IASA's 55th Annual Conference

This session consists of 3 presentations and a joint Q&A with the presenters. The session contains:

➺ Tre Berney - Infrastructure needs in 21st century audiovisual archives (Short presentation)

➺ Shruti Nagpal - Datafication, Surveillance and New Media Archive in Academia: A Study based in New Delhi, India (Long presentation)

**Abstracts:**


➺ Infrastructure needs in 21st century audiovisual archives
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Tre Berney (Short presentation)
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Over 90% of the data that exists today was created within the last decade. Audiovisual archives maintain that same challenges they have always had, yet archives aren’t prepared for the onslaught of content being produced. It is increasingly how we communicate and consume information. In order to inhabit this digital world, we must reframe how we think of audiovisual content. It is created, managed, preserved, and made accessible in the context of a data-driven world. This talk will focus on core components of infrastructure that are required to continue our work on capturing and maintaining our shared record in a multi-disciplinary world. It will also raise questions around perception of audiovisual materials in the field of research data management. There is a coming convergence in best practices from archives to research data management that should be explored.

➺ Datafication, Surveillance and New Media Archive in Academia: A Study based in New Delhi, India
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Shruti Nagpal (Long presentation)
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The proposed paper explores the New Media technology in urban classrooms and the advancement in surveillance archives in academic infrastructures. While discussing the nature, context and application of surveillance devices, the study explores CCTV cameras, biometric and face recognition sensors and id-card tapping devices for monitoring attendance and regularity. The paper questions the archives created out of the codified digital existence of teachers, students, subjects in academia and the archiving of such data and the audio-visual material recorded in CCTV cameras for automated data management processes. Exploring the technological integration with academic culture, the study documents the changes in the dynamics of interaction in educational campuses and use of Educational ERP software for recording attendance, scores, monitoring and tracking of the archival database. The paper questions the privacy, transparency, and integrity of communication using such surveillance capitalist devices. Stemming from the theoretical interventions of Donna Haraway (1991), the research tries to understand if there is a link in the rapid privatization of education, datafication and frenzy technical acceleration in academia. While studying the Surveillance culture in private corporate regimes in academia, the paper looks at the nature and usage of such private archives.

This session consists of 4 presentations and a joint Q&A with the presenters. The session contains:

➺ Viktor Johansson - The Karl Tirén Joik Collection – Experiences and lessons learned nominating Sami cultural heritage to the UNESCO Memory of the World programme (Short presentation)
➺ Nathan Gibson - Community Engagement Through Archives-Based Artist Residencies (Long presentation)
➺ Dzidzor Azaglo , Crystal Bi Wegner - Collective Imagination throughout Time: How imagination has shaped the physical landscape of our communities in Boston (Long presentation)


**Abstracts:**

➺ The Karl Tirén Joik Collection – Experiences and lessons learned nominating Sami cultural heritage to the UNESCO Memory of the World programme
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Viktor Johansson (Short presentation)
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Between 1913-1915, the Swedish folk music collector Karl Tirén recorded about 300 phonograph cylinders containing Sami joik. In 2023, the Karl Tirén Joik Collection was nominated to the UNESCO Memory of the World programme, which aims to protect and preserve archives with culturally valuable documents. The application to UNESCO was initiated by Svenskt visarkiv, a governmental archive who is the current owner of the collection. The phonograph recordings made by Karl Tirén is one of the oldest sound collections in Sweden. The recordings were made in a time when the Sami culture was oppressed by the Swedish society. Today, the collection is a unique documentation of one of the world's recognized indigenous peoples (as well as one of five national minorities in Sweden) and the collection has great significance for the survival and development of the Sami joik. The Karl Tirén collection also tells us stories about changing roles of the archives: From being a part of the construction of the modern national state – where the cultural expressions of minorities often have been neglected – the archives of today aspires to be public sources available to all people. The focus of this presentation is the Karl Tirén collection. But foremost, it discusses experiences from working with the UNESCO nomination. The process has provided important experiences and lessons learned about the work of a governmental archive in relation to the rights of national minorities to decide for themselves about the use of their cultural heritage.

