IASA elects new Board in Aarhus

During the recent IASA conference, held in Aarhus, Denmark (September 16th 19th) the new Board was elected and introduced:

Elections also took place within a number of committees and sections. Herewith an update on all the committees and sections:

Cataloguing and Documentation Committee

Discography Committee

National Archives Section

Radio Sound Archives Section

Research Archives Section

Technical Committee

From the new Editor

They say that an editor's first and foremost responsibility is to the readers. And having to step into the shoes of previous editors such as Helen Harrison, Grace Koch and Chris Clark, our outgoing editor, I am well aware that the task of keeping you informed of IASA's activities is a daunting one. However, I am looking forward to taking up the challenge, and trust that I will be able to serve you well over the next three years.

I should like to express my sincere gratitude to Chris Clark. His hard work is evident in the new, modern design that marks all the IASA publications; he left us with a new, very attractive web site, and set high standards in the selection of articles for the Journal and the Bulletin.

On behalf of all the IASA members, a very warm thank you to you, Chris.

IASA Conference 2002: Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Preservation Grace Koch takes a look

The IASA conference 2002, Digital Asset Management and Preservation, hosted by the State and University Library, Aarhus, Denmark, was a most successful event, highlighting new directions in archiving as we all move into the digital era. Of course new directions bring challenges and it was encouraging to see how our colleagues are dealing with these most successfully. The conference content was extremely dense, causing us to take copious notes as we reduced digital issues to handwriting so that we can submit reports to our institutions upon our return!

The Program

After gracious welcomes by Niels Mark, the Director of the State and University Library in Aarhus and by Eva F?nss-J?rgensen, the new Secretary-General of IASA, Chris Clark, our outgoing Editor, presented the keynote speech. This encapsulated the major issues we are now facing with digitisation, capturing our imagination and making us want to explore the many web sites he gave us. He brought a fresh approach to the process of digitisation based upon some of the latest philosophical and managerial thinking. He began by describing how the importance of the development of production equipment in the 20th century has shifted emphasis to the importance of knowledge workers and their productivity. In this age of having to look at archives generating their own income, the importance of contributions of individuals is not to be overlooked. Outcomes are not to be measured simply by inputs and outputs, but by the contributions of the knowledge workers in establishing networks and ensuring that corporate memory is passed on. He then outlined the process he used in managing the digitisation of the British National Sound Archive collections, showing how material is prepared for Web use. This address set a perfect tone for all of the following papers.

After the General Assembly and lunch, came the two sessions on Selection for Preservation and Prioritising before Digitising. All speakers agreed that degree of physical degradation, uniqueness of material and potential demand, are the most important factors in selection and prioritising. In the first session chaired by Per Holst, Lars Gaustad outlined the types of audio carriers and how they stood on a scale of stable to endangered formats. Majella Breen traced some of the criteria used in prioritising digitisation projects in Radio Telefis Eireann. Isabelle Gianattasio alerted us to the importance of keeping institutional programs and directions in mind when we select. Pio Pellizzari gave some of the results from the IASA Task Force on Selection and we look forward to the final report. Harald von Hielmcrone described the Danish experience in establishing selection criteria for radio and television programs, finding that for serials, the flow of context needs to be preserved as well as important individual items and that 'cultural hypertext' or references to publications citing the characters or the serials expands the information in a most useful way.

In the session on prioritising, George Brock-Nannestad highlighted the importance of depositors giving as much documentation as possible when they lodge their collections with archives. Matthew Davies, in showing the prioritisation system used at ScreenSound Australia, put forth a number of terms that seemed to find their way into other presentations. How many times did we hear the terms, 'crown jewels' or 'gems' used to describe some of our precious holdings? Finally, John Spence, one of our outgoing Vice-Presidents, presented the results of the IASA Survey on DAMs and Digital Preparedness in a most graphic and interesting way.

