SYMPOSIUM ABSTRACTS

SYMPOSIUM SESSION 1

Case Studies of Change Management (Administrative, Leadership, Political, Technological) Part 1

The Digitisation Task of Vietnam Film Institute in the Changing Times of Technology

Le Tuan Anh (Vietnam Film Institute)

The fourth Industrial Revolution is a precious opportunity to approach scientific and technical achievements, but it also puts enormous pressures on the audiovisual archives. In that context, with a limited budget, Vietnam Film Institute always faces many difficulties and challenges, including the risk of technical obsolescence and lagging behind in comparison to developed countries. However, if the opportunity is taken advantage of, the technology will also bring about great support for audiovisual archiving. Determining that the film digitization will take a long period of time, VFI has developed some national standards for film storage practices and evaluating the technical condition of photographic films. However, the longevity of audiovisual materials is limited, and opportunities do not wait for us forever, so if we do not take advantage of them soon, opportunities will pass, then difficulties and challenges will appear exponentially. Therefore, the sooner the digitization strategy of audiovisual materials is implemented, the better it will be in storing the national audiovisual heritage, contributing to preserve and promote the national cultural identity.

Transformation of the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia in the Preservation of Motion Pictures Archives

Kurniawan Budi Santoso (National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia / ANRI)

Preservation of motion picture archives is the most challenging matter for archival institutions in general, compared to the preservation of textual and still images archives, because preservation of motion picture archives requires higher technology, higher human resource capabilities, and higher costs. The advancement of information and communication technology in the last fifty years has influenced the method of creating motion picture archives, which will also affect its utilization, maintenance, and preservation method.

The National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia which has more than one hundred thousand motion picture archives, consisting of film reels and videotapes, also face these challenges, with its limitations, which have gone through transformation along with technological advancement. The transformation occurs in the preservation strategy or method, which is related to the quality of the preservation results; transformation of the capability of human resources as the subject of the transformation; transformation in business processes that impact the efficiency of institutional performance in serving the needs of the community to access the motion picture archives; and transformation in policies of motion picture archives preservation.

This paper describes the transformation that has been done / experienced by the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia to overcome the challenges of technological advancement, within the scope of the transformation of strategies, human resources, business processes and policies that surround them; especially the transformation strategy within limited resources, so that it can be a material for sharing experiences with other archival institutions with the same limitations and constraints.

SYMPOSIUM SESSION 2

Case Studies of Change Management (Administrative, Leadership, Political, Technological) Part 2

The Future National Film and Sound Archive of Australia: Our Transformation Journey

Nancy Eyers and Jacqui Uhlmann (National Film and Sound Archive of Australia / NFSA)

In 2019, the NFSA commenced an ambitious transformation journey, starting with a comprehensive restructuring of the organisation. The Future NFSA is:

• Digital by Design
• Supportive of our Strategic Priorities: Collection Digitisation and Engagement
• Customer Focussed
• Collaborative and Project-Based Workforce
• Efficient and Sustainable

The restructure has resulted in substantial changes to not only what we are focused on, but how we work. In a world where fiscal pressures to arts organisations and digital archives looks to increase, we need to learn to deliver more with less. We do not have the luxury of having a specialist in every field any more – we need to think of ourselves as a collective knowledge base and enable project-based delivery of our key priorities.

On 1 November 2019, with no change to our fiscal position, we have managed to reorient the NFSA, while still delivering more than we ever have before. The restructure itself we did in-house, with no consultant assistance.

In this interactive presentation, where we will actively engage the audience, we will share with you the highs and the lows of our recent restructure. We will talk to you about what we refer to as our Transformation Program, which we are actively working on now in 2020. The Transformation Program moves the NFSA beyond the restructure and focuses on developing our best asset: our people. We will share with you our cultural change program and workforce planning strategy. We look forward to sharing our journey with the SEAPAVAA audience.

