P&P Commission report from our meeting in Venice,
29-30th November 2002

Our meeting was hosted by RAI in a most wonderful building on the Grand Canal, Venice.

It was agreed that Sue Malden would continue as chair of the Commission for the next year.

Members needs analysis

Commission member Ruth Stifter has analysed responses form members who attended the annual conference in Antalya.

The next action is to put the questionnaire on the revised website and email a notice to all members so that we can gain an understanding of the needs of the whole membership.

Members' details database : a new service for FIAT/IFTA members

The Commission, with a great deal of support and work from RAI, is developing a database of all FIAT members that will collect essential useful information about FIAT members, e.g. correct contact details, level and type of business, scale of holdings and archive activities and store it in a database that can be accessed in a range of different formats.This new service is presently undergoing the last tests. You will be informed as soon as it is available on line.

It will be an easy to use tool for the collection and presentation of facts and information that archive managers frequently need to use in their daily work - both about their own archive and comparison with the individual or the totality of FIAT members.

The database will be used to gather information that is essential for daily archive management and strategy work in each individual archive - the information can be regularly updated if it is used as a daily working tool. It will give central updated facts and information - an easy, quick overview of the situation and with an annual updating help you to see the development of your archives. Amendment of this information will be restricted to the individual archive managers.

It will also be possible to access the data on all other FIAT members. This will give vital comparative statistics and information to help give an overview of the state of media archives at any given time and on any major topic. E.g. How fast are your collections growing ? How much do you have to migrate? How much is digitized? How does this compare with others? and so on

The statistic summaries will indicate progress on the key areas of archive work for each archive e.g. intake/acquisition, cataloguing de-selection , growth in holdings, formats held that will give a quick overview and comparison with other archives.

At the same time the database serves as a memberlist - always updated. It will be much easier to get in contact with each other. We all know how time consuming it is to find the right person in another organisation. It will be much easier to find archives and colleagues in similar situations as your own organisation/archive when you, for instance, need information about different database systems.

Finally, this will help the FIAT management make more effective contact with all its members and improve the service and spread of information to members.

Awards

New media Award

The Commission is reviewing the criteria for the selection of the New media Award to encourage entries for this year, as well continuing to manage the Television Award.

FIAT Television Award

We have decided to no longer produce a conference"bag" and reviewed the existing process to further reduce costs of managing the Award.

Legacy archive selection for preservation project

The Commission have begun work on a major new project to produce Strategy guidelines and criteria for selection and prioritisation of archive holdings for long term preservation. This new project have been proposed by president Emmanuel Hoog and Ms Barbara Scaramucci of RAI.

This will result in a strategy document for members facing the dilemma of deal with large, costly legacy archives. It will provide statement and supportive details on the nature of the challenge facing archives; guideline selection criteria to enable archive managers to prioritise content for transfer; recommendations for most efficient methods of transfer; cost benefit analysis for company investors; options for partnerships to share this problem of national/international audiovisual heritage.

Comments and experiences from all members will be most welcome.The findings will be presented at the Brussels conference, 2003.

See details of the project

FIAT/FOCAL Cooperation

Dictionnary of sales terminology

Billy Segal of the Commission will work with FOCAL to identify all key terms used for commercial transactions and related activities.We will produce a joint dictionary of specialist media sales terms for publication on the website. Presentation could be given at the Brussels conference.

FIAT/FOCAL Summer School

A week-long course for archive staff and researchers, now in its 5th year.

This is an excellent example of FIAT working in partnership with a sister organisation in the media archive business - pooling one anothers' expertise. A highly popular and valued first stage of training for media archives workers.

See attached details

Next meeting

To be hosted by SWR in Baden Baden, Thursday 16 - Saturday 18 May, 2003.

Sue Malden, Chair of the P&P Commission - sue.malden@btopenworld.com
December 2002