The second day of the conference began with a session on Planning for Digitisation. Three case studies from the National Archives of Canada, the Biblioth¨¨que Nationale de France, and the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation focussed on the importance of dissemination of materials, requirements for digitisation of various kinds of carriers, and need for adequate metadata. Jean-Paul Moreau showed how the concept of 'fonds', or description and arrangement of all records generated by a single person, family or corporate entity, is the organising principle of records at the National Archives of Canada, and we saw an example of a project that combines audio and visual media using the theme of wartime records. Alain Carou described the digitisation system at the Biblioth¨¨que Nationale, mentioning the work of the French organisation, ARISTOTE, which explores the use of multi-media on the Internet. Finally, Bj?rn Blomberg presented a case study on the way Swedish Radio is planning for asset management, ensuring that there is a component of a digital rights system within the process. With digitisation comes major format change, and he questioned what will happen to the 'soul' of the archive once all holdings are digital.

Sessions 4, DAM in Broadcast Archives and 5, Research Archives in the Digital World, were held at the same time. In Session 4, integrated systems structures for radio and television archives were described from the viewpoint of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (Torben Lundberg), Suedwestrundfunk in Baden-Baden (Robert Fischer), and Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich (Mary Ellen Kitchen). This important session, demonstrating cutting-edge technology and management, was of interest to most delegates, and it was unfortunate that they had to choose between it and Session 5. The newly-constituted Research Archives Section of IASA presented three papers, the first of which included a performance by Anthony Seeger of the rarely-heard second verse of the song, 'This Land is Your Land.'! A definition of research archives and an tracing of the complexity of intellectual property rights amongst performers were explored along with a description of the Global Sound Project, which seeks to disseminate recordings of traditional music and to ensure remuneration to the performers. In the next paper, Shubha Chaudhuri, one of the new IASA Vice-Presidents, emphasised the importance of supplementary documentation in the form of field notes, photographs and other media. This presentation fit well with the demonstration given by the National Archives of Canada given earlier in the morning, where the primacy of context was discussed. The final paper of the session, by Virginia Danielson, gave a most exemplary and practical study of how research archives can initiate and plan projects, taking into account existing constraints when the archive is part of a larger institution.

That afternoon delegates were treated to two excursions- one to the Aarhus State and University Library, and the other to the European Film College and town of Ebeltoft. This reviewer, who went on the latter tour, was assured by several delegates that the Library trip was most informative and enjoyable, especially due to the entertaining narration given by the Librarian! The tour of the European Film College included views of students filming in the surrounding countryside as well as a screening of one production. Ebeltoft offered many charms with its ancient buildings, tales of the intellectual limitations of former inhabitants (read most dramatically by Elsebeth Kirring) and artwork of glass. Some delegates has the pleasure of sampling freshly-baked pastry as it came out of the oven!

On Wednesday, Session 6 on DAM in Heritage Archives covered a broad scope of topics. Wolfgang Bender began with a cautionary tale of the necessity of keeping backups of recordings in secure environments. If the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service had not arranged for copies of its holdings to be kept in Germany, all recordings would have been irretrievably lost when rebels destroyed their record library. As IASA membership extends to countries outside Europe and the U.S.A., protection of collections becomes a most vital issue for archives. Next, Judith Gray traced the history of and digitisation plans for the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Funding in the form of bequests usually means that entire collections will be digitised. Finally, Rainer Hubert, Peter Levenitschnig, and Hermann Lewetz gave a most impressive description of the processes used to establish the DAM system at the ?sterreichische Mediathek in Vienna and a series of demonstrations. This presentation bridged both Session 6 and Session 7, explaining their system of long-term preservation, optimal access and security and integration of the catalogue, mass storage and on-line player. Afterwards, this dynamic team persuaded various IASA delegates to record their "statements for eternity" and we should be able to hear ourselves on their web site sometime in November.

Preservation and technical issues were covered in sessions 7 and 8. Vienna again held centre stage as Nadja Wallszkovits told, in careful detail, how the world's oldest sound archive, the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is dealing with the complexities of the video medium. This paper gives encouragement to those of us struggling with how to manage the multiplicity of formats in video and how to handle compression. As IASA has extended its brief to all audiovisual media, hopefully there will be more offerings on topics of visual media. In the final paper, Matthew Davies' use of the word, 'forever', matching the Austrian use of 'eternity', figured largely as we followed how audio digitisation is being implemented at ScreenSound Australia. The business aspects of our roles were highlighted as well as the planning structures and technical specifications.