➺ Community Engagement Through Archives-Based Artist Residencies
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Nathan Gibson (Long presentation)
--
In 2022, traditional fiddler Beth Hoven Rotto spent the spring semester as UW-Madison’s Musician-In-Residence, exclusively working with the Arnold Munkel Collection in Mills Music Library. Rotto’s knowledge and mastery of Upper Midwestern fiddle traditions and its many community members vastly enhanced the archival collection guides and her residency provided undergraduates with firsthand access to Upper Midwestern fiddle and dance traditions. Transcribing more than 80 tunes from the Munkel collection, Rotto then formed a community ensemble and taught both community and campus members selections from the varied and oft-forgotten Scandinavian-American old-time tunes held in the Mills Music Library's Wisconsin Music Archives. This presentation highlights the resident-musician, institutional, and communal benefits unlocked when archives incorporate folk musicians and traditional artists into residency programs.

➺ Collective Imagination throughout Time: How imagination has shaped the physical landscape of our communities in Boston
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Dzidzor Azaglo , Crystal Bi Wegner (Long presentation)
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Department of Public Imagination - a public art and archival project - examines archives of collective, horizontal imagination work by communities of color in Boston. Often our communities are reshaped by top-down design in ways that don’t take into account the needs of residents of color. Horizontal imagination work, by contrast, is a result of communities designing and imagining what they need based on deep local knowledge. Through Dzidzor Azaglo and Crystal Bi’s work, they highlight archives which preserve collective imagination through history; drawing a map throughout Boston to hard-won community spaces such as Villa Victoria, Mary Hannon Park, or Chinatown Library. These spaces demonstrate how collective imagination work has altered the physical landscape of our city with more equitable and vibrant public spaces and community infrastructure. Through this public art project, Dzidzor and Crystal also engage folks in Boston to add to a living archive through an installation of a Dream Portal for Imagination Collection and live soundscape events which encourage collaborative envisioning.

This session consists of 4 presentations and a joint Q&A with the presenters. The session contains:

➺ Léa Morin, Deva Pereda, Mariana Torres, Paul Bonnarme, Laura Alhach Castro - CinémArabe, Asia, Africa, Latin America (1975-1979): Material Research and Circulation Approach for the Preservation of “C3 Non-Aligned Film Archives” (Short presentation)

➺ Juan Antonio Casado - From echoes to ecosystems: Transforming sound recordings into knowledge through Artificial Intelligence (Long presentation)

➺ L'Armari de la Memòria, Pablo Hernández Miñano, Bruno Laurent, Inés Ferrando Vidal - La Pinteta Rebel: Queer waves for historical memory. A case of radio archiving in an LGTBQ+ archive (Short presentation)

➺ Filippo Mengoni - Like Never Before: Leveraging AI to Promote Access to the Original Oral Sources of the Cineteca di Bologna (Short presentation)


**Abstracts:**


➺ CinémArabe, Asia, Africa, Latin America (1975-1979): Material Research and Circulation Approach for the Preservation of “C3 Non-Aligned Film Archives”
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Léa Morin, Deva Pereda, Mariana Torres, Paul Bonnarme, Laura Alhach Castro (Short presentation)
--
In the search for the traces, stories and archives of the Third Cinema Movement, we evidenced a disconcerting lack of resources in official archives. Nonetheless, in face of this unexplored theme, an abundance of documentation, publications and even films, almost totally unpreserved, appeared in private and transnational archives. An immense material memory in danger of disappearing.

CinémArabe magazine is one of these almost unknown traces of the existence of a Transnational Third Film Critic Movement. Dedicated mainly to Arab cinema, also to Asian, African and Latin American, CinémArabe was created in Paris in 1975 by a group of young critics and filmmakers, fighting for the existence of a film critic committed to the cinema of their countries.

From 1975 to 1979, it proposed unpublished interviews with African filmmakers, covered tricontinental festivals, and was also the space for the publication of manifestos translated into French and Arabic.

