and Judith Gray are at the end of their terms. Alan Burdette (Archives of Traditional Music, Indiana University), North America, was elected as Secretary, and Diane Thram (ILAM – International Library of African Music), South Africa, as Vice Chair. Christiane Fennesz-Juhasz (Vienna Phonogrammarchiv), Europe, will serve as Chair.
Respectfully submitted,
Anthony Seeger, Chair
Christiane Fennesz-Juhasz, Vice Chair
Judith Gray, Secretary
IASA Branch report – MAA Media Archives Austria
Report to the General Assembly I, September 16, 2008
I am giving this report on behalf of Rainer Hubert, chair of the Austrian branch of IASA, Media Archives Austria (www.medienarchive.at).
During the last year we prepared the proceedings of the symposium which took place on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of MAA at the end of 2006. Currently in print, our festschrift includes contributions by representatives of all major Austrian AV archives and by other experts in the field. It deals with the topics “Chances and risks of digital archiving and long-term storage”, “Lobbying and networking”, and “Media archives in the Internet era”.
Recently, Media Archives Austria commented in a letter to the Austrian Ministry of Justice, on the proposal to extend the term of protection for performers and phonogram producers from 50 to 95 years, which was adopted by the European Commission in July 2008 (cf. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0464:FIN:EN:PDF). The MAA is of course strongly opposed to the extension of the term and pointed at the urgent necessity of exceptions for archives, libraries and museums regarding the non-commercial use, in the digital domain, of cultural heritage in their care.
At present, we are preparing our comment on the European Commission’s Green Paper on "Copyright in the Knowledge Economy”
(http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/docs/copyright-infso/greenpaper_en.pdf), which was adopted also in July this year, and includes proposals of exceptions for archives and museums regarding digitisation and availability of digitised works.
Together with the German/Swiss-German Branch of IASA the MAA will hold a joint annual meeting from November 7 to 8, in the Technical Museum in Vienna.
End of June, five member archives of MAA jointly responded to a call for interest by the Austrian Research Fund concerning a new Funding Programme: NIKE – Network Initiative Cultural Heritage. Within the NIKE framework, joint project networks will be funded which aim at accessing, analysing and preserving holdings of the cultural heritage. In order to ensure, for the scientific community, free and sustainable access to both original data and project results, digitisation is likewise promoted. The NIKE programme will be launched with a first proper call by the beginning of 2009.
The Austrian Mediathek, the TV archives of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), the Sound and Media Archive of the Styrian Museum Joanneum, the Filmarchiv Austria, and the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv will jointly submit an application for a project network focusing on endangered audio-visual holdings from the 1950s to 1970s. We hope we will be successful.
Christiane Fennesz-Juhasz
Phonogrammarchiv
Centre for Linguistics and Audiovisual Documentation
AustrianAcademyof Sciences
Recovery of 130-year-old tinfoil recording
Since 2003, the British Library Sound Archive has been a partner in the Surface Scanning of Archived Sound Recordings research project at the University of Southampton. Professor John McBride, the project’s manager and Nigel Bewley, head sound engineer in the Sound Archive, discuss the project. This podcast [at http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/downloads/audioarchive2008.html released in mid-December 2008] features audio transferred from the British Library’s earliest object containing recorded sound, a Thomas Alva Edison tinfoil recording of c. 1877, unplayable by conventional means. Although the audio is of poor quality, it’s extraordinary that the 130-year-old recording survives and is recoverable at all.
International Preservation News all about audiovisual collections
In case you haven’t seen it, the latest issue of International Preservation News is all about the preservation of audiovisual collections: http://www.ifla.org/VI/4/news/ipnn46.pdf.