After lunch, Nadja Wallszkovits gave a most comprehensive session on signal retrieval from analogue magnetic tape. A version of this paper would make an excellent small monograph for IASA members. This session was described, perhaps inaccurately, as a 'tutorial', where a more apt title might be an 'information session.' Because of the specialisation of this paper, a parallel session might have fit in comfortably.

The last session of the day examined the nexus between archives and the role of industry in archive preservation. Firstly, George Boston gave us the history of IASA's involvement with Unesco along with an enumeration of the frightening speed of which our analogue playback equipment and our audio formats are becoming obsolescent. He then updated delegates on the actions being taken to ensure that parts for machinery will still be available, including a Memorandum of Understanding that he and Albrecht H?fner have drawn up between archivists and the industry. Next, Christophe Kummer gave a most creative case study tracing the strategies used by the Red Bull Drink Company of how audio tracks are used for marketing purposes. Finally, Richard Wright from the BBC challenged delegates as to whether or not they, as archivists, or industrial partners who specialise in preservation should be in charge of our digitisation processes as we heard about the PRESTO Project. We heard that 'on-demand' preservation, while seeming most easy to achieve and less costly, is actually three times more expensive than an efficient mass transfer project. Also, we were advised that 16 bit audio seems to be adequate for mass transfer.

The last day of the conference began with a valuable series of lessons learned about three projects aimed at Internet access. As Maria Sotgiu was unable to present her paper, Crispin Jewitt described 'A Sense of Britain', which offers 'learning journeys' through various areas of the country with an interactive map and a time line. He ended the talk with some managerial issues to consider, cautioning delegates to ensure that all parts of such a project be securely funded before proceeding. Richard Green, one of our new Vice-Presidents, presented a set of lessons learned and most enjoyable examples (which delegates will remember well) from the 'Virtual Grammophone' project of the National Library of Canada. His observations linked well with Crispin's cautionary comments on the need to update the site regularly and to count the human and financial cost before undertaking such a project. The excerpts played of La Bolduc had won IASA member Gilles St-Laurent a prize for audio restoration using the CEDAR system. Elsebeth Kirring gave the last paper in this session, describing how the State and University Library at Aarhus has dealt with Internet access to unpublished Danish sound recordings from 1913-1940. She described the how the work of the Scandinavian Audiovisual Metadata group provided the standard for description, and how the Internet was used to locate information not available on the in-house cataloguing records.

Session 11, Metadata and Rights, brought delegates up-to-date on some of the most recent developments in rights management, security and contents-based technologies. Walter Plaschzug outlined the Recognition and Analysis of Audio (RAA) project based in Graz, where 'audio DNA' is used to produce and effective identifier for music and commercial recordings. This identifier is automatically generated from analysis of a sample lasting approximately 5 seconds. We were shown how the data could be merged with rights information for efficient management of audio files. The next paper, by Sven Aaquist, showed a Danish application of the Norwegian Phonofile project that clears usage rights for audio files in the Internet. An alliance of authors, performers, producers and national archives worked together to ensure that the audio cultural heritage could be made available over the Internet completely, easily and legally. One feature is that audio files downloaded from CDs will self-destruct after a period of 14 days. The final paper of the conference, by Dagfinn Bach, outlined the CUIDADO project, which maps automatically- extracted MPEG-7 descriptors with more traditional fields of metadata. The mapping of cognitive, perceptual and semantic data means that users can generate sophisticated playlists and can detect pirate recordings. Discussion revolved around the taxonomies used for the data.

Postscript

There were papers of interest to all delegates, with much practical guidance being offered to archivists in digitising their collections. The morning and afternoon teas were a delight with delicious pastries awaiting our sampling. The venue accommodated our needs well, and it was easy to find good lunch places nearby so that we could get back to the conference on time. One of the highlights was the conference dinner with the brief tour of Aarhus by night and the lively dancing. Also, the number of delegates from Central America, Africa and Asia show that IASA is successfully widening its membership. The attendance of representatives from 14 countries at the inaugural Research Archives Section meeting was most encouraging.