With new interviews conducted with the magazine contributors such as Magda Wassef, Ali Akika, Abdoul War, Ahmed El Maanouni and Khemais Kheyati, and engaged in a collective work methodology for studying close-ups and multiple micro-stories published in the magazine, we tried to understand the context of the existence and disappearing of the magazine, how was it circulating, and what can film criticism do in a context of political and aesthetic domination? This, with the aim of giving new light to non-central narratives of militant gestures and film critics from the 70s and pondering on the echoes in present day political and aesthetical proposals.

➺ From echoes to ecosystems: Transforming sound recordings into knowledge through Artificial Intelligence
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Juan Antonio Casado (Long presentation)
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The project, submitted to the National Library of Spain, is an initiative to contextualize the wealth of information compiled in more than 200 Subterfuge Radio podcasts titled "Sympathy for the Music Industry". These podcasts feature interviews with key figures from the Spanish music industry scene, aiming to share their insights, experiences, and outlooks on the recording industry.

Interviewees dissect their roles within this professional landscape, essentially crafting a comprehensive encyclopedia filled with diverse data, including previously undisclosed information. This proves valuable beyond the confines of the interview format. The collection encompasses individuals, events, dates, companies, and statistics, accumulated over more than 200 interviews, each lasting around an hour, that the program has released so far.

This project originates from these audio sources. After converting them into text and employing graph theory alongside ontological analysis principles, it compiles all discussed data into a semantic model. Once processed and interconnected, the narrative's components become navigable on a web platform through interactive visualizations. These visualizations span chronological, geographical, documentary aspects, and the relationships among the elements discussed.

Artificial intelligence plays a crucial role in the project's two primary phases: the conversion of speech to text, utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, and the recognition and classification of entities.

➺ La Pinteta Rebel: Queer waves for historical memory. A case of radio archiving in an LGTBQ+ archive
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L'Armari de la Memòria, Pablo Hernández Miñano, Bruno Laurent, Inés Ferrando Vidal (Short presentation)
--
Among the most interesting audiovisual and sound archive documents currently kept in l’Armari de la Memòria, there is a set of audios from the radio program La Pinteta Rebel, broadcast on Radio Klara (Valencia, 1982-present) between 1984 and 1994. La Pinteta Rebel was a pioneer radio program in Spain for its content: it included news, interviews and fiction dedicated to the LGTBIQ+ community, so invisibilized and repressed in the 80s. The protagonist voices, were the activist Miquel Alamar and the members of the music-hall group Ploma-2, Rampova and Clara Bowie.
In addition to being a space for transgression, discussion and critical look at the current political and social norms in the last years of the Spanish Transición and entry into democracy, La Pinteta Rebel appears in a year when the gay liberation movement had been dismantled in the city of Valencia, assuming an important role in the struggle and the claim for the rights of LGTBIQ+ people.
In this presentation, the professional team of l’Armari de la Memòria will explain the process of recovery of these sound archives and their treatment as a documentary source to reconstruct a collective memory. It will address the problems that have arisen in this process and what challenges remain to be faced in the reconstruction and dissemination of these documents for their historical use and promotion.


➺ Like Never Before: Leveraging AI to Promote Access to the Original Oral Sources of the Cineteca di Bologna
--
Filippo Mengoni (Short presentation)
--
Despite being one of the earliest methods of historiography, oral sources have continuously struggled to assert their value. Thanks to technological and informatic advancements, we initially moved to recording sound on physical media and subsequently dematerialized it into a vast series of bits. These progressions have allowed us not to settle for transcriptions and to use timed indexes that assist users in searching for information, overcoming one of the major inconveniences that has hindered the widespread dissemination of these sources outside this research area.
Despite these significant changes, interviews still struggle to find its place in historiographical research and in archival management as sources able to reproduce the sonic nature of spoken language, rather than written text. The reason is due to the considerable amount of resources needed to create timed indexes for a multitude of available sources.
Through the use of Automatic Speech Recognition and Automated Indexing systems, AI software will be utilized as a means to promote access to more than fifteen hundred oral sources primarily involving well-known figures and unpublished recordings at the Cineteca di Bologna. For these reasons, the project represents a unique challenge and atypical features: both for an archive specialized in preserving film heritage and for oral history in general.
After physical media and digital formats, we are facing another important, perhaps decisive, step: assessing the implications of using AI to finally allow the voices confined in our archives to emerge and be heard by all.

