The new
National Library of Latvia situated in Riga was the venue for the annual
conference of BAAC. Delegates from
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Canada, Norway, Finland, United Kingdom, Sweden,
Denmark , Poland, France,Italy and Malta came to the beautiful, old city of
Riga, to exchange information and the learn about the work of different
audiovisual archives. Education in archival issues or up-dating in the latest
news about the work of national archives, television archives, music
collections, sound collections and projects related to the archives. The
programme was ambitious. “ SAFE AND REUSABLE: IDEALS VERSUS REAL LIFE”
The goal of
the presenters was to participate in fulfilling the intention of the programme.
Aldis
Putelis, dr. Nijole Bliudziuviene, Helle Bech Madsen, Marika Koha, Gerli Rebane, Heiki Mannik, Tedd Urnes, Ginta
Zalcmane, Sven Lapa, Juris Lubejs, Klaus AJ Riederer, Nicole Jacquemin, Maksims
Misura, Marco Rendina, Janis Ziedins, Richard Ranft, Maria Drabcyk, Kamlia
Lewandowska, Eva-Marie Oesterlen, Jole Stimbiryte, Erkki Nurmi and Adris
Kesteris contributed to make the conference a splendid arrangement for all of
us who are searching for new information and education in the field development
of audiovisual archives and facts about how the preserve original materials
like films, sound recordings, music collections, old videotapes, books and written documents.
The
conference was official opened on September 18 by the President of BAAC, Zane
Grosa, and the Head of the National Library of Latvia, Andris Vilks. The conference was supported by the Norwegian Embassy, The Canadian Embassy, Ministry of culture of republic of Latvia and Front Porch Digital, France.
Conference
partners were: Museum of the Occupation of Latvia 1940 – 1991, The National
archive of Latvia and Archives of Latvian Folklore.
SESSION 1
The first
speaker of Session 1 was Aldis Putelis
Issues of
formation, preservation and access of the essential part of the National
Archival Fund of published documents were dealt with by Dr. Nijole
Bliudziuviene.
We have moved from archival matters of Latvia to issues of published documents in Lithuania. Dr. Nijole Bliudziuviene is Director of Centre of Bibliography and Book Science at the National Library of Lithuania.
From
Lithuania we moved to Denmark. Helle Bech Madsen from Danish Broadcasting
Corporation(DR) informed us about the development of digitalisation of DR.
Digitised content of the collections must not remain in the archive. Journalists
and programme makers in the house must get easy access to the audiovisual
collections. An important questioned asked by Hell Bech Madsen was how can the archive stimulate the use of the
content?
The last
presenter of Session 1 was left to Marika Koha from Estonia. She reported about
the work with Estonian audio cassettes and digital archive Diger in the
National Library of Estonia (NLE). About 2100 commercially published audio
cassettes related to Estonia are stored in NLE. The digitalisation of the
cassettes was launched at the beginning of 2009. From 2013 sound files of
digitized audio cassettes are put into Digar, the new digital archive.
Archival
issues from Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark and Estonia were presented at the first
session.
SESSION 2
The first
presenter of Session 2 came from Estonia too. Digital projects at Estonian Film
Archives was the main subject for the paper presented by Gerli Rebane, consultant
from Estonian Film Archives.
Digitalisation
projects at ETA were presented. Access to old films is important for the users
of the film collections. Foreign documentaries and feature films make use of
the old films. Future plans for ETA: Nation-wide digitalisation project is to
be undertaken to digitalise all national audiovisual heritage of Estonia.
Estonian
Public Broadcasting has dealt with complicated issues connected to the
digitalisation of the audiovisual collections of the broadcasting. Heiki Mannik
talked about theoretical and practical problems with the introduction of the
digitalisation policy of the company. A self-critical approach to the work was
the content of his report.
The last
presenter of Session 2 was Tedd Urnes from Norway (TAAM). Safeguarding, protection of analogue originals
of audiovisual archives, libraries and private collections in time of war,
natural disasters and political conflicts were issues dealt with in his paper.
A report of the official approach of International archival associations to
political conflicts where libraries are damaged by the fighting forces was
presented. Protection of cultural heritage of any nation during an armed
conflict was also dealt with in his paper.
Session 3
The
programme of the last session 3 of the first day of the conference on September
17 was to highlight issues of importance to national libraries of Latvia and
Estonia.
The search
for the lost Latvia was dealt with by Ginta Zalcmane from The National Library
of Latvia.
The goal of
the National Library of Latvia is to get access to digital copies of ancient
drawing, postcards, photos from the 19th century till nowadays. The
description of the objects is important . The project: “ In Search of Lost
Latvia” is a defined as a historical-cultural project which is implemented by
the National digital library “ Letonica”. The content description of the
objects have to be made by the users of the project in close cooperation with
the National Library of Latvia. The aim of the project “ In Search of Latvia”
is to make a bridge between past and present . The main task of the library
specialists is to maintain a link among the digital collection and the user.
The keyword for the work is: Education. The new portal also makes it possible
to do cross-border research of the history of the Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania. The research of the history of Germany, Poland and Russia is also a
goal for the project.
National
Archives of Estonia was the subject for the next presenter made by Sven Lepa
who is also interested in making access of historical images possible for a
larger audience. In 2008 the image hosting site “ Flickr “ started its
cooperation with the Library of Congress,USA, to bring historical images to
users. The National Archive of Estonia
became a member of “ The Commons “ in 2013. This means that the library has
contact with about 80 participating institutions worldwide. Sven Lepa presented a report of the
experience with “ The Commons” and the cooperation with different international
institutions worldwide.
