Editor's Letter

Dear all,

The summer here in Stockholm has nearly come to its end, vacations are over and it feels exciting coming back again with all the events that are waiting. The present Water Festival in Stockholm, which fills the city with tourists, are one of the big happenings here and also the last before the work starts. Another great event to look forward to is the one in October - The FIAT/IFTA World Conference - this year in Santiago de Chile. This issue of the Newsletter will be updating you on all that you eventually have missed about it.

During the summer our website has been interestingly extended
The visitors are, from now on, able to get important documents in different formats direct from "the web". Either they can order them as prints from the FIAT/IFTA office against a charge (non-FIAT members, members free of charge) or they can get them directly by downloading them as PDF-files. To download documents one requires a username and a password that will be distributed together with the confirmation of paid membership fee. To read the PDF-files requires the programme Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded free via our website.

The big event that everyone is waiting for - The World Conference - is soon to be realized. The theme and also the name of it is "Audiovisual Archives of the New World - A New World of Audiovisual Archiving". The meaning of having it in South America is to enable the Latin American archives to further develop themselves by the transfer of know how such a conference means, at the same time as they get an unique opportunity to present their collections and latest achievements. Every continent, every region has its own problems and therefore a FIAT/IFTA could be an important opportunity for professional archivists maintaining and developing their skills.

The subjects to be discussed in the workshops and by the speakers are many. Only to mention a few: the Documentation development from Card catalogue and Film to Digital archiving, Storing Data files, Meta data and Protecting rights etc. There will also be workshops of professional Training of Audiovisual Archivists, Film preservation and how to prevent the "Vinegar Syndrome".

Not to forget the presentations, screenings and voting for the 1999 FIAT/IFTA Television Archive Award! The winner will return with the glory, the big honor and a check on DM 10.000.

The Conference registration forms from eager participants daily reach the office and we are happy that it seams to be such a great interest. They are coming from all over the world and the host - TVN Chile - is delighted. A lot of speakers have already submitted their papers, treating the wide area of audiovisual archiving. They surely will have crowded auditoriums that are eager to bring home to their organizations the new ideas.

Unfortunately, I will not be able myself to be there in Santiago because of other more unpredictable reasons, but fortunately our assistant administrative coordinator Ms Christine Politsch (archiv@orf.at) from the ORF in Vienna, Austria, will be able to replace me there to take care of the FIAT/IFTA-officeās duties. I hope that you all will enjoy yourself at the conference and that you will make new and interesting acquaintances among the delegates. And if you canāt make it to the World Conference this time, there are still a great number of events in the very near future worthwhile to take part in. Check the calendar below!

Yours sincerely,
Katharina Robertsson Reimer
Administrative coordinator (ifta@svt.se)

THE FIAT/IFTA CALENDAR

• EBU/PEDG-FIAT/IFTA Seminar for TV-archivist of transitional countries "Preservation of archive film", Sarajevo, October, 1999
• IASA Annual Conference and Executive Board meeting in Vienna, September 18th-22nd, 1999
• FIAT/IFTA World Conference, Santiago, Chile, October 3th-5th, 1999
• ICA 34th International Conference of the Round Table on Archives, Budapest, Hungary, October 6th-9th 1999.
• Stockholm University-FIAT/IFTA-SVT-Institute for Future Studies: "Approaches to Television Studies", Stockholm, October 28th-29th, 1999.
• Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), Annual Conference, Montréal, Quebec, November 1st-6th, 1999
• JTS meeting Paris, France, January, 2000
• FIAT/IFTA Baltic Seminar and Commission meetings, Tallinn, Estonia, (late) May, 2000
• FIAT/IFTA Annual World Conference, Vienna, October 2000.