This session consists of 4 presentations and a joint Q&A with the presenters. The session contains:

➺ Christian Poske, Anna Ziya Geerling - Mapping Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and Stories of Belonging in the Eastern Himalayan Region: Community Archiving in Times of the Climate Crisis (Long presentation)

➺ David Walker, Cecilia Peterson - Building Collaborative Indigenous Audiovisual Documentation: A Case Study from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Long presentation)

➺ Cristina Sá Valentim - What untold narratives can colonial sound archives reveal? Music, Power, and Resistance in Angola. (Short presentation)

➺ Nadjah Rios villarini, Victor Torres Rodríguez, Tania Ríos Marreo - Participatory Digital Archiving Builds Communities: Lessons from Puerto Rico and the Caribbean (Panel session)


**Abstracts:**

➺ Mapping Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and Stories of Belonging in the Eastern Himalayan Region: Community Archiving in Times of the Climate Crisis
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Christian Poske, Anna Ziya Geerling (Long presentation)
--
Unprecedented rapid transformations in the earth’s critical climate regions alarm us all and call for equally unprecedented transformations in educational policies, priorities, and approaches at audiovisual archives located in these regions to critically engage and amplify the voices of local and indigenous communities disproportionately impacted by climate change. As a member institution of the international environmental humanities research and education project ‘Ekologos’ (2022–2026), the Highland Institute in Kohima engages pedagogically with the climate changes affecting the eastern Himalayan region. As part of these efforts, the Institute supports local communities in documenting and safeguarding their traditional ecological knowledges and place-based oral literatures through collaborative research and community archiving initiatives to revitalize and promote awareness about these traditions with an ‘Atlas of Ecological Knowledge’. The resulting recordings will be accessible at the Institute’s audiovisual archive and online via a digital mapping platform, allowing locals, and especially youth, to engage with the ancestral relations to their lands through songs, stories, and myths conveying intimate land relationships and traditional ecological knowledge relevant to maintaining and restoring climate change resilience. An essential component of this investigation into digitizing traditional knowledge is considering intellectual property rights, ethics, and potential hazards such as biopiracy, which the Institute addresses by consulting local communities, IP rights experts, and IT specialists to explore suitable software solutions. In this presentation, we discuss the initiatives the Highland Institute has taken in this field, the challenges encountered, and the planned steps ahead, drawing on insights gained as co-coordinators of the Ekologos project.

➺ Building Collaborative Indigenous Audiovisual Documentation: A Case Study from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival
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David Walker, Cecilia Peterson (Long presentation)
--
In 2024, the Smithsonian Institution will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) with a six-day Festival on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The high-resolution audiovisual documentation created during the event will be archived at the Smithsonian, forming a substantial body of ethnographic research material. However, properly creating and stewarding this documentation requires a commitment to cultural respect, acknowledgment of shared ownership of the material, and active collaboration with the traditional bearers represented.

In this presentation, archivists from the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH) will provide an overview of workflows for creating born-digital documentation and discuss strategies for responsible and ethical stewardship of the material. Specifically, they will describe the need for proactive work with participants to create transparency around the documentation process. Questions to be addressed include: How will the assets be managed? Who may access them, and how will they be used? How does CFCH’s Shared Stewardship Policy apply to this newly created material? In this case study, the archivists will also describe the collaboration process with the NMAI, a leader in the ethical and reparative description of Indigenous materials. They will explore how the resources created by the museum, such as the NMAI Culture Thesaurus, are used to ensure accurate descriptive metadata and how rights and permissions are tracked. By sharing our experiences, we hope this case study can serve as a model for future community-based documentation initiatives, particularly for Indigenous and traditional knowledge.