The Impact of Technological Change on the Management of Audiovisual Archives in Malawi

Innocent Mankhwala (National Archives of Malaysia)

The field of archives and records management has consistently been facing a number of difficulties and failures especially in the management of audiovisual archives. Several studies have highlighted challenges that are faced in the management of such collections (Lihoma, 2012; Nachreiner, 2009). Some of the challenges are lack of properly trained personnel, lack of purpose-built infrastructures, lack of equipment (Shelves, thermometers, air conditioners, computers, scanners). The National Archival of Malawi is not exceptional to the highlighted difficulties. Since the establishment of the National Archives of Malawi 72 years ago, it has been in the custody of audiovisual archives generated by several government and non-governmental agencies. This paper intends to look at how technological change has impacted the storage and management of the audiovisual collections in the National Archives of Malawi. The paper will focus on identifying the type of material being kept, how it is being kept, challenges that are being faced in the management of such collections in the light of changes in technology. the study shall involve an in-depth interview with the National Archives staff responsible for the management of the records. In addition, since these records are generated by various institutions, a sample of those institutions shall be consulted to establish their role in the management of the audiovisual materials from the point of creation all the way to the point of deposit to the National Archives of Malawi. The study will also assess the kind of support the creating institutions give to the National Archives of Malawi.

SYMPOSIUM SESSION 3

Adaptability of Archives in Times of Challenges and Opportunities Part 1

Evolution of Data Management for New Uses of INA’s Collections and New Professional Practices

Anne Couteux (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel / INA)

The French National Audiovisual Institute (INA) was created in 1974, with the mission of collecting and preserving the audiovisual programs of French public broadcasters. In 1992, the legal deposit law for radio and television extended its scope. In 2006, INA was given the mission of collecting media websites and, beyond, the institute became a third-party archiver for private partners (cultural and sports institutions, companies…). As collections have grown, so have audiences: audiovisual professionals, researchers, general public, who access INA collections through various consultation applications. Access is based on the availability of descriptive metadata produced by INA teams or provided by partner companies.

In order to facilitate access to the collections and exploitation of the archives and to develop new uses, a vast project to modernize the information system has been undertaken. It is based on a “data lake”, unique technical infrastructure hosting data structured according to a completely redefined model which allows a more flexible management of data and a more precise analysis of collections and media. In parallel, new data production and management applications are developed as well as artificial intelligence tools applied to the description of audiovisual archives.

The evolution of archive use, management tools and data production methods are leading to challenges of change for information professionals, which need to be anticipated and supported. The project led by Ina also covers data quality and homogeneity issues, to ensure that the migration to the new storage environment, the data lake, is a complete success. The presentation will focus on these issues and the methods used to address them.

Portrait of an Archive on Fire: The Case Study of the Film Archive in Thailand

Sanchai Chotirosseranee (Film Archive (Public Organization))

On the evening of September 29, 2019, a fire broke out at one of the Film Archive’s temporary mobile offices located in the back part of the compound. The office was used by film archivists to do film inspection. There were around a few dozen film reels in the office. The Film Archive’s staff and security guards spotted the fire early and firefighters arrived 20 minutes later. The quick response helped limit the damages, and the fire was put out in less than an hour. Fortunately, there was no injury.

The day after, the police arrived to investigate the cause of the fire. Later the staffs were allowed to retrieve films from the scene. The “survivors” were then moved to our preservation and restoration facilities. The damage to the film reels was caused by the fire as well as by water from the firefighting operation. But the inspection also revealed that several reels were not damaged by the incident.

This presentation will explain the rescue mission in detail. How did the Film Archive deal with the “survivors” step by step? What was the treatment the Film Archive used to heal the damaged reels case by case? And what are some of the lessons we have learnt from this incident?

