ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 45 | June 2000
ScreenSound joins PANDORA project
Rohan Lilley from ScreenSound Australia is pictured during his online archiving training with Electronic Unit staff (from left) Paul Koerbin, Fiona Ash Relf and Anne Daniels. Photograph: Damian McDonald
Readers of Gateways will be aware that PANDORA (Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia) already has two partnersthe State Library of Victoria and the State Library of South Australia. Recently ScreenSound Australia also joined the project. This is a significant event in PANDORAs history as it is the first organisation to be involved that is not a library.
While the National Library will retain responsibility for publications with a national focus and the State libraries for online publications at the State and local level, ScreenSound Australia will have a different focus. Its responsibilities will certainly be aimed at the national level but include online sites and publications dealing with film, sound, television and related activities. Most of the sites selected for preservation by ScreenSound Australia will contain multimedia files, which are technically more difficult to archive.
At the end of March, ScreenSound's Rohan Lilley spent a week at the National Library learning all the tasks and procedures involved in archiving Internet publications. As is usual practice, all members of the Australian Electronic Unit were involved in Rohans training.
Activities covered during training included selection, evaluation, publisher liaison, archiving, comparison of original and archived versions and the creation of PURLs (Persistent Uniform Resource Locators). Rohan also met with some of the information technology staff who provide the technical support necessary for PANDORA activities. Rohan was surprised by the complexity of many of the tasks involved in archiving online publications and is looking forward to challenging times ahead. During the training week a very good rapport was established between staff from the two organisations.
Anne Daniels
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au