From analogue collection to multifunctional access

Polish audiovisual heritage is a very important part of the cultural legacy of the country. Unfortunately the use of and access to Polish audiovisual archives is still in its initial phases. The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage has made great strides towards solving the problems of access and limitations of use. In 2009 the ministry established the National Audiovisual Institute (NInA), which prompted several digitization projects including collaborations between Polish Public TV, National Archives, museums and private collections. This paper highlights some of the creative uses of Poland’s audiovisual heritage and demonstrates how NInA has become an innovator and a leader in the audiovisual field in Poland and Eastern Europe.

Applying the “baby nursing model” in under-resourced audiovisual archives in Africa

It is a well-known fact that there has been extensive documentation of African traditional arts in post-colonial Africa, which has contributed to the growing accumulation of field recordings in Africa that could form the nucleus for archives in individual African countries. These include private collections as well as recordings at broadcasting and television stations; government ministries such as Tourism, Culture and Information; museums and academic institutions. Sadly, these precious traditions – which have been expensively captured – are often not properly managed in their host institutions. The caretakers of this heritage mostly sit by as collections deteriorate and sometimes are disposed of due to lack of institutional support. Such practices prevail in most African archives. This paper proposes a new mode of consciousness of the value of audiovisual heritage materials by comparing them with human babies. This new archival management principle, ‘the baby nursing model’, has been adopted and practiced at the University of Ghana and has achieved positive results.

I value, you value, we value… but what’s the value?

Today‚ audiovisual collections account for a large portion of the world’s memory. They are part of museums, serve as research documents for various types of scientific institution, register history and provide us with a tangible witness of our most precious memories. Even though sound and image collections are generally accepted as being part of our cultural heritage, determining how to open such collections to a large audience is far from simple. Although value and signi cance assessments are increasingly used as collection management tools, they are labour intensive and organizationally demanding activities for collection managers and institutions. Nevertheless such assessments are vital to ensure proper collection management today and in the future. Likewise they provide us with an excellent tool in communicating about audiovisual collections, prioritizing in case of digitization and rendering their management comprehensible. This paper outlines a three-step methodology designed to facilitate assessing value in audiovisual collections.

Documenting ICH in sound and image

Documentation of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) poses a series of new questions and challenges within the heritage practice. How do we document a heritage that is alive, through the heads, hands and practices of people? Heritage that is neither tangible nor fixed but intangible and dynamic. Heritage that lives within a community, which by its active practice also acts to transmit and realize a future for this living heritage. Such living heritage processes require different, explicitly participatory and dynamic approaches for documentation – for which audiovisual forms of recording seem appropriate. This article unravels the conceptual confusion between different ‘intangible’ heritage practices and then looks at examples of practice in Flanders and in existing related research methods such as visual anthropology and oral history.

Introduction

Introduction to: Unlocking sound and image heritage. Selected readings from the 2015 SOIMA conference

Challenges at the Europeana Space project

Digital technologies enable us to visualize dance in new ways and to capture recordings of dance which may be preserved and handed down to future generations. In this way, dance starts to become part of our intangible cultural heritage. But capturing dance also raises questions of authorship and ownership of copyright in both the dance and the recording of the dance. Challenges arising at the intersections between the legal frameworks of intangible cultural heritage and copyright have surfaced in an EU-funded project, Europeana Space. This contribution describes the E-Space project and the place of dance within it, and it introduces work being done at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University on dance and examines the intersections between copyright law and the international legal frameworks applicable to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.

Changing gears

Audiovisual archives are embracing the opportunities offered by digitization for managing their work processes and offering new services to a wide array of user groups. Organization strategy, working processes and software development need to be able to support a culture where innovation can flourish. Some institutions are beginning to adopt the concept of ‘two-speed IT’. The core strategy aims to accommodate two informational technology tracks simultaneously: foundational but ‘slow’ and innovative but exible and ‘fast’. This paper outlines the rationale behind the two-speed IT strategy. It highlights a specific implementation at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, a large audiovisual archive and museum where two-speed IT is enabling the institute to reach its business objectives.

What to do with audiovisual carriers after their digitization?

Both traditional and more recent audiovisual carriers degrade. Even CD-ROMs have typically only a ten-year expected life span. In addition, playback equipment for both analogue and digital carriers will ultimately grow scarcer and more expensive to repair or replace. Archives and museums are inevitably faced with the decision of whether to preserve audiovisual carriers after their content has been digitized. This paper o ers a draft decision- making framework developed by the Flemish Institute of Archiving (VIAA). Assuming that an institution already has a digital collection management system in place, the proposed framework addresses the concepts of favourability, possibility, value, preservation conditions and the risk for other carriers through a series of questions. The paper also addresses the disposal of carriers, should an organization decide that disposal is in the best interests of its collections.

The sonic heritage of ecosystems

This paper discusses the importance of the ‘paleo- soundscapes’ of remote natural habitats as unique footprints of the systemic behaviour of healthy ecosystems and proposes considering them as intangible heritage to be urgently recorded and preserved. The interdisciplinary project Fragments of Extinction has worked toward preserving that ecological heritage through multidimensional sound recording eldwork in primary equatorial rainforests since 2002. The soundscapes of these unique, untouched and undisturbed places – increasingly threatened by human pressure and climate change – represent an object of patrimonialization that can offer insights to a range of fields. The project seeks to merge science (eco acoustics), technology (3D sound recording and reproduction) and art (environmental sound art) to contribute to the preservation of examples of the ordered and fragile equilibrium of biodiversity, and to encourage ecological awareness among audiences.

Digitizing collections of musical instruments in Africa

In 2013–2014 the Musical Instruments Museum (mim) in Brussels worked with Musée de la Musique (MMO) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and the Musée Panafricain de la Musique (MPM) in Brazzaville, the Republic of the Congo to build digital inventories of their musical instrument collections. The purpose of this digitization campaign has been to provide a more complete view of musical world heritage by incorporating not only African instruments but also the African terminology that describes these instruments, into international research databases. The cooperative digitization work has helped bring attention to valuable but not easily accessible collections. Both the musical patrimony held in African museums and the metadata they provide are proving to be valuable sources for understanding musical world heritage.