The issue is subtitled: Still Images & Sound and features the following articles:
Introduction
Socio-technical and socio-cultural challenges of audio and video preservation
– Dietrich Schüller
Images
Albert Kahn, des images pour la paix: rappels historiques et choix de conservation– collective article from the Albert-Kahn Museum
Digitization of transparencies– Pierre Hauri
Sound
The Charles Cros Collection– Dominique Théron
Digitization of sound archives at the National Library of France– Xavier Sené
Imaging historical voices– Carl Haber
Preservation of audiovisual collections in developing countries
South East AsiaPacific: Focus on SEAPAVAA – Ray Edmondson
The UNESCO Jikji Prize and the José Maceda Collection– Ramon P. Santos and Dietrich Schüller
Challenges of preserving and conserving audiovisual collections in sub-Saharan Africa –Dr Ruth Abankwah
African audio-visual archives: bleak or bright future. A case study of the situation at the National Archives of Zimbabwe –Ishumael Zinyengere
EUROPEANA prototype launched with overwhelming interest
On 20th September 2008, EU Commission President Manuel Barroso, EU Commissioner Viviane Reding and French Culture and Communication Minister Christine Albanel launched the http://www.europeana.eu/portal/en portal at the National Royal Library in Brussels. The event was very successful, with all European ministers of Culture attending and a lot of interest of the world’s press. For those not yet familiar with Europeana: Europeana is a multimedia internet portal that combines Europe’s digital collections of four different cultural domains, i.e. libraries, archives, museums and audiovisual collections, into one digital website. It offers direct access to digitized books, audio and video material, films, photos, paintings, maps, manuscripts, newspapers and archival documents that are Europe’s cultural heritage. Anyone interested can search and explore different collections in Europe‘s cultural institutions in their own language in virtual form, without having to visit multiple sites or countries.
On the first day of its launch, the Europeana website was overwhelmed by interest shown by millions of users. Experts had anticipated up to 5 million hits per hour on the site, the real interest however was 3 times as strong; the traffic increased in the afternoon and reached 13 million hits per hour (4,000 concurrent users!). On the one hand this caused unexpected difficulties since the massive interest slowed down the service so much that the site had to temporarily be taken down although the server capacity had been doubled. On the other hand it was an encouraging sign that citizens in Europe and around the world have such a great interest in Europe’s digital library. The Europeana management is testing newly configured hardware. The website includes this notice, explaining that “The site is open for you to use but the user experience may not be optimal in this test phase, eg.: the number of users will be limited in peak times.”
At its beginning the Europeana prototype gives direct access to more than 2 million digitized items. Over 1,000 cultural organizations from across Europe have provided materials. However, to make Europeana successful in the long term, the amount of searchable objects should significantly grow over the coming years, the speed of this growth depending largely upon the pace of digitization in the EU member states. In support of that, some € 119 million in total will be available in the coming two years for digitization actions through the EU’s overall research programme (FP7) and its Competitiveness and Innovation Programme. The objective of the European Commission is that in 2010 the number of digitized works available online through Europeana should reach 10 million.
So far, audiovisual contributions within Europeana are totally underrepresented. Therefore, I would like to encourage all European institutional IASA members to contribute their audiovisual collections. Europeana is a unique occasion for content holders to open their collections and gain a completely new visibility. Benefits are
› Increase the degree of familiarity across Europe and even worldwide;
› Increase the number of users;
› Get new audiences;
› Increase revenues.
For organizations willing to contribute their digital contents, basic instructions, mapping aids, a technical requirement questionnaire and specifications of semantic elements are available. Visit http://www.europeana.eu/for more information.
Albrecht Häfner
PrestoPRIME – new EU project to explore digital preservation framework
PrestoPRIME is a 12 million Euro project to research and develop means of ensuring the permanence of digital audiovisual objects in archives, libraries, museums, and collections. It starts in January 2009, runs for 4 years, and is funded by the European Union under the Seventh Framework Program (FP7).
Program partners include three of the major European broadcasting agencies: the French national broadcaster, Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA) - which is coordinating the program - Italy’s national broadcaster, Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI), the British Broadcasting Corporation, (BBC) and several other leading technology innovators from Europe.
This description can be found on the FP7 EU project website:
“Audiovisual content collections are undergoing a transformation from archives of analogue materials to very large stores of digital data. As time-based digital media and their related metadata are edited, re-used and re-formatted in a continuously evolving environment, the concept of the unique original loses its meaning and we require dynamic processes that can preserve indefinitely not only the audiovisual signal but also its evolving associations, context and rights. PrestoPRIME will research and develop practical solutions for the long-term preservation of digital media objects, programmes and collections, and find ways to increase access by integrating the media archives with European on-line digital libraries in a digital preservation framework. This will result in a range of tools and services, delivered through a networked Competence Centre.
