ARCHIVES @ RISK

PRESENTATION OF THE PROJECT and the Organisational Group

Content Supply requirements   |   The Treasury (Videos from our archives)

Photos : G. Chabi

The Inter Organisational Group on Archive at Risk

The Inter Organisational Group on Archive at Risk was created in February 2006, following the session on endangered archives held at the World Electronic Media Forum - WEMF II, on the occasion of the World Summit of the Information Society (Tunis, 15-16 November 2005).

The Group consists of :

• United Nations, represented by Lily Chau, Antonio da Silva
• UNESCO, represented by Joie Springer
• WBU - World Broadcasting Union, represented by David Baylor
• EBU / UER - European Broadcasting Union, represented by David Wood
• FIAT / IFTA - International Federation of Television Archive, represented by Edwin van Huis, Sue Malden, Dominique Saintville
• Matt White (independent)

FIAT / IFTA has been commissioned by the Group to take over the running and coordination of its activities. Presently, the Group is chaired by Edwin van Huis, Director General of B&G and President of FIAT / IFTA. Sue Malden is the executive coordinator.

The Group has launched a world survey, organised by the World Broadcasting Union and their regional members, intended to estimate the magnitude of the issue and identify archive preservation / digitisation projects that may benefit from international support.

Based on the first results of the survey, the project was designed.

The Archives at Risk project

OBJECTIVES

The objective of the project is to develop the Group lobbying activities on behalf of endangered archives throughout the world, so that resources can be found to save and give access to the world audiovisual heritage.

The first stage of the project is dedicated to setting up a web site, offering professional media management resources, and identifying sources of funding for these archives.

• It will display a digital archive store that will be representative of potentially "endangered archives" and will serve as a promotional tool for the work of the Group ; it could grow into the Endangered Archives web site and store.
• It will also articulate and demonstrate the threats and challenges facing audiovisual archives.
• It will provide access to resources on media library management, such as an online bibliography of all major books, reports and articles, a selection of guidelines and best practices, with some evaluation of these resources.

Lobbying activities will be developed in parallel.

During this stage, potential sources of funding will be identified, both for implementing the project and to support work on specific endangered archives.

At a later stage, the project may lead to the establishment of a Foundation for the preservation of world endangered media archives.

MAIN AREAS OF WORK

The Group has drawn up a plan of action. It will report at the next WEMF.

The main areas of work are :

• Archive collection and web site : design and implementation of the web site, as well as the gathering, processing and production of the web content. The audiovisual content is expected to amount to 500 hours, including some 2.000 clips from broadcasting unions members' and FIAT members' archives, plus samples of the United Nations and UNESCO collections (60 hours each). The written content consists of information about endangered archives and related projects, as well as selected material on media archive management.
• Lobbying activities : promotion of the name "The Inter Organisational Group on Archives at Risk" together with the logos of FIAT, UN and UNESCO ; draft of a resolution on audiovisual archives to be presented at the UNESCO General Conference ; application for UNESCO Memory of the World label
• Looking for funding and sponsors : for digitising, cataloguing, storing the content, as well as for building and maintaining the website.
• Identification of long term sources of funding for endangered archives.

TIMETABLE

Under the first chairmanship of the Group, by Emmanuel Hoog, CEO of INA and former President of FIAT / IFTA, the INA teams have greatly contributed to the implementation of the preliminary stages of the project : call for content, methods to process and catalogue the content, as well as the spread of the vision and the values underlying the project.

The leading of the project has been handed over to the FIAT team who will be continuing the work, i.e. associating industrials sponsors, gathering and processing the contents, building the web site, developing the body of tools and best practices required to help endangered archives to save their audiovisual heritage.

A first version of the website was presented on the occasion of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, on 27th October 2007.

Progresses will be reported at IBC , FIAT annual Conference and at the World Electronic Media Forum .

HOW TO TAKE PART ?

At this stage, we are inviting all audiovisual archives to contribute to the building of the "Archives at risk" website. As media professionals you will understand the impact of images to transmit the message.

We would like you to submit a maximum of ten extracts or short items of approx 1- 5 min. duration each.

These extracts should represent those items in your archive that are most valued and represent national cultural treasures, the loss of which would be tragic both on a national and international scale. The kind of material that would be appropriate is that which would reflect national traditions, folk music and dancing, events of national significance, politicians, personalities, buildings and towns that will reflect the historical development of your country.

Our ambition is that we get clips from archives all over the world, so as to build a vivid image of the world audiovisual heritage, to demonstrate the value of the archives and the magnitude of the issues we face, and to highlight those threatened archives that are in need of urgent action.

The footage will be viewable on the Archive web site, but will NOT be downloadable, thus offering a protected window to each participating archives' holdings and useful promotion of the archive. Links to archive/broadcasters commercial footage sales sites will be possible.

Click here to see details of the content supply requirements, i.e. selection criteria, technical format, metadata required to describe your clips and your archive, as well as a standard letter that you can use to specify the permitted use of your content. In addition, a user guide and some examples are provided.