SYMPOSIUM SESSION 4

Archiving and the Community

From Manhattan, with Awakening Voices of Asian American Research and Preservation of 1970s Chinatown Community Media

Klavier Jie Ying Wang, Ph.D. (Moving Image Archiving and Preservation / MIAP; New York University)

Ethnic minorities have played a significant in the history of the United States. This is a project about the archival collection of a New York-based ethnic minority grassroot community news media – CCTV (Chinese Cable Television). This project will cover CCTV’s historical background, archival contents of the CCTV collection, the acquisition of the collection by New York University, the current status of the collection, and the challenges of making the archive more visible and accessible.

Active during the late 1970s and early 1980s, CCTV was established by a group of Asian American youngsters who were members of an ethnic minority art group – Asian CineVision (ACV). ACV is regarded as the earliest model of self-governed Asian American media in the United States. CCTV documented not only the everyday life of Asian Americans (especially Chinese immigrants), but also how people were engaged in public affairs and fought for their civil rights. Unlike other ethnic media that focuses on covering immigrants’ hometown news, CCTV created a public and politically empowerment space for Chinatown residents.

Special Collections at New York University acquired the ACV collection, including the CCTV audiovisual materials in the early 2000s. CCTV news programs are made up of over 500 ½ inch open-reel tapes and U-matic tapes. However, due to different factors including language barriers and digitization limitation, CCTV archival records become a “hidden collection” which have limited public access over the years. Though efforts of writing archival descriptions for individual news programs and getting tapes gradually digitized have been applied since 2018, difficulties and challenges of expanding the visibility and accessibility of this ethnic minority media archive remain substantial.

This research is based on my internship at the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University, during which I was responsible for managing, writing archival description and digitizing CCTV tapes.

From Keepers to Creators: Broadening the Archivist’s Mission Through Education

Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab, Ph.D. (University of the Philippines Diliman, School of Library and Information Studies / UPSLIS)

Our understanding of the nature and shifting roles of archives in society is continuously evolving. With the constant increase in information and needs of different communities, the archival paradigms that guide and shape our theory and praxis move from the archive’s tradition of custodianship and standardization of practical operations to a more proactive, societal and humanistic archival approach in the creation of new knowledge and ways to address social, historical and cultural issues. Hence, archival education has to keep up with the times and align itself with the emerging needs of the profession and the community it is serving. In this presentation, I will discuss the state of archival education in the Philippines through the courses and activities offered and done by the School of Library and Information Studies, University of the Philippines Diliman (UP SLIS). With the first library courses offered in 1914, the UP SLIS is the oldest library school in the region and one of the first educational institutions to offer courses in Archives and Records Management in 1954. Together with the history and current status of the program, I will also go into its future direction from being an Archives and Records Management (ARM) Track in the undergraduate and graduate levels to a separate graduate degree program for Archival Studies. In preparation for the formation and implementation of this graduate degree program, and other related courses and training programs, a market demand survey to identify the interests, needs, and expectations of potential students in the Philippines and in the region is being conducted from 2019-present. For years, more and more local students and practitioners are becoming interested and engaged in the offered courses and archival work. Despite the UP SLIS’ minimal resources, faculty members and students have been continuously doing various projects such as research, extension and outreach work and community archiving initiatives to further advance the archives profession – and more importantly, to give service to the public through records and archives.

AV Archiving and Preservation in the Pacific: The Kiribati National Archives

Aileen Boubou (Kiribati National Library and Archives)

Established in 1976 as a Unit within the Ministry of Education, Training and Culture, the National Library and Archives of Kiribati is the repository of Kiribati’s public and historical records connecting the past and present. The institution works to unite natives to authentic records of the country’s history and those created by the government. The archives have been busily collecting and organizing these records and have developed new programs that never existed before.

An important part of the National Archives of Kiribati is its collections of audiovisual materials.  These collections contain film, video and audio tapes which are an indispensable resource to our county’s history and heritage. However, we face many challenges in dealing with these collections. Due to the lack of essential resources, there are currently no means by which citizens can access these materials.  The effects of climate change on the islands have put these materials at even greater risk.