The project will deliver a preservation framework, complete with risk management and content quality and corruption control measures, capable of supporting audiovisual signal migration and multivalent preservation methods using federated services for distributing and storing content. It will create a metadata conversion and deployment toolkit, with a novel and efficient process for metadata vocabulary alignment, annotation and services for user-generated content metadata. A rights management system and audiovisual fingerprint registry will make it possible to track and manage content at all stages of its lifecycle, in all contexts of use.
The project will demonstrate and evaluate an integrated prototype of the preservation Framework and software in the networked Competence Centre. The Competence Centre and the European Association for Audiovisual Archives will be established to provide business models, registry and best practice services and training”.
Source: http://soundresources.ning.com/profiles/blogs/prestoprime-launched
Gramophone Archive available online
The Gramophone has set up a free Web archive with all the contents of the magazine including advertisements from the first issue in 1923 up to the present. The archive is fully searchable and downloadable as pdfs, you can report possible mistakes (due to OCR reading) and comment on the articles and it’s free!
Take a look at: http://www.gramophone.co.uk/
Jacqueline Von Arb (IASA) and
Steve Abrams (ARSC)
Save the dates: 2009 ARSC Conference, Washington, DC
The 43rd annual ARSC Conference will be held at The Liaison Capitol Hill, an Affinia Hotel, at 415 New Jersey Avenue NW, Washington, DC, May 27-30, 2009.
The hotel, which opened April 1, 2008, is located three blocks from Union Station, ten minutes from Reagan National Airport, and within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol, Library of Congress, the memorials on the National Mall, and the Smithsonian museums.
For ARSC conference attendees, a block of rooms has been reserved for the nights of May 26-30, at a special rate of $149 per night, single or double (one king bed or two queen beds). The rate also applies three days prior and one day after the conference, based on availability. Reservations must be made by May 5, 2009 at (866) 233-4642 or reservations@affinia.com. Remember to request the ARSC 2009 DC Conference Rate. Rooms are available on a first-come, first-served basis. We expect our room block to sell out before the conference, and possibly prior to May 5.
For more information about the Liaison Capitol Hill:
http://www.affinia.com/Washington-DC-Hotel.aspx?name=Liaison-Capitol-Hill
PRE-CONFERENCE TOUR OF NAVCC:
ARSC is planning a pre-conference tour of the new Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC). The Packard Campus of the NAVCC, located on a beautiful 45-acre site near Culpeper, Virginia, is a state-of-the-art facility with unprecedented capabilities for audiovisual preservation and access. Chartered buses will depart from The Liaison Capitol Hill on the morning of May 27, and return tour participants to the hotel between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. The tour will be limited to 100 people, and a separate registration fee will apply. For more information about NAVCC: http://www.loc.gov/avconservation/packard/
BAAC / LCSA Annual Conference – call for papers
The Joint BAAC (Baltic Audiovisual Archival Council) and LCSA (Lithuanian Central State Archive) Annual Conference (The Riga Seminar) takes place this year October 4-7, 2009 in Vilnius (Lithuania) (European capital of Culture ‘09). The title of the conference is: “Aggregation and Management of Audiovisual Content in the Digital Space.” The conference will be hosted by the Lithuanian Central State Archive, and Institute of Library and Information Science at the Vilnius University.
The deadline for abstracts is April 3, 2009.
Large-scale digitization, and aggregation of digital content in the national and international portals representing cultural heritage, is the latest trend in management of cultural resources in Europe and worldwide. This is exemplified by such international initiatives as European Film Gateway, Europeana and other emerging networks. Such portals improve access to heritage resources for diverse audiences, and unlock it for various uses. However, building such repositories of shared resources requires collaboration and organizational decisions.
The development of virtual memory institutions for audiovisual collections requires the establishment of effective content management solutions. High on the agenda of audiovisual archives are a wide spectrum of issues. They range from analogue-to-digital conversion, development and maintenance of digital archives, long-term preservation of digitized and born-digital material, as well as standardization and interoperability of digital information systems.
In accordance with the latest emerging issues in the management and dissemination of audiovisual heritage, the conference, “Aggregation and Management of Audiovisual Content in the Digital Space”, aims to promote a higher visibility for the Baltic heritage in a digital environment. Nationally and internationally, this can be achieved by sharing best practices and encouraging collaborative networks for stakeholders.
Three major aspects to be discussed in conference sections:
1. Content aggregation experiences - national and international initiatives focusing on large-scale cultural heritage systems, allowing for improved access to diverse audiences.
