FIAT/IFTA with IAMHIST
at the 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences in Oslo

FIAT/IFTA continues to seek new partners in developing the use of audiovisual archive. And the founding of the Television Studies Work group (TSW) within FIAT last year I think very much has proved to be the working tool we had hoped in creating new alliances between users of audiovisual archives. Since several of the "founding members" of this work group are active scholars, it is obvious why we attract an event like the "19th International Congress of Historical Sciences", this time held in Oslo last August. Several thousands of historians filled up the Oslo University Campus at Blindern for a programme during a whole week that covered every possible aspect of historical sciences. And that of course also included audiovisual medias.

Four FIAT officers were invited in their different capacities to a series of workshops during two days arranged by the International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST). The present president of IAMHIST, Christine Whittaker, I think many of us knows both as speaker at FIAT events and from her profession as researcher for projects as "People´s Century". She was charing the workshop "Audiovisual Media in the 21st Century: Access and Use". And who could be better cut out for shedding light on that topic than herself and FIAT members!

The FIAT vice president Tedd Johansen began with giving an outline of FIAT and especially emphasizing the possibilities - and need - for scholars to get in touch with the often unique historical material that is held in audiovisual archive collections. To further underline this he could show thrilling examples from his own archive at the NRK, the national public broadcaster of Norway.

Steve Bryant, the chair of TSW, was happy to present for the first time a draft of the "Code of Conduct for academic use of broadcasting archives". You will find the text of this document in full in another article of the this issue of the NewsLetter, just click here! TSW is trying to formulate some rules in the communication between archives and scholars to facilitate the use for the latter and hopefully through this also bring in some new ideas to archives.

The Secretary General of FIAT Lasse Nilsson was invited in his joint capacity as FIAT officer and producer at Sveriges Television (SVT) of archive programming. The heading of his contribution was "The TV programmes no one believed existed: Co-operation between Scholars and the Broadcasting Archives". With a number of examples from a present production, he could show the benefits of letting in the scholars on their own conditions in the archives of a broadcaster.

To understand what kind of an organization a modern broadcast archives is, Sue Malden of the BBC Information & Archives (and Chair of FIAT/IFTA Programming & Production Commission) gave an overview of the current structures of archives within the company. The emphasize was especially made on the preparation for the digital future and its use with BBC production.

Luke McKernan gave an on-line presentation of British Universities Newsreel Project and the development of a unified database of British newsreel records. This tool for research in pre-television material will certainly prove to be of great importance both for programming purposes and academic historical research.

Though entertaining through a great number of ínteresting examples, the summary of three decades of research and production by Christine Whittaker (UK) and especially David Thaxton´s (USA) should really be taken as a memento by us broadcast archive people. The experience as researcher and producer of historical documentaries using US broadcast archives gave a very depressing view of the conditions under which many broadcast archives has to work. Even though there are brilliant exception.

To give you an idea of the content of the workshops the day before, we restrict us to mention a few of the contributions; Luisa Cicognetti (Italy): Newsreels and the Spanish civil war; Valeria Camporesi (Spain): Spanish Factual Films; Pierre Sorlin (France): Italian newsredels in the 1950´s). This certainly gives a good motive for a future closer cooperation between FIAT and IAMHIST.

Lasse Nilsson, SVT (text)
Jerry Gränsman, SVT (photos)

Lasse Nilsson, FIAT/IFTA & SVT, Stockholm: The TV Programmes no one believed existed: Co-operation between Scholars and the Broadcasting Archives

Tedd Johansen, FIAT/IFTA & NRK, Oslo: FIAT/IFTA Access to Television Collections