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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 47| October 2000


A future for the past:
joint IASA/SEAPAVAA Conference

The International Association of Sound and Audio Visual (IASA) Archives’ members are generally an informal lot, and their meetings, though intensely focused on matters of sound archiving, are rarely extremely formal. So when it was announced that the 2000 conference was to be held in tropical Singapore, there was a relaxed sense of occasion. However, this year’s conference was held in conjunction with regional association SEAPAVAA (South East Asian and Pacific Audio Visual Archives Association), and their sense of the formal occasion is much more grandly developed.

Held in the lavish surroundings of the Hotel Intercontinental with a level of secretarial and technical support that was extraordinary, the joint conference set new standards for all future meetings. The formal opening was attended by guest of honour and senior government minister Mr Lee Yock Suan, Minister for Information and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, and was a grand affair, punctuated by presentations, speeches, and gloriously colourful costume. Some IASA delegates found the need to dash back to their rooms in the break between sessions to don the requisite formal attire and others for the shops to acquire replacement for their less than formal tropical rig. The conference received wide newspaper attention and significant television time on a number of occasions.

Titled ‘A Future for the Past: AV Archiving in the 3rd Millennium’, the conference recognised that audiovisual archivists have been plying their trade for just over a hundred years. So the theme embraced the idea that archivists must always project their thoughts in two directions, backwards and forwards in order to ensure that the work of the past will remain intact for future generations.

SEAPAVAA has, since its recent inception, primarily been a film and moving image association, and has recently decided to focus on audio collections as well. Similarly, IASA, whose archival focus has long been exclusively audio, has recently expanded its range of interests to include archiving of audio and audiovisual materials. The joint conference was intended to draw on SEAPAVAA’s moving image knowledge and IASA’s audio experience to the benefit of both.

IASA is structured around committees or special interest groups that meet to discuss technical matters, issues of cataloguing, research collections and the like. The technical committee met for a full day before the conference and continued short sessions in all the available spaces for the week of the conference. Matters such as a discussion of the endangered carrier survey produced some predictable, as well as some unexpected results. Acetate discs featured high among unstable carriers, as did acetate tapes and cassettes. However, such items as dictaphone cassette tapes were rated as critically in danger, both for physical stability and the unavailability of replay equipment.

The endangered carrier survey alerted archivists to the need for an adequate supply of replay equipment and a report was commissioned to identify the number of available machines and manufacturing support for parts. The reel-to-reel tape recorder has been the bastion of the sound archiving world since its invention in the middle of the 20th century. However, though there is still a market, it is no longer large enough to support the manufacturers, and so from over 80 models available only a few years ago, there are now only eight models of reel-to-reel tape recorder, manufactured by five companies, available on the market. A meeting between officers of the IASA technical committee and the manufacturing companies revealed a commitment to maintain machines and parts for as long as is commercially viable. This could be a matter of only a few years. The discussion of the technical committee specifically dwelt on the suitability of those machines for replay of archival tapes, and whether there were sufficient machines available to carry out the archival tasks before us.

The conference proper commenced Monday, and continued for five full days. The conference topics were wide ranging and included Selection and Deselection, Formats, Obsolescence and Digital Mass Storage Systems, Copyright, Access, and Restoration. There were many links between the different topics, the convergence of interest being driven by the convergence of technology. Selection and Deselection saw reports from many institutions dealing with the issues of selection as the migration to digital mass storage systems forced a choice, if by no other mechanism than priority. Crispin Jewitt, from the British Library, and President of IASA presented a list of assessment criteria designed to support prioritisation in format migration, in order, sonic content, status, use, intrinsic value, availability of duplicates, ownership, technical quality and collection management constraints. In opposition to the emphasis on mass migration, questions from the floor argued for the value of the original carrier, a decision of value that was echoed by many present.

Metadata was an Australian affair, with Kevin Bradley presenting a paper prepared jointly with Deborah Woodyard, on behalf of the IASA catalogue committee, which explained the context of metadata and described the use of preservation metadata, and Adrian Cunningham, who described the Australian Archives archival description metadata. These two papers complemented each other well, and linked to University of Queensland’s Dr Jane Hunter’s detailed and dense paper.

At the Joint IASA/SEAPAVAA Conf.

Pictured at the conference: Sarminah Tasmir, Television Corporation of Singapore and Mary Miliano, ScreenSound Australia
stand behind (from left) Adrian Cunningham, National Archives of Australia, Christopher Clark, British Library,
National Sound Archive and Kevin Bradley, National Library of Australia. Photograph: Shelly Grant

During one of two IASA technical committee sessions Kevin Bradley presented a paper ‘CD Recordable – Case Study of an Interim Media’. This paper argued that the technical limitations of CD-R could be managed through a comprehensive testing and analysis program, and careful technical management of equipment and facilities. At a subsequent session Deitrich Schuller presented on the introduction of ‘Personal Mass Storage Systems’. The latter examined Dr Schuller’s attempts to implement a small, expandable storage system (500gigabyte–1terrabyte) as a model system for small archives. However, though the physical technology is available, the major hurdle to implementing this system remains the management software. Both these papers aimed to address issues associated with small to medium sized collections.

The conference included many regional case studies of archives that are developing storage and management systems, and expanding or constructing collecting and access systems. These papers presented some exceptional and innovative solutions to complex problems from humidity control through to film restoration. Some of the South East Asian collections are vast in size, and of immeasurable value in cultural content.

SEAPAVAA is very active in its local area and has instituted an impressive South East Asian training program, which has focused on film, but is now considering magnetic media, both sound and video. They have drawn on expertise from many international institutions, including ScreenSound Australia. In a similar vein, a book documenting the South East Asian film industry was launched at the conference which demonstrates the deep and long involvement of film in cultural representation in the region.
—Kevin Bradley and Shelly Grant

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