2. Content management - issues at various stages of the content management cycle. These range from digital conversion or creation of born-digital content, to its processing, description, access and long-term archiving. Special emphasis on digital preservation and standardization.
3. Audiovisual content - access to the European audiovisual heritage: Projects and Initiatives. Actual practice in digitisation at the Lithuanian Central State Archive (national initiatives, international projects: MIDAS, EFG). Seeking “balance” between protection and access.
The conference will be conducted in English. Please send abstracts of up to 400 words to: juozas@baacouncil.org
The programme committee will announce the results by the end of April.
Program Committee: Juozas Markauskas, Valerija Juseviciute, Zinaida Manžuch, Piret Noorhani,
Conference Organizers: Valerija Juseviciute - Lithuanian Central State Archive; Zinaida Manžuch - Institute of Library and Information Science at the Vilnius University; Piret Noorhani - Estonian National Museum; Andris Kesteris - Library and Archives Canada; Georg Eckes (Deutsches Filminstitut-DIF)
The estimated conference fee will be 20 EUR
Updates about the conference will be published on BAAC website: www.baacouncil.org
Announcement: Unlocking Audio: Connecting with Listeners
Unlocking Audio 2: Connecting with Listeners is a key event exploring the use of sounds online. The conference is about ways that researchers and other audiences expect to discover, browse, audition and analyse archival audio resources. The conference will be held at the British Library in London on 16 – 17 March 2009.
Keynote speakers are Charles Leadbeater (a leading authority on innovation and creativity in organisations and author of We-think) and Andy Powell (Head of Development at the Eduserv Foundation).
For a full programme and registration details please go to the conference website at: www.bl.uk/unlockingaudio
Richard Ranft
The British Library Sound Archive
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Calendar of Events |
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| Date | Event | Location |
| 2009 | ||
| 11 – 13 March 2009 | 35th AES International Conference http://www.aes.org/events/35/ | London, GB |
| 16 – 17 March 2009 | Unlocking Audio2: Connecting With Listeners at the British Library Sound Archive http://www.bl.uk/unlockingaudio | London, GB |
| 7 – 10 May 2009 | 126th AES International Conference http://www.aes.org/events/126 | Munich, Germany |
| 22 – 30 May 2009 | 65th FIAF Congress http://www.fiafcongress.org/2009/index.htm | Bueno Aires, Argentina |
| 27 – 30 May 2009 | 43rd Annual ARSC Conference http://www.arsc-audio.org/conference/ | Washington, D.C, USA |
| 2 – 4 June 2009 | 36th AES International Conference http://www.aes.org/events/36 | Dearborn, Michigan, U.S.A |
| 5 June 2009 | British & Irish Sound Archives (BISA) http://www.bisa-web.org/ | WessexFilm & Sound Archive in Winchester, Hants U.K. |
| 5 – 10 July 2009 | IAML-IMS Annual Conference http://www.iamlconference2009.nl/ | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| 27 – 31 July 2009 | 9th UNESCO Memory of the World International Advisory Committee | Bridgetown, Barbados |
| 23 – 27 August 2009 | IFLA annual conference http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla75/index.htm | Milan, Italy |
| 28 – 30 August 2009 | 37th AES International Conference http://www.aes.org/events/37/ | Hillerod, Denmark. |
| 10 – 14 September 2009 | IBC 2009 http://www.ibc.org/cgi-bin/displaypage.cgi?pageref=1124 | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| 19 – 25 September 2009 | IASA 40th Annual Conference http://www.iasa2009.com | Athens, Greece |
| 4 – 7 October | BAAC Annual Conference | Vilnius, Lithuania |
| 9 – 12 October 2009 | 127th AES International Conference http://www.aes.org/events/127/ | New York, USA |
| 22 – 26 October 2009 | FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2009 http://www.fiatifta.org/cont/calendar_detail.aspx?c=27 | Beijing, China |
| 26 – 30 October 2009 | 10th International Conference on Music Informational Retrieval, ISMIR 2009 http://ismir2009.ismir.net/ | Kobe, Japan |
| 27 October 2009 | UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage http://www.ccaaa.org/wdavh | Worldwide |
| 2010 |
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| 1 – 4 May 2010 | JTS Joint Technical Symposium | Oslo, Norway |
