Overview of the FIAT/IFTA World Conference in London
September 2001

The theme of the conference, jointly hosted by the British Film Institute and the BBC, was "Television Archives; Business as Usual?"

Key issues that came out of this conference were: What are the practical and financial implications of digitisation? How do archives argue the financial business case for the expenditure necessary to preserve and digitise some of the vast collections that are held by many national and public broadcasting archive?

For at least the last four years there have been many presentations, and now, much progress made in the technology to deliver digitised archives: This is all very well - what are the real financial benefits that the digital technology brings? Now it is important to really understand what are the implication of this technology, in terms of dealing with legacy systems, the revolutionary change in work flow and the whole nature of doing business with media archives.

There were 212 delegates and speakers from across the world attending the conference. The key note speaker Charles Haslem set the challenge - "How much of an archive is worth digitising?" The rest of the conference, however, did indicate that many leading broadcasters and archives such as INA from France, SüdwestRundfunk from Germany, the BBC and TRT from Turkey among others are well down the path of preparing their legacy archives for the transformation with the aid of media asset management and metadata. TeleMadrid(Spain), Vidion from Portugal and SVT from Sweden all demonstrated the new digital asset management systems that are already in use in their organisation. The big challenge is how will the older material from the legacy interface with this new digital future delivery into archive? The mornings plenary sessions were followed by much more detailed discussion in the afternoon workshops. There was much information to impart about many of the EBU and EU Projects - P/Meta on Metadata or P/FTA on Television Archives, Amicitia (the Asset Management Integration Project and of course PRESTO (Preservation Technology for European Broadcast Archives Project). All the and experience with the audience. Another workshop looked at the eternal problem of the wide range of current production and legacy formats and raised the issues of integration that will have to be addressed in the near future in the future.

The Delos European Network for Excellence Project also was present at the conference. Led by Vittore Casarosa, the Delos workshop focused on metadata modelling and looking at the work that Delos has done to produce standardisation of terminology.

Day 2 jointly hosted with FOCAL (The Federation of Commercial Audio Visual Libraries) was linked to Day 1 by John Ive, Director of Strategic Planning for Sony Broadcast and Professional Europe and Mr Louis Estrada of IBM both demonstrating how the technology is now being used in archives. Mr Estrada showing the CNN system.

This led very neatly into three commercial library presentations: - Ian Morris, National Geographic Society, Jeremy Cantwell, BBC Worldwide, Karena Smith, ITN all talked about how they are dealing with commercial pressures to maintain and develop their business in footage sales. This was followed up with a very stimulating workshop in the afternoon looking at how to market and sell the content of footage libraries. Peter Fydler of Pathe, Alicia Conesa and Rita Constantinou led a stimulating discussion about the key principle and issues that need to be addressed when drawing up rate cards and then posed the question "why do we use rate cards and do we ever stick to the rate card?" For many working in public service broadcasts this commercial approach to the collections was very challenging.

Another plenary and workshop session led by Jane Mercer, the Chair of Focal, with speakers Guy Strickland from the BBC, Jean-Luc Vernhet and Kathleen Haynes from America looked at the factors involved when preparing the staff of archives for this new commercial world. Jean-Luc in particular realised that his presentation for this audience would now become an essential tool in discussion and preparation of staff in the INA archive.

Rights are another key area of concern for archive managers. It has become increasingly apparent that knowledge and information about the rights of archive content must be known in order to maximise the use of the archive. The FIAT/IFTA Programming and Production Commission have conducted an audit of existing rights management systems. The ensuing demonstrations from RAI, ORF, SWR and Pearsons (now Freemantle Media) showed that some broadcasters now had in place systems to manage this information. However, clearly the next area to address is: How can this information be made more widely available? i.e. outside of the legal departments of the broadcasters and what work needs to be done to develop good customer user interfaces? This is the next challenge facing the technologists and the archive managers.

Links between archives and production are always being forged within the FIAT conference. Taylor Downing MD of Flashback Television was most stimulating in his presentation on the effect of current financial demands on programme makers and how this influences the way in which they approach archives. The producers of the three short listed programmes were also available to present their programmes on the Tuesday morning and participate in a workshop that afternoon. These sessions with producers are meant to help increase the archive understanding of production needs.

The rest of the Tuesday session was led by the Television Studies Workgroup. Looking at the search for lost archive material with Dick Fiddy of the BFI, Mike Mashon of The Library of Congress and Sue Malden on the BBC's Archive Treasure Hunt. The TSW also led a challenging workshop on the ethical question of use of archives with contributions from Vit Charous of the Czech Republic and Jan Faull of the BFI. Another key potential in the future of these archive is the contribution they will make to educational and heritage projects. The BFI's education reminiscent project "Entertaining the Nation" was discussed in the workshop with interesting presentation from Carrie Bazelgette followed by Vittorio Sette from Italy and Hans Peter Hauke from SWR in Germany.

The activities of the Training Commission, led by Branco Bubenik of the Croatian Archive, discussed in a workshop the wide range of activities, from the recently held seminar on Moscow hosted by Gosteleradiofond to the forthcoming seminar to be held in North Africa hosted by Wahid Braham.

In all the conclusion of the conference was "Yes, it is Business as usual." The key themes were: - Legacy Systems - how to deal with them, and what will be the interface between them and the digital systems of the future. A comprehensive review of the progress made in EU projects; and a look to where do we go next, what will be the impact of XML. How the archive management will need to change, with more acknowledgement of the need for a commercial or business like approach to working in archives. How will staff in the future be trained ? The work of FIAT will continue - organising workshops to exchange information and knowledge in all areas of the world - the success of the Moscow seminar, the forthcoming seminars to be held in Mexico and North Africa.

Sue Malden
Vice President FIAT

I have now left the BBC to pursue a career as an independent Media Archive Consultant. However I do hope to continue my working relationship and friendship with FIAT/IFTA and all its members. If any one needs to contact me, my details are:

Sue Malden Associates
86 Ravenscourt Road
London W6 OUG
Tel +44 (0)20 8748 6481
mobile: 07885 891 481
E-mail: sue.malden@talk21.com