FIAT and the next decade

Among the commitments taken by the new Executive team is the development of closer links with FIAT's sister organisations. In this view, I was happy to accept the EBU and RAI invitation to present FIAT policy at the meeting of the EBU Interdisciplinary Archive Group in Rome, last 31st January 2003.  The target of this group of experts assembled in IAG is to provide guidelines for the development of broadcast archives in the next decade. The final version of the report is expected in June 2003. Here is my presentation.

The major challenge that all Radio and Television archive services are facing now and for the next decade is the preservation of their legacy materials and the migration of the Archive to the digital environment, which includes not only the archive materials, but also the technical infrastructure and the professional practices. Time is short : within 6 to 15 years, depending on the types of formats, most of the material which will have not yet been transfered to digital formats will be lost ! The related challenge is to provide a wider access to the contents through adequate technology, services and rights management.

The main mission of FIAT/IFTA for the next years is to help its members to take up this challenge, which can be approached through four main questions or projects :

Selection for preservation

It seems unlikely that we can migrate all the bulk of our legacy materials in due time. This is true especially for film and radio tapes affected by the vinegar sindrome and for ¾ videocassettes. Volumes at stake are enormous. Preservation is an expensive and time-consuming business. Migration implies huge budgets.

To avoid a wild "natural" or "business" selection, we can go in two complementary directions : to get more funding in order to save more contents in due time ; to accept the principle of a well thought out selection.

In both cases we need to involve the national authorities in charge of the preservation of the national heritage, such as the ministry of Culture and the members of Parliament who vote the budget, in order to alert them on the value of the audiovisual heritage and the risks to which it is exposed in the short term, to convince them to allocate the necessary resources to speed up our migration plans, to share the responsibility of selection i.e. the responsibility of abandoning deliberately parts of our heritage.

I have advocated the making of a "FIAT Selection Charter" to address these questions. The project is now launched. It includes a well argued presentation of the general problem intended for corporate decision makers and political circles, selection principles, a review of current strategies developed by advanced archives, as well as a set of tools for archive managers. We will report on its advancement in Brussels next september.

Cooperation between advanced archives

Informal cooperation between advanced archives is very valuable for exchanging experiences and practices and assessing each other migration programmes.

More formal cooperation is required for developing and funding joint tools, through R&D projects supported by the European Commission.

In the field of preservation, the best example is the Presto project, which aims at developing joint solutions liable to reduce costs and improve the effectiveness of multimedia archive preservation projects. The first Presto project has resulted in a set of preservation " machines " dedicated for instance to the playback of audio materials (one operator can work several tape desks at the same time), to the transfer of ¾ videocassettes (automatic detection of errors and correction), to the preparation of film before transfer (automation of cleaning and resplicing operations). It has also led to the building of a thorough knowledge on preservation problems and solutions. The Presto team has organised several very successful workshops opened to all archivists to share this knowledge.

The Presto Space project is the continuation of the first Presto project, its main objective is to build an integrated system that will permit a fast, good quality and cost reduced archive digitisation. It intends to solve technical problems related to the process, ranging from playback of films, video and audio-disks to user access and storage. Presto Space will propose full solutions for medium and small archives as well as the optimisation of existing processes for large archives.

FIAT encourages its members to take an active part in this new project and will participate in the dissemination of results.

Assistance to less advanced archives

The situation of archives in most non European countries is very worrying : bad preservation conditions, no equipment, low priority given to archives, unequal technical and archival skills, no money. It is FIAT's responsibility to assist them in the specification of their needs, the definition of a realistic strategy, the search for resources, the implementation of their preservation plan.

Until now, the main answer to meet these needs was the organisation of regional seminars where FIAT experts presented their analysis and solutions. This might be well fitted for medium advanced archives. But the benefit of such seminars is low for less advanced archives.

Other cooperation models have to be implemented for less advanced archives.

The CapMed model is based on the cooperation of archives at different levels of development in one region. The project, which gathers a dozen of Mediterranean TV archives, and which is supported by the European Commission, embraces the whole range of archival activities : preservation, documentation, communication, rights management, marketing. Regarding preservation, it includes the assessment of each archive preservation conditions, the repairing of transfer equipments and/or the acquisition of new equipment, the transfer of know-how through practical training workshops. The cooperation of advanced archives, such as INA and RAI, and of less advanced archives prouved its efficiency, insofar as the solutions have been adapted to each specific context.

This model is in the process of being adapted to the Balkan archives, under the leading of Copeam and RAI. FIAT is keeping a close watch to its development.

I have advocated the application in other countries of the model of cooperation that INA is presently developing with the Afghan audiovisual archives. In the case of Afghanistan, it is a task force involving me and INA film, video and documentation experts : the idea was to involve the political authorities in the preservation of the audiovisual heritage, and to help the Afghan archivists and technicians to start their migration work (repairing of old tape recorders, provision of new equipment, on site training). The migration process has already begun. The FIAT training Commission will start adapting this model next April in Zambia.

Moreover, we are restructuring the FIAT web site. Archivists will soon find a set of useful documents and links, as well as new services, such as the possibility to ask specific questions to FIAT experts.

Cooperation with international or regional sister organisations

FIAT has long developped links with its sister organisations, like IASA (sound archives), FIAF (film archives), AMIA (American audiovisual archives), SEAPAAVA (South East Asia archives) under the umbrella of Unesco : a Coordinating Council meets twice a year, a Joint technical Symposium is organised every four years (the last one took place in Paris in 2000 and focused on the vinegar syndrome problem ; the next one will take place in 2004 in Montreal), IASA and FIAT have had joint conferences and organise joint workshops for radio archivists.

Considering the scarcity of financial resources, considering also that many broadcast archives have the responsibility of film, sound and TV archives and that the digital world offers similar solutions for different media, I think that we have to work closer and develop joint actions. For example, a task force aiming at starting a preservation plan in one archive could gather IASA and FIAT experts.

Beyond this, I think that archives will be much stronger if they coordinate their action, avoid the duplication of tasks, benefit from each other work, and talk as one voice. The question today is to strengthen the awareness of all decision makers about the value of the audiovisual heritage and about the risks to which it is exposed in the short term, about the need for traditional users as well as users in the research, educational and cultural fields to access its contents, and to convince them to allocate adequate resources in due time.

I have taken the initiative, on behalf of FIAT, to send a resolution along these lines, to the organisers of the World Summit for the Information Society.

In conclusion, it is obvious that the work you are doing in the frame of the EBU Interdisciplinary Archives Group is closely related to what we are doing in FIAT. My wish is that your work could reflect some of our views and relate to our concerns and projects, and that all our members could benefit from your vision of the future of archives. To achieve this, I would like to propose that one of your members who is also a FIAT member could be our official ambassador. I would like also to invite all of you to attend the next FIAT conference which will take place in Brussels next 7-9 September, and to report the main conclusions of your very interesting work.

Emmanuel Hoog
President of FIAT/IFTA