➺ What untold narratives can colonial sound archives reveal? Music, Power, and Resistance in Angola.
--
Cristina Sá Valentim (Short presentation)
--
Colonial archives are part of what Valentin Mudimbe called the colonial library. This means that the colonial archives are a set of knowledge that legitimized hierarchical identities of the colonized and the colonizer, which produced subalternity and unequal relations of power. Furthermore, colonial sound archives – mostly neglected in favor of written, visual, and audiovisual historical sources – combine performative, ontological, acoustic, and political dimensions that need to be considered to better understand the complexities of power relations. What colonial sound archives hide, omit and display? What untold narratives can traditional music reveal about colonial power and resistance?
This paper discusses some traditional Cokwe songs related to the colonial mining forced labor at Lunda region. These songs were collected during the Portuguese colonial rule in the 1950s in Angola by the Museu do Dundo of the former diamond mining company – Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang). Based on ongoing interdisciplinary research between anthropology, history and post-colonial studies, this presentation is built on a collaborative approach that combines colonial archival research and historical-ethnographic fieldwork on memories and shared listening of these songs, in Angola and Portugal. This case study aims to uncover the multiple African voices and practices of agency and resistance, also showing how Portuguese colonial domination was intertwined with Angolan music and culture. Above all, this presentation aims to contribute to the decolonization of African colonial sound collections that remain unstudied and largely unknown, and share some reflections on the challenges related to research into colonial sound archives.


➺ Participatory Digital Archiving Builds Communities: Lessons from Puerto Rico and the Caribbean
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Nadjah Rios villarini, Victor Torres Rodríguez, Tania Ríos Marreo (Panel session)
--
This panel explores production and post-production processes as part of the methodology for participatory community archives. From transdisciplinary perspectives, the panelists address fundamental questions such as: who are community archives for and what function do they serve? Based on concrete experiences in Puerto Rico, the presenters describe specific instances of co-creation of archival resources, involving researchers from the University of Puerto Rico affiliated with the UPR Caribbean Digital project, the Digital Library of the Caribbean, and two grassroots community groups spearheading important sociocultural projects on the island: Casa Pueblo and Taller Comunidad La Goyco. The stories of these communities recorded in audiovisual documentation not only reveal the successes and challenges of their struggles but also demonstrate the ability to propose solutions to problems such as gentrification, the use of renewable energy, and the promotion of cultural actions as a cohesive element for the political organization of the members comprising these groups.

This session consists of 2 presentations and a joint Q&A with the presenters. The session contains:

➺ Johanna Huehn - “But whether the voice of the heart can be heard is questionable”. Sound recordings of prisoners at the 1926 Berlin Police Exhibition (Long presentation)

➺ Ninna Carneiro, Gabriel Cardoso - Organizing the unorganized: the challenge of structuring a digital audiovisual archive (Short presentation)


**Abstracts:**


➺ “But whether the voice of the heart can be heard is questionable”. Sound recordings of prisoners at the 1926 Berlin Police Exhibition
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Johanna Huehn (Long presentation)
--
This contribution discusses how sound recordings of prisoners were presented as potential forensic evidence in the context of the 1926 Berlin Police Exhibition. It traces the collaboration between the Berlin Lautarchiv (sound archive), Prussian police, and local prison administration, and contextualizes the bid to promote sound recording and reproduction technology as a promising tool for police investigation. It argues that the recordings framed as “voice portraits of criminals” were an attempt to establish voice recordings not only as biometric identifiers to be cataloged in police databases but also as evidence of a person’s character and inclinations. It ties the claim to 1) the evidential characteristics of the voice to the idea of “anthropophonetics”, proposed by the then director of the Lautarchiv as a science in its own right based on phonetic examination, and 2) relates the recording project to a broader shift to prioritize “the criminal’s character” rather than “the character of the crime” – as discernible in the reforms of the Prussian penitentiary system, the increasing institutionalization of “criminal biology” and specifically, the intensifying discourse around so-called “habitual criminals”. It emphasizes how the interests of the involved institutions have shaped the structure and texture of the archive and attempts to counter these embedded and imposed narratives by a close(r) listening/reading of the recorded testimonies and manuscripts, emphasizing moments of interrogation and contestation on record and paper. Drawing on archival theory and sound studies, I critically reflect on my own attempt and desire to “unveil narratives” when engaging in academic/archival work.