This presentation will introduce the National Archives of Kiribati and its history, development and challenges and provide a look into the reality facing audiovisual preservation in the Pacific.

SYMPOSIUM SESSION 5

Reflections on Archival Difficulties

Trophies and Scars

Ray Edmondson, Ph.D. (Archives Associates Pty. Ltd.)

This paper picks up three of the topics listed in the Call for Proposals: a case study in change management, reflections on a major failure, and the question of generational tensions. All three relate to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. (NFSA)

The case study arises from the birth of the NFSA in 1984, when the film archive and sound archive sections of the National Library of Australia were separated from that institution and formed the basis of a new organisation. The two areas had different systems, worldviews and economics and they were in competition for the enlarged resource base of the new entity. The challenge was to turn these competing entities into a united organisation. The failure occurred in 1999 when the NFSA was re-branded and re-positioned as ScreenSound Australia. Although the original name was later restored, the episode had major economic, professional, and political consequences that took years to be resolved and endangered the future of the NFSA itself. Finally, generational tensions play out in complex ways, particularly in a profession that has moved from an analogue to a digital mindset within less than a working lifetime. Some examples are put forward for discussion.

Our Failures, Success, and Challenges: Lessons from a Broadcaster’s History

Nobuki Yoshiyama (Japan Broadcasting Corporation / NHK)

NHK, or Japan Broadcasting Corporation, is a public and largest broadcaster in Japan and has been producing news, documentaries, dramas, sports, educational and other audio-visual contents since 1953.

Even though the NHK Archives today manages one of the largest multimedia archives in the Asia-Pacific region, our path has never been smooth sailing. For the first three decades of TV broadcasting, we do not have every content in our archive because of the technical and financial constraints of that times, which is a tremendous loss. We started systematic preservation as late as the 1980s, as awareness for archiving arose. The success was brought to us by digitization, which started in 2012. With digitization, we can easily review and order footages on our laptops. We can provide the materials to production teams much faster.

Ironically, as we now set sail for a UHD (Ultra-High Definition/4K and 8K) era, we are facing essentially the same challenge as we had in the 1950s. We have been unable to find a way to preserve high-quality contents at a low cost, and with available technology. But the time is against us, as we air programs 24/7, also the huge coverage of Tokyo 2020 is expected.

In this presentation, I will frankly talk about our painful experience from the past and the lessons we learned. I will also introduce the project we launched to take back the lost cultural heritage. Such themes as “Digital Dilemma”, “Migration” and others will also be discussed.

No matter the size or the nature of the institution, our experience should look familiar to fellow SEAPAVAA members, and we hope our lesson to be shared.

Facing the Issues & Challenges in Preserving Malaysia’s Audio-Visual Archives

Norsuriaty binti Awang Hassim (National Archives of Malaysia)

National Archives of Malaysia (NAM) has started to collect Audiovisual (AV) records from a number of sources. Nowadays, it has become one of the most popular archival materials due to its significant impact on Malaysia’s historical values and modernization. After over a decade of managing AV archives, NAM has undergone a number of challenges to ensure longevity and survival. Financial constraint, lack of expertise and training, shortage of staff, the rapid changes in technology, technology obsolescence, climates, and the changes of organizational structure are the never-ending issues that brought significant challenges and difficulties faced. This paper is focusing on the challenges in our AV archival initiatives; its impact; the efforts to overcome the issues; and lastly, NAM’s way forward. With proper strategies, better priorities, and good allocation, we somehow believe that we could strive better in ensuring AV materials’ sustainability for future references.