There are benefits and problems when a conference is held to a theme. Also, it may be useful for organisers to consider pre-conference workshops rather than tutorials or information sessions within the main part of the conference. And the holding of parallel sessions should be avoided wherever possible.

Some probing questions were raised. To reiterate:

What will happen to the 'soul of the archive' when everything becomes digital? How effective will the Memorandum of Understanding be between equipment manufacturers and archivists as formats and standards change rapidly? And finally, as our Viennese colleagues have said, will we think of Digital Archives (Asset) Management as DAM or DAMN?

Grace Koch

New members

Florian ?anga (associate) Rr \"Ymer Kurti\" P 2/1 Ap 5, Tirana, Albania.
Our first member in Albania intends ¡°to help the National Folk Institute of Albania to build a sound Archive Department.¡±

Bill Klinger
13532 Bass Lake Rd., Chardon, OH 44024-8324, USA

Andy Kolovos, Archivist Vermont Folklife Center, Vermont, USA
He wrote: ¡°I am the archivist in charge of a collection of approximately 4,500 audio recordings of oral history, folklife and traditional music documentation in the state of Vermont. We are about to begin a large digital project.¡±

Paul Lihoma, National Archives of Malawi
"As an Archivist managing audiovisual archives, I feel joining IASA will greatly assist me to perform efficiently and effectively in my job while maintaining the international standards. IASA gatherings and materials will also help me to sharpen my skills and acquire new knowledge."

National Archives of Malawi, Nkulichi Road, P.O. Box 62, Zomba, Malawi
The National Archives of Malawi has a staff complement of 65 country wide, with a mandate to collect, arrange, control and preserve for research and posterity, the country's documentary heritage. We therefore keep paper records, gramophone records, films, audio and videotapes, CDs etc.

Ronda L. Sewald (associate) 2627 E. 2nd St., Apt. #11, Bloomington, IN 47401 United States.
Ms Sewald is currently a graduate student at Indiana State University, Bloomington, and is pursuing a double Masters in library science and ethnomusicology. After graduation, she plans to work in an academic library or archive that specialises in sound and audiovisual recordings of ethnographic materials. She says ¡°I feel that knowledge of current preservation and digitisation issues are key if I am to properly take care of these priceless collections and I feel that IASA is leading the way in both of these areas. I am particularly impressed by the organisation's efforts to establish a preservation standard for storage and handling of early sound materials.¡±

Tommy Sj?berg, c/o DCM Sweden AB
Reasons for joining: Currently working on a digitisation project for Universal music, including cataloguing and, possibly, distribution.

Marcos Vera (associate) 10a Whitney Ridge Road apt. 2 Fairport. NY. 14450, USA
¡°I am very interested in the sound and audiovisual archives. I had written a proposal for last years conference. I was unable to make the conference last year due to the attacks on the US¡­. All of my course work, while completing my masters' degree focused on sound and audio-visual archives.¡±

WNYC Radio
1 Centre Street 26th Floor
New York, NY 10007 USA

Andy Lanset, Archivist wrote ¡°WNYC AM and FM are flagship stations for the National Public Radio and Public Radio International networks in the United States. WNYC AM has been on the broadcasting continuously since 1924. WNYC FM has been on the air since 1943. The WNYC Archives collection includes more than 40,000 broadcast programs of every genre on disc and tape from 1931 to the present.¡±

IASA CONFERENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA, 2003

IASA's next annual conference will be held in Pretoria, South Africa, September 22-26, 2003. The theme of the conference will be Audiovisual Archives: Memory and Society.

The conference aims to encourage a wide range of papers which will look at the role audiovisual archives play in preserving the collective memories of societies; issues relating interesting collections and projects with societies and communities; the way audiovisual archives reflects society and its memories with regard to oral histories and oral traditions; and how researchers make use of these audiovisual collections.

Papers are invited which will contribute to the theme of the conference. Abstracts should be about 300 words in length, on disc or as an email attachment, listing name, organisation, contact address, telephone and email address, and should include the title of the proposed paper. The closing date for abstracts is the 31st December 2002. Please note that presenters need to register for the conference and pay the registration fee.