➺ Organizing the unorganized: the challenge of structuring a digital audiovisual archive
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Ninna Carneiro, Gabriel Cardoso (Short presentation)
--
The Nucleus of Audiovisual and Documentary (NAD) is a part of the Center for Research and Documentation on Contemporary Brazilian History of Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV CPDOC), and it was created in 2006 as a space to think of new ways in which to use CPDOC’s historical archive. These documents, that include manuscripts, letters, photographs, moving images and oral history interviews, among others, are important sources in terms of research of Brazil’s contemporary political history, ever since CPDOC was founded in 1973. When NAD was created, its original purpose was to reuse these documents, creating documentaries, short videos, edited interviews, among other productions. The intent was to expand access to CPDOC’s archive, but over the years NAD began to create its own audiovisual documents, a vast array of digital audiovisual archives that were not organized in any type of database. Our current project is to organize all these documents, making a digital curation effort to select which documents should be preserved, how to best organize them so other can access them in the future, and how to make a long-term digital preservation plan of these documents that is adequate to CPDOC’s infrastructure.

This session consists of 4 presentations and a joint Q&A with the presenters. The session contains:

➺ Ketevani Davitashvili, Laura Alhach - Advancements in Archival Practices: Insight into the FRAME Advanced Access 2023 (Short presentation)

➺ Julia Colleen Miller, Nick Ward - PARADISEC creates tertiary-level curricula, focusing on discipline-specific archiving practices in Linguistics, Anthropology, and Ethnomusicology (Long presentation)

➺ Jean-Baptiste Masson - A manual for the restoration of the sound of amateur films (Short presentation)

➺ Kimberly Tarr - Praxis and Partnership: How Archival Training Programs Support the Audiovisual Archiving Field (Short presentation)


**Abstracts:**


➺ Advancements in Archival Practices: Insight into the FRAME Advanced Access 2023
--
Ketevani Davitashvili, Laura Alhach (Short presentation)
--
The FRAME Advanced 2023 training provided an exceptional immersion into the practices of esteemed institutions like INA, Cinémathèque, and BNF. The training showcased presentations and discussions revolving around digitization initiatives and archival strategies. INA's pioneering efforts in video-on-demand services and inventive utilization of social media platforms exemplified a forward-looking approach to enhancing archive accessibility. Moreover, a guided tour of the National Library highlighted the transformative potential of AI in archival processes.
Looking ahead to the forthcoming IASA conference, the focus will be on DoblAI, an advanced AI tool for audio segmentation and speaker diarization. This innovative tool employs sophisticated video analysis algorithms to accurately and efficiently transcribe, translate, and dub videos. DoblAI signifies a notable advancement, offering archival professionals a powerful solution for managing and disseminating audiovisual content across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts. The presentation will dive into its functionalities and implications for archival practices in an AI-driven era, emphasizing its transformative impact on the preservation and accessibility of cultural heritage materials.
Beyond its role as a training, FRAME Advanced 2023 facilitated a sense of community and collective growth among participants, leaving us enriched and motivated to grow as professionals. As preparations are underway to share the insights gleaned from this transformative workshop, there is a palpable eagerness to convey the innovations and learnings derived from the event.

➺ PARADISEC creates tertiary-level curricula, focusing on discipline-specific archiving practices in Linguistics, Anthropology, and Ethnomusicology
--
Julia Colleen Miller, Nick Ward (Long presentation)
--
Established in 2003, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a collaborative project based at three Australian universities: The University of Sydney, The University of Melbourne, and the Australian National University. Serving as a digital archive and access platform, PARADISEC focuses on preserving endangered materials from the Pacific region, encompassing Oceania, East and Southeast Asia. These materials are primarily contributed by researchers specialising in Linguistics, Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, and related fields.

Operating within academic research institutions provides PARADISEC with direct engagement opportunities with students and researchers. Recognising the importance of integrating archival practices into tertiary education, PARADISEC has developed tailored curricula for Linguistics, Anthropology, and Ethnomusicology. The curriculum emphasises data management, archiving, and digital preservation, with a focus on safeguarding linguistic and cultural heritage.

Through practical training sessions, students acquire essential skills for managing and preserving diverse data types, including linguistic recordings and ethnographic materials. They are introduced to industry-standard tools and techniques for digitisation, metadata creation, and ensuring long-term preservation.