SYMPOSIUM SESSION 6

Adaptability of Archives in Times of Challenges and Opportunities Part 2

Protecting Archival Workers with Agile Information and Mutual Aid

Lydia Tang, Ph.D. (LYRASIS)

Archival Workers in the United States, probably like most other countries in the world, were caught off guard by the encroaching pandemic. During intensely chaotic weeks in March 2020, archival repositories closed, with their workers transitioning to working from home or furloughing or completely laying them off. The Archivists at Home google doc was spearheaded by the Society of American Archivists’ Accessibility & Disability Section, which began as a crowdsourced advocacy tool for developing a more flexible concept of archival labour, whether it is archivists working from home due to COVID-19 or archivists with disabilities.  The document has evolved in scope to address the needs of the archival community grappling with COVID-19 broadly, ranging from the workplace, choosing to temporarily close an archive, to working from home, and supporting student and contingent workers.

A related effort, spearheaded by many of the same people who created the document, also founded the Archival Workers Emergency Fund. For workers in the United States, health care, retirement, and other supports are often tied closely to having a full-time job. Archival labour in the United States is also predominantly precarious due to low paying and temporary positions. To swiftly support archival workers who had been furloughed or laid off by the pandemic, a volunteer ad hoc team of archivists created this fund, which SAA administers. The fund has been a powerful symbol of solidarity and compassion within the archival profession. To date, it has assisted over 170 U.S.-based archival workers, disbursing over $141,000 in donated funds.

This presentation will explore these two efforts, describing their significance and role during the evolving pandemic.

Case Sharing: The Audiovisual Archives Sharing Platform Construction in a Global Perspective

Fang Han (Shanghai Media Group, Shanghai Audio-Visual Archives)

Digitalization has brought great changes and new possibilities to the archives industry, especially in the audio-visual archives industry. Obstacles restricting the use of audio-visual archives have been gradually removed. With the advent of the 5G era, more and more archival institutions have set up and operated digital archives online. SMG Shanghai Audio-visual Archives, a professional audiovisual archives agency of Media Group, starts to explore a new online operation mode of audio-visual archives by setting up a sharing platform—Chinese Archives Online. This platform will undertake certain social service functions and provide Chinese users with public services. This bilingual platform will also serve as a channel for overseas users to consult Chinese audio-visual archives. This article will focus on the content, functions, and services of the platform, introduce some explorations in the field of public service, and show the problems encountered in the operational process as well as the future development plan.

Libraries and the Pandemic

Christine McKenzie (International Federation of Libraries Associations and Institutions / IFLA)

2020 has been a very challenging year for all of us, and the impact of COVID 19 has required us to be even more innovative and inventive as we continue to provide services to our communities despite lockdowns and safety concerns.

In September and October last year, the IFLA Regional Office for Asia and Oceania and the National Library Board of Singapore presented a series of conversations about libraries in the post COVID world. These conversations covered national, public, and academic libraries, and library leaders from around the region described what was happening in their libraries and how they were managing through the pandemic and how they think that the future will look.

After participating in all three conversations, with national, public, and academic library leaders, there seems to be a number of common themes emerging which can help us understand how we go on from now. We are working together more and sharing information; we are increasing our innovation and creativity; librarians are upskilling; there is a new appreciation of libraries – we are being seen as partners, and there are serious concerns about resourcing into the future. We are all adapting and changing, and we need to continue to be resilient and stay committed to achieving literate, informed and participative societies.

This presentation will explore these themes and how libraries are responding.

SYMPOSIUM SESSION 7

Collaboration and Cooperation in Archives

Now or Never: Pushing for Film Preservation Using Inter-Agency Relations

Matthew Yang (Asian Film Archive)

A film commission’s role is to nurture, support and promote its country’s filmmaking talents, production, and industry. A film archive preserves a country’s cinematic heritage and works. For an organisation like the Asian Film Archive (AFA) that has a transnational collection, is based in Singapore, and receives local public funding, the preservation of Singapore’s films has become a necessary aspect of its work.