Please address all abstracts and enquiries to: Shubha Chaudhuri, IASA Vice-President: eMail: shubha@arce.ernet.in

Diana Hull

Diana, who was the wife of Patrick Saul, the founder of the British Institute of Recorded Sound, which subsequently became the British Library National Sound Archive, and who was for many years Head of its Cataloguing Department and Chair of the IASA Cataloguing Committee, died peacefully on Sunday morning 26th July after a long illness.

Her funeral took place at Putney Vale Cemetery in London and was attended by former colleagues at the British Library National Sound Archive.

Chris Clark worked for Diana when he first came to the British Institute of Recorded Sound, that is now the British Library National Sound Archive (NSA). "Diana was Chief Cataloguer at that time and had strong views about how sound recordings should be catalogued. She had devised a structure for individual catalogue records that cleverly merged discographic and cataloguing principles. While adhering to AACR rules for the formation of names and titles she replaced the statement of responsibility element with an ordered arrangement of performer(s), recording date and location that would ensure a more useful filing order where there were many recordings of the same work. As it is common for a large national collection to hold hundreds of recordings of the same title (e.g. Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony or Johnny Green's "Body and soul") and often more than one recording of the same work by the same artist, her invention has proved invaluable and has been retained as part of the structure the NSA's catalogue, CADENSA.

Many of us who work in libraries and archives have additional interests. Diana's was the theatre. When she left the NSA in 1994 she quickly resumed the career that she clearly preferred, appearing in a number of London stage productions.

She always described her working methods as those of a "pack rat" (an American rodent that carries as much food as it can in mouth pouches) and never threw anything away. I now have her old job and eight years after her departure I am still coming across old folders full of hastily written notes to agenda of meetings long forgotten. I doubt anyone who worked with Diana will ever forget her."

RLG/OCLC preservation metadata

Quoting more or less verbatim from the RLG website:

¡°The Working Group on Preservation Metadata, an initiative jointly sponsored by OCLC and RLG, has released A Metadata Framework to Support the Preservation of Digital Objects, a new report available on the OCLC Web site at http://www.oclc.org/research/pmwg/pm_framework.pdf.

The report is a comprehensive guide to preservation metadata that is applicable to a broad range of digital preservation activities. Preservation metadata is the information infrastructure necessary to support processes associated with the long-term retention of digital resources and is an essential component of most digital preservation systems.

The report represents the consensus of leading experts and practitioners [including IASA Technical Committee members Kevin Bradley (National Library of Australia) and Michael Alexander (The British Library)] and is intended for use by organizations and institutions managing, or planning to manage, the long-term retention of digital resources.¡±

Studer A807

Here's a happy follow-up to Dietrich Schueller's "Re: Studer A 807 - last orders" message of July 31, 2001 to the AV Media Matters list:

In talking to Sam Lum, Studer North America, about some A807 parts, I learned that, due to popular demand, the A807 production line is not shutting down this summer as planned.? Studer will accept orders for 200 additional A807 MKIIs in various configurations.

I inquired about Herr Schueller's desirable "archivist" configuration, "replay-only version with a half-track plus a quarter-track head, switchable". Sam said he had a warehouse full of pre-owned A807-0.75 VUK (half-track butterfly heads, meter bridge) play-only machines that he would re-condition, relap, and offer at very reasonable prices.? He said he could easily add quarter-track heads and switches. (Toll-free Canada/US: 866-269-0000).

Glad to be the bearer of good analog news,

Gary Sprung
Carmel, CA USA

And for those of you who are interested in the AV Media Matters listserve, please contact Jim Lindner at AV-Media-Matters@topica.com

CBC/Radio-Canada Screening Series

Pat Kellogg (CBC) announces ¡°Timed to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of television in Canada, the Museum of Television & Radio in New York and its west-coast site in Los Angeles, is launching O Canada! A Salute to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a radio and television screening series featuring CBC/Radio-Canada's distinctive, high-quality Canadian programming.