The integration of discipline-specific archiving practices into tertiary education aligns with PARADISEC's mission to empower students and researchers in responsibly managing cultural and linguistic resources. The curriculum has been successfully implemented for credited job placements for institutions like Charles Sturt University (AUS) and the University of Manchester (UK). Its effectiveness has led to its adoption for training staff and volunteers, and there is growing interest from university course convenors to add this content to their courses beyond the occasional guest lecture.


➺ A manual for the restoration of the sound of amateur films
--
Jean-Baptiste Masson (Short presentation)
--
This paper presents an on-going project conducted at the Université of Rennes-2 and at the Cinémathèque de Bretagne, that aims to produce a manual for the restoration of the sound of amateur films. Amateur films are usually seen as silent, while a vivid practice of sound recording existed in parallel. Since the 1930s, amateur cinema magazines have documented the recording of soundtracks, first on instantaneous discs, then on magnetic tapes. For amateurs, the norm was to record image and sound on two separate media and to synchronise the two afterwards.
In France, the collection and safeguarding of amateur films and sound recordings are mainly undertaken by local archives (such as the Cinémathèque de Bretagne), who have acquired an expertise in the digitalisation and management of sub-standards. However, until recently, sound has remained the poor relation and sonic materials have rarely been taken into consideration. A number of amateur films then appeared as silent while soundtracks exist(ed). Thus, this project aims to give a voice to films that were until now deprived of one and seeks to highlight the sonic collections that are often present in local archives (around 3000 recordings are kept by the Cinémathèque de Bretagne). These amateur collections represent voices that are usually not present in history books and national archives.
This project also intents to give practical advices to local archives that often work on a constraint budget and with limited human resources.

➺ Praxis and Partnership: How Archival Training Programs Support the Audiovisual Archiving Field
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Kimberly Tarr (Short presentation)
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Education and training programs can prepare the next generation of archival professionals for practical work in the field while strengthening the foundation of audiovisual archives. Partnering with smaller archives, historical societies, and arts organizations, New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program has anchored student-led collection assessments and internships to support and build the capacity of institutions. An express interest has been placed in supporting repositories that seek to amplify less mainstream and counter-culture narratives, such as Visual AIDS, La MaMa Theatre Archives, and the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Center for Puerto Rican Heritage. MIAP students have made a deep and lasting impact on the condition and accessibility of audiovisual collections locally, nationally, and internationally. Informed by Paulo Freire's pedagogical approach, praxis can be defined as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it.” This session argues that praxis is essential in training audiovisual archivists and discusses how the MIAP program’s emphasis on providing a theoretical foundation with practical, real-world experience, has supported both its students and audiovisual archives globally since its founding twenty years ago.

➺ An update: IASA-TC 07 Guidelines for the Preservation of Born-Digital Video
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Somaya Langley, Joshua Ng, Julia Miller, Crystal Sanchez, Brianna Toth (Short presentation)
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The Guidelines for the Preservation of Born-Digital Video are currently in the early stages of development. Discussion about the need for guidance on born-digital video began in 2016. At the 50th IASA conference in 2019, it was agreed that this would take the form of TC 07, however the approach to development would differ from previous IASA Technical Committee guidelines. In 2023 the draft layout of the guidelines for open contributions by the IASA and audiovisual preservation community was launched.

After a hiatus of several years, there is now a core IASA-TC 07 organising committee consisting of Joshua Ng (Archives New Zealand), Julia Miller (IASA Technical Committee, Australian National University), Andrew Martin (Vice President (Communications) IASA Executive Board), DAMsmart), Somaya Langley (IASA Technical Committee, Science Museum Group), Brianna Toth (Smithsonian Institution), and Crystal Sanchez (Smithsonian Institution).

This presentation will provide an update on the current progress of the guidelines. The outline of the guidelines will be briefly discussed, as well as the next steps for development, how the core team intend to identify and allocate sections to members of the community for their contributions, and a review of the approach so far.

The draft guidelines can be found at: https://bit.ly/borndigitalvideo