In 2007, the AFA established a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Singapore Film Commission (SFC) and the National Library Board Singapore (NLB), to preserve and promote Singapore’s film heritage. Thirteen years on, the MOU has evolved into a symbiotic relationship between the AFA and SFC to tackle the influx and preservation of born-digital productions. With a lack of legal-deposit legislation for cinematic works in Singapore, AFA’s working relationship with the Singapore Film Commission has become crucial to preserving Singapore films supported using public monies, despite its limitations.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has recently led SFC to initiate policy shifts centred toward financial relief and assistance to filmmakers and production companies. These initiatives have led to the production of films with very different terms and conditions. As a result, AFA has had to review and reassess its archiving and acquisition policies in response to developments within the film industry during this unprecedented time.

Using the AFA-SFC case study, my presentation discusses past and present acquisition strategies while navigating the challenges posed by the pandemic, thereby illustrating how inter-agency relations can help advocate for an archive’s cause and enable preservation work to be successful.

A Case Study in Preservation Project Management: The W.I.L.L. Radio Transcription Discs

Joshua Harris (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Illinois Public Media (IPM) is a not-for-profit public media service of the College of Media at the University of Illinois. Operated by IPM, WILL Radio and Television provides public radio, television and online content through a variety of distribution channels.

First broadcast in 1922 from the U of I Electrical Engineering Laboratory under the letters WRM, WILL has a long and storied history. As the first university to be granted an FM license (1941), WILL became one of the founders of public media in the United States. It was out of these endeavours that The National Association of Educational Broadcasters (forerunner of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System) began producing and broadcasting from the U of I in 1951.

In 2009, the University of Illinois Libraries began a project for the physical preservation and digitization of a collection of grooved lacquer transcription discs from WILL Radio. Inadequately housed and in poor condition, the 3,188 discs contain content recorded from broadcasts spanning the late 1930s to mid-1960s and document a stunning array of campus, local, state, national and international news, events and feature programs.

As a joint effort between WILL, the University Archives and the Media Preservation Labs, the project provides an excellent case study in preservation project design and execution, as well as human and financial resource management. From its conception to its completion 10 years later, the project revealed important questions, faced unexpected challenges and required important decisions.

This paper will provide a brief history of WILL and the importance of the collection to our knowledge of public media history, university-based public broadcasting and innovation in reaching new audiences in the mid-20th Century. The paper will focus upon a detailed, practically based, overview of the project with particular emphasis on the challenges, successes, failures, and lessons learned from this venture.

Sustaining Culture and History: Acts of Volunteerism in the Preservation of Archives

Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab, Ph.D., Michelle Deloria, and Rosemarie Roque (University of the Philippines Diliman, School of Library and Information Studies / UPSLIS and Polytechnic University of the Philippines / PUP)

In our previous presentations at SEAPAVAA Conference 2017 and 2018, we mapped out the locations of state-produced AV materials during the late President Ferdinand Marcos’ regime and integrated other materials found in family archives and memory sites. As part of our continuing objective to underscore the importance of archives in shaping and understanding the historical narrative of the Martial Law era, we now focus on the concept and act of volunteerism. We believe that volunteers are agents and movers of change.  Our initiatives alongside the efforts of volunteers to preserve the Martial Law-related films, photographs, and other artefacts are still ongoing and growing. We continue working on the organization towards the provision for access to these archival materials. Such is the Community Archiving Workshop Manila – AsiaVisions AudioVisual Collection Project, a voluntary initiative to assist Ibon Foundation to jumpstart its AV archival preservation. Its collection comprises of magnetic tapes serving as documentary heritage of the people’s movement from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. Another voluntary effort involved the Burgos family photograph collection, which consists of published and unpublished photographs of the Marcos regime and succeeding administrations. The collection was organized, and a research guide/finding aid was created to facilitate preservation, access and retrieval. While we have the support from our home institution, UP School of Library and Information Studies, our initiatives have also been confronted with several issues and challenges. In this presentation, we will discuss our attempts to address and overcome these challenges for us to continue our advocacy as archivists and volunteers.

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