The last
presentation of Session 3- the session for National Libraries – was left to
Juris Lubejs who is working as an audio engineer at the National Library of
Latvia.
He
presented a report of his studies of the Latvian record company, “ Bellaccord
“. The aim of the presentation is to highlight some aspects of the importance
and success of the maker of the company, the Latvian businessman Herberts
Rudzitis. A brief history of the prewar work to set up a record industry is
Latvia was also presented. The work with the preservation of the Bellaccord
records in Latvia was also included in the presentation.
OPENING
RECEPTION –SMALL GUILD (MAZA GILDE), RIGA
An opening
reception for all the delegates was set up at “ Small Guild (Maza Gilde)” in
Riga in the evening. Communication between the delegates is important for any
conference including this one. The arrangement was nice with entertainment from
a local song group. One of the singers was the active member of BAAC, Aldis
Putelis . Splendid performance!
SESSION 4
On
September 18 the second day of the conference Klaus A J Riederer from Finland
opened the Session 4 .
“ Seeing is
believing: How to make OCR work in practice “ was the title of his paper. His
main issue was how to deal with old card catalogues. What to do with the
content of the cards? How to scan the
index cards into databases? The content of the card was controlled before the
scanning began.
Dr.(tech)
Klaus A J Riederer informed about his experience working for The Finnish
Broadcasting Company ( Yleisradio,YLE). Optical character recognition (OCR) was
demonstrated in action.
Information
about how to transport , store and protect the content of the collections, was
the main issue of the paper presented by Nicole Jacquemin. The Archive exchange
F ormat (AXF) is a cloud- transport of file assets providing stream-based
exchange, in-pathload/file validation. AXF is the key tool to several
cloud-based services available today proving its significance outside of
archive applications. Nicole Jacquemin is a representative for the company,
Front Porch Digital, France.
Finland and
France – then we return to information from Latvia.
Latvia
State Archive of Audiovisual documents, Electronic documents department
presented a paper written and presented by Maksims Misura.
What to do
with old tapes which is fading ? Audio tapes can be lost because ferromagnetic
layer has started to separate from the tape substrate. The paper dealt with the
issue of how the archive may save national documentary heritage by copying the
information to the new digital media. The digitalisation process from the audio
tapes to electronic documents was described by Maksims Misura.
The last
speaker of Session 4 came from Italy. Marco Rendina presented a paper dealing
with the Prest4U project.
It is
difficult for the great majority of media owners to gain access to advanced
audiovisual preservation technologies. Presto4U will focus research efforts
onto useful technological solutions, raise awareness and improve the adoption
of audiovisual preservation research results.
The
resulting knowledge, tools and services produced by the project will be
maintained by PrestoCentre, the European Competence Centre for audiovisual
preservation.
Information
given from Finland, France, Latvia and Italy – the result of Session 4
SESSION 5
Janis
Ziedins opened Session 5 by presenting a paper aiming at finding a solution for
online access of audio visual material. What about making it possible to watch
movies in any public library free of charge? Culture Information Systems Centre
in cooperation with other cultural institutions has built Latvian movies portal
(www.filmas.Lv)
where users can get access to movies.
Richard
Ranft is the Head of Sound & Vision at the British Library. He is making a
statement about the aim of his paper: “ ... Many of Europe’s leading cultural
heritage institutions have large, high-quality audio collections which are in
great demand be researchers and the general public, but online access to them
is constrained by copyright and fragmented among many different platforms...”.
The problem
will be solved because the European Sound project is aiming at bringing
together for the first time major European audio archives and web innovators to
solve the problem. Publishers, the record industry, right holders and libraries
will be approached to improve the access to out-of- commerce and geo –locked
audio content.
The last
contribution on Session 5 was done by Maria Drabczyk, Kamila Lewandowska and
Eve-Marie Oesterien.
Poland and
United Kingdom working together with a common aim: a pan-European AV heritage
project.
The title
of the paper is: Going EUscreen XL: On the joys and challenges of participating
in a pan-European heritage project.
The focus
of the presentation was on the practical challenges and benefits of making
audiovisual content and metadata searchable, findable, and accessible for
future re-use.
The
presenters came from: National Audiovisual Institute of Poland and British
Universities Film & Video Council.
SESSION 6
The final
session of the conference, Session 6, was opened by a presentation of Jole
Stimbiryte.
She was
aiming at making a report about her experience in the field of searching for
access to audiovisual material in Lithuanian Central State Archive. The
question asked was: Does the user always get what he wants? Is every
audiovisual material accessible for the user at any time?
What about
material that is protected by copyright regulations?
The next
speaker came from Finland: Erkki Nurmi from University of Arts Helsinki,
Sibelius Academy Library.
He was
reporting about his study tour to libraries in London. He focused on the study
of research for music in libraries. The title of his paper was: librarian in
Erasmus exchange: E- resources in academic music libraries.
The last
presentation of Session 6 was left to Andris Kesteris from Canada.
He wanted
to show a documentary which he had worked with for about three years. The film
title was: “ Outside the Shere “. Marcus Kolga and Andris Kesteris produced the
47- minute film in collaboration with the Independent Producers Initiative
program of OMI-TV in Toronto, Canada.
The film
relies on archival and new footage coming from various institutional and
community sources. The content of the film is the history of the Baltic
Communities in Canada and their role in a post-Second World War environment.
The main question posed in the film is about the future of the Baltic diaspora
and the survival of the three Baltic States themselves.
Tedd Urnes
Teddview Audiovisual Archival Management (TAAM)
October 15, 2014.
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