Approximately 40 CBC/Radio-Canada television and radio programs (French and English) have been selected for inclusion in this celebration. Television programming has been grouped into program strands of approx. 2 ? hours featuring the following themes: Troubadours; The Boys of St. Vincent; Auteur, Auteur, Auteurs; Teen Angst; Four by Finkleman; The Coroner's Report; Performing Arts; Canadian Comedy; Comedy on the Edge; News/Public Affairs: Benchmarks; Documentaries: A Storied Tradition; La Belle Province; Popular Arts: Infinite Variety; and A Sense of History. There will also be radio program strands. Their themes will concentrate on how Canadians cover the news, arts and culture of the U.S. and Americans in general while reflecting the Canadian world-view.

The series runs from October 18 to February 2, 2003, kicking off with a special public seminar on Thursday, October 17 at 6:30 p.m. in New York that will feature some of Canada's most distinguished creators. For more information log on to www.mtr.org and follow the links, or call 212-621-6800 in New York, or 310-786-1025 in Los Angeles.

Joint IASA/FIAT/PRESTO meeting

Multimedia Archive Preservation Projects. A practical Workshop, London 22-24 May 2002 Per Holst, Radio Sound Archives Section, reports:
The annual joint IASA/FIAT meeting this year on digitisation was held together with PRESTO. The meeting took place on May 22nd 24th in London and was hosted by the BBC and PRESTO. The participants represented broadcasting companies as well as audio, film and video collections. The meeting was very well attended. About 130 people participated and approximately 20 members represented IASA.

Papers were given on technical solutions for audio, film and video preservation and included names of organisations for assistance on preservation projects: the European Commission, ERPANET and the Digital Preservation Coalition. Papers on planning, funding and managing of preservation projects and PRESTO ¡°new technology¡± key links were presented, as well as papers on the EC projects BRAVA and DIAMANT. From IASA Dietrich Schueller, Phonogrammarchiv, gave a presentation on Analogue to Digital Transfer: The Specific Problems of Heritage Collections and Rainer Hubert, Austrian Mediathek, presented The New Digital Storage Equipment of the Mediathek and its Access via Internet. Two workshops on specialist and broadcast archives gave the participants the possibility for more informal discussions on preservation issues.

Professional visits were arranged to the BBC's Windmill Road and Maida Vale facilities for storage and digitisation respectively , the storage and technical facility for the British Film Institute, and the British Library National Sound Archive, all involved in preservation projects.

The meeting was well organised, very interesting and will certainly serve as inspiration for next year's joint IASA/FIAT meeting which will take place 4-5 April 2003 at YLE, Helsinki, Finland.

German National Bibliography online

Silke Breslau (Deutsches Musik Archiv) reports that the music section of the German National Bibliography is now on the Internet.

The catalogue of the Deutsches Musikarchiv Berlin, containing nearly 20 years of German music publications, is available on the Internet at http://www.ddb.de/.

The catalogue offers searching by interpreter, composer, title, track name, publisher, label name, edition number, and ISMN.

The catalogue includes entries for over 125,000 scores and 260,000 CDs and LPs. The catalogue offers a comprehensive view of German music production, and through it users can find essential information on music titles. The catalogue is based on the collection of the Deutsches Musikarchiv Berlin, a part of the Deutsche Bibliothek (the German National Library). Music producers and publishers are required to deposit two copies of each of their publications in the archive, and for that reason the collection covers every type of music. Every company is represented, not only major record companies and publishing houses, but also independent labels and smaller publishers. The annual receipt of 20,000 CDs and 7,000 titles of printed music allows the Deutsches Musikarchiv to maintain a complete record of Germany's musical output.

Sites and Sounds

Quest for sound http://www.npr.org/programs/Infsound/quest/ is an excellent audio site on the Web that has evolved by NPR (US National Public Radio) producer Jay Allison in response to a call to listeners to send in home recordings from the last 100 years. The outcome is a series of stories that have captured ¡°the rituals and sounds of everyday life¡± in America.

Calendar of events

This Information Bulletin was compiled by:

The Editor - Ilse Assmann,
SABC, PO Box 931, 2006, Auckland Park, Johannesburg, South Africa,
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Language editor: Dorothy van Tonder, SABC
PLEASE SEND COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 44 BY 15 DECEMBER 2002
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