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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?  Which is the role of international organisations and of the IASA in this new environment?  How can the National Archives of big and smallest countries can cope with this new environment?
              
 
  Conference Themes

 

  

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1. Archives, Libraries and Museums. Moment of Truth - Time to Converge?

  • Convergent practices of archives, libraries and museums 
  • The content industry
  • European initiatives and related activities and projects (e.g. europeana projects - europeana connect/thematic network, videoactive, prestospace2 etc) 

2. The disappearing Archive I: the loss of physical substance through digitisation

  • Technological issues such us: archival standards, digitisation workflow, digital restoration, archival and consumer compression standards, stages of technical control etc.
  • Major ongoing research aims to create a "perpetual preservation" system, capable of storing and reproducing digital content regardless of technological evolutions and physical threats. These efforts can be expanded to include off-site distributed digital archive storage/backups. To maximize robustness against social and physical threats, the off-site content could transcend national borders while preserving controlled access through encryption. Legal and technological issues need to be discussed.
  • Possible visionary extension: completely distributed digital archives, with controlled access. A truly disappearing Archive.

3. The disappearing Archive II: aging and physical deterioration of analogue media

  • Content quality deterioration in old media is unavoidable due to aging.
  • The time where these original media will not be preserved for practical reasons (providing the best-quality content) is approaching fast. We must start tackling the large issue of separating the archival value that lies in the media and the content, and start envisioning strategies that will best serve the archival value of every type media and its content.
  • In this context, proven technological solutions for the preservation of analogue "masters" or "source" media need to be constantly enriched with the latest research in the area on the one hand, while on the other these efforts need to be complemented with content preservation through transfer to new materials. The state-of-the-art solutions for each type of media can be discussed.

4. The disappearing Archive III: obsolete carriers but no replay equipment

  • Obsolete carriers, obsolete formats
  • The human factor: rapid erosion of expertise on working with older replay equipment.

5. Born to die? Selection policies in the 21st century

  • Reassessing archival priorities for the new information order.  Digital content production, in all fields, is currently doubled every year.  In 10 years this will happen is less than 2 weeks.  What is the impact of this in audiovisual content?
  • How the Archives can select what to keep, how to do that and for how long?
  • What is the meaning of perpetuity?
  • Is the majority of the content “born to die”?
  • How the role of curators is affected?
  • Select how to select: the changing interests of archive users in developing new selection and preservation policies
  • From memory society to knowledge society?

6. Between archivists and users, taking advantage of the archive

  • The problem of digital changes and user expectations: which is the language of METADATA? 
  • User –friendly digital archives: How user preferences affect the development of a digital archive
  • Open Archives: obstacles, potentials and perspectives
  • Sociotechnological Change and the Transformation of Research Libraries and the Academic Information Environment
  • Archives on-line? Technical and archival aspects of international web access to audiovisual material (from digitisation to delivery)
  • Web2 and audiovisual archives
  • E-learning and audiovisual archives
  • Copyright Issues

7. Digital preservation and audiovisual preservation: Is there a divide?

  • Digital Preservation: technical and organisational issues and techniques

8. 40 years of IASA

  • Review of IASA’s contribution to the AV archival field
  • Proposal and ideas for the future
  • IASA and the relation with other organisations

9. The role of the National Audiovisual Archives

  • Specialised vs general national archives
  • Synergies and Cooperation
  • Public funding and new economic models for the National Archives

10. Archiving the web and the new media audiovisual content

  • New cultural products and records are enabled by modern technology putting new challenges to audiovisual archives


11. Ethics of digital archives

  • Relationship between the reality and a digital object (eg data reduction)
  • Possibilities to 'manipulate' the original using digital techniques (e.g. sound/video restoration)
  

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