The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme is an attempt to save the cultural heritage, and audio-visual materials cannot be excluded. These materials, however, are among the most vulnerable to destruc-tion. Lost collections are a sad reminder of the rav-ages of time, chemistry, natural and man-made disas-ters, wars and conflicts, but fortunately endangered collections are currently being identified by this pro-gramme.
International organizations
Audiovisual archives have set up their own federa-tions: the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) was established sixty-eight years ago, the International Association of Sound Archives (IASA) in 1969 and the International Federation of Tele-vision Archives (IFTA) in 1977. All have NGO status within UNESCO. Although each has its own constituency and membership structures, the audio-visual NGOs, ICA and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) have collaborated since 1979 in a Round Table on Audio-visual Records under the auspices of UNESCO. The Round Table has been responsible for many activities including publications, surveys, the development of guidelines and training. It pro-vides an arena for audiovisual organizations to address common issues and improve the recognition and status of audiovisual archives as vital compo-nents in safeguarding the cultural heritage. The Round Table has an important subcommittee – the Technical Co-ordinating Committee – which orga-nizes Joint Technical Symposia across its spectrum of interests and provides technical advice and exper-tise.
In addition to the international NGOs there are several national and regional associations: the Association of Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) in the United States, the Association of Moving Image Archives (AMIA), with its network of interests in North America and beyond, and the recently formed South-East Asia-Pacific Audio-visual Archives Association (SEAPAVAA). Other closely allied associations include the International Council on Museums (ICOM) and the International Council on Traditional Music (ICTM). Thus many associations are willing to assist if one knows where to look. The next step is to provide greater awareness of the expertise and advice available, and the Round Table under UNESCO auspices is a good place to start. ■■
Further reading
BOSTON, G. 1991. Guide to the Basic Technical Equipment Required by Audio, Film and Television Archives.
Milton Keynes, TCC. 104 pp.
HARRISON, H. P. 1992. Audiovisual Archive Literature: A Select Bibliography. Paris, UNESCO. 153 pp.
——. 1995. Selection and Audiovisual Collections. IFLA Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 185–90.
——. Audiovisual Archives: A Practical Reader. Paris, UNESCO. (Forthcoming.)
KLAUE, W. 1993. World Directory of Moving Image and Sound Archives. Munich, K. G. Saur. 192 pp.
KOFLER, B. 1990. Legal Issues Facing Audiovisual Archives Paris, UNESCO. (PGI-91/WS/5.) 71 pp.
UNESCO. CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT WORKING
PARTY. 1990. Curriculum Development for the Training of Personnel in Moving Image and Recorded Sound Archives, pp. 14–18. Paris, UNESCO. (PGI-90/WS/9.) 104 pp.
Helen P. Harrisongraduated in Psychology from Sydney University and trained as a librarian in the United Kingdom. She entered the archives world in the National Film Archive in
London on the cataloguing staff and then worked for several years in Visnews, a newsfilm agency. In 1969 she joined the newly established Open University as Media Librarian, and worked there for twenty-five years, establishing library systems for audiovisual materials and an archive of programme material produced by the university. Ms Harrison is now consultant AV archivist at the Open University. She has been on the Executive Board of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) since 1981 and held positions as President, Secretary-General and Editor. She has represented IASA in many UNESCO meetings, and carried out several projects for UNESCO dealing with selection and appraisal, bibliography, legal issues and training with reference to audiovisual archives.
Helen P. Harrison 6 Barnhill Road Marlow, SL7 3E2 United Kingdom Fax: (1908) 64278
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his chapter covers current computer develop-ments and provides an overview of how they have affected archive, library and information work. An international conference on networking and the future of libraries, organized by the United Kingdom Office for Library Networking (UKOLN) in 1995, included papers describing computer-based services which provide access to library information, local and remote databases (such as on the Internet and via networked CD-ROMs), full texts of journal articles, software for word processing, etc., and com-munications facilities for e-mail, file transfer and newsgroups in Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.Library and information service managers now have a wide set of computer-based solutions from which they can select the best mix of services to meet the needs of their customers. Phrases such as ‘the electronic library’ and ‘digital libraries’ are begin-ning to appear in the literature. Collier and Arnold (1995) define the electronic library as ‘a managed environment of multimedia materials in digital form, designed for the benefit of its user population, struc-tured to facilitate access to its contents and equipped with aids to navigation of the global network’. The Electronic Libraries (e-Lib) Programme in the United Kingdom, which resulted from a study (known as the Follett Report) into various crises affecting academic libraries, is funding sixty or so projects covering the areas of document delivery, electronic journals, on-demand publishing, digitiza-tion, training and awareness, and access to net-worked resources. Full details of the state of the pro-jects are maintained on the web server at UKOLN (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/elib/). In the United States the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other agencies have funded six institutions to work on the Digital Libraries Initiative. Berry (1996) describes some of the work in progress and gives a definition from the University of Michigan Digital Library
Project: ‘a digital library is the generic name for fed-erated structures that provide humans both intellec-tual and physical access to the huge and growing worldwide networks of information encoded in multimedia digital networks’.
The parallel developments of computer pro-cessing speed, storage facilities, multimedia and telecommunications now enable access from one workstation to huge information resources world-wide. The traditional view of a library as a store of information held locally is being eroded as the library becomes a gateway to information resources worldwide. This, of course, has huge implications for library users, information providers, librarians and information scientists.
The first electronic digital computer, ENIAC, was completed in Philadelphia in 1946, but all com-mands had to be input separately. The first stored program was written by Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester in 1948. Some of the jour-nals that publish relevant papers in this area are also now fifty years old. The Editorial Board of the Journal of Documentation conceived for 1994 a spe-cial volume, Fifty Years of Information Progress, which contains many useful chapters outlining developments over the years.