MEMBERSHIP

Becoming a Member ? Keeping informed ?

If you are interested in the work of the Section, and wish to become a member, …and for information, projects, ideas, comments please contact:

Chair/Treasurer: Joëlle Garcia, Département de l'audiovisuel, Bibliothèque National de France, BNF Département de l'Audiovisuel T3N3 Quai François Mauriac, 75706 Paris Cédex 13, France. Tel: +33 1 53 79 53 96. Fax: +33 1 53 79 47 21.	Bibbi Andersson, Secretary Kultur-och fritidsnämndens stab Stadshuset, C223- 721 87 Västerås Tel: 46.021.16.14.40 Fax: 46.021.14.67.42 E-mail : bibbi.andersson@vasteras.se
Monika Cremer, Information Coordinator Nds. Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek 37070 Göttingen Tel. 49.0551.39.52.42 Fax: 49.0551.39.31.99 E-mail: cremer@mail.sub.uni-goettingen.de

Officers

Joëlle Garcia, Chair (France)
Bibbi Ansersson, Secretary (Sweden)
Monica Cremer, Information Coordinator (Germany).

Standing Committee 1999-2001 (Provisional)

Observers (Provisional)

Joëlle Garcia, France Bibbi Andersson, Sweden Monika Cremer, Germany Joyce Agalo, Kenya Jean-Marie Beauloye, Belgium Emma Cohn, France Graciela Dacosta, Uruguay M. Dahmane, Algeria Pierre-Yves Duchemin, France Elinor Dulzaides-Iglesias, Cuba Kai Ekholm, Finland Maria-Pilar Gallego, Spain Gérald Grunberg, Egypt Nieves Iglesias, Spain Martin Kesselman, USA Ludmilla Levykina, Russian Federation Yaping Liu, USA Yan Ma, USA Debbie McLeod, USA Luis A. Mourelos, Cuba Rafael de la Oza Diaz, Cuba Antonio E. Perez Cano, Cuba C. Pinion, United Kingdom Wang Quian, China Mircea Regneala, Romania Carla Maria Sotgiu, Italy

H. Ernestus, Germany I. Giannattasio, France Anna Johansen, Denmark Anna-Maria Kylberg, Sweden Paul MacNally, Australia Johanna L. de Vries, Netherlands

As usual, the Standing Committee will meet twice during the IFLA Conference : Saturday, 12 August 11h30 - 14h20 (room to be determined) Friday, 18 August 8h00-10h15 (room to be determined).

MEDIUM TERM PROGRAM 1998-2001

The Section on Audiovisual and Multimedia concerns itself extensively with all issues relating sound, still and moving images and multimedia documents and services such as : children libraries, languages centers, and Internet (images, sounds delivery) in libraries : development of collections, cataloguing, access including Internet, conservation. Special expertises are required about sources and methods of acquisitions, technical issues for historical and for new carriers and equipments, legal issues affecting collecting, transfering and delivering documents, specifics rules and formats of cataloguing, and all kinds of libraries are concerned. Relations have to be established in IFLA with corresponding groups and with PAC and UAP Core Programmes, and out of IFLA with professionnal organizations of sound and audiovisual archives.

Goals, 1998-2001

Goal 1 Promotion of the use of Audiovisual and Multimedia in Libraries. Discussion and information between librarians in charge of audiovisual and multimedia collections and services, in relation to users' needs.	Actions 1999-2000 1.1 Membership enlargement (institutions and personal affiliates), in order to gather together resources and to be able to strengthen the library work with the fast developing material called audiovisual and multimedia 1.2 IFLA open sessions and workshops, exchanges between section members and others, interested in the audiovisual and multimedia area 1.3 IFLA Project : adaptation of the renewed guidelines for audiovisual and multimedia services in all kinds of libraries 1.4 IFLA Project: Audiovisual and Multimedia Managment in Libraries : a selected Bibliography
Goal 2 Development of heritage collections: by voluntary deposit or by the extension of legal deposit to include Audiovisual and Multimedia, in both public and private archives	Actions 1999-2000 2.1 Information and cooperation with other bodies/organizations working worldwide with audiovisual and multimedia material and services 2.2 Survey on legal deposit and copyright about audiovisual materials all over the world
Goal 3 Develop legal expertise in relation to acquisition and access questions, and for preservation requirements.	Action 1999-2000 3.1. Information and cooperation with other bodies/organizations working worldwide with audiovisual and multimedia material and services
Goal 4 Monitor technical knowledge regarding historical, present and future carriers and related equipments, in order to preserve heritage collections ; monitor the use of technological developments to copy and to deliver collections to the public, including Internet.	Action 1999-2000 4.1 Joint organisation of the "Technical Symposium", to be held in Paris on 2000, with other NGOs.
Goal 5 Adaptation of cataloguing rules and formats for audiovisual and multimedia documents. Adaptation of indexing languages and classification. Encourage National Bibliographies to include sound and image records and multimedia. Expertise in enriching catalogs with sound and images. Adaptation of Information Retrieval systems to images and sounds on Internet.	Action 1999-2000 5.1 Working group with ICA and IASA on sound documents cataloguing rules.
Goal 6 Promotion of special services such as language and educational centres.

SECTION ANNUAL REPORT
(September 1998 - August 1999)

An extract :

From Round Table to a Section:

Since the status of the group has been a Round Table for most of the year, the starting point for this annual report is the one of a Round Table. The Professional Board decided at the board meeting in April 1999 to approve the Section on Audiovisual and Multimedia, formerly RT/AVM.
April 1999 was too late for the nomination procedure of the new Section, and therefore the section has a kind of in between status during the period of 1999 to 2001. We still have persons working in the EC by their own interest and the blessing of their institutions without ordinary nomination and election procedures of an ordinary section. This condition will remain until the next normal nomination and election period.

Scope statement of RT/ Section:

The Round Table/Section on Audiovisual and Multimedia concerns itself extensively with all issues relating to sound, still and moving images and multimedia documents and services such as: children's libraries, language centers and Internet (images, sound delivery) in libraries: development of collections, cataloguing, access including Internet, conservation.
Special expertise are required about sources and methods of acquisitions, technical issues for historical and for new carriers and equipments, legal issues affecting collec?ting, transferring and delivering documents, specific rules and formats of cataloguing, and all kinds of libraries are concerned.
Relations have to be established in IFLA with corresponding groups and with PAC and UAP Core Programmes, and out of IFLA with professional organizations of sound and audiovisual archives.

Membership

A Round Table does not have any registered members, but since RTAVM from springtime 1999 has become a Section, we will from now on try to get members in a proper way.
We have produced a leaflet from the RT in order to enroll members. From 1999 we have a leaflet of our new Section for marketing purposes.

Meetings:

A meeting between the chair and the secretary of the RT on AVM and the officers of IASA at the IASA Annual Conference in Paris, 19-20 November 1998.
The meeting had two topics: the future cooperation between IFLA, IASA and other organizations and - for IFLA officers only - the use of audiovisual and multimedia in public libraries today.
Joëlle Garcia took part of the 19th meeting of the Round table of Audiovisual Records in Brussels, 13 March 1999, together with representatives from FIAF, FIAT, IASA, ICA and UNESCO.
The headlines of the meeting were exchanging of information, planning of the Joint Technical Symposion in Paris in January 2000 and the future of the Round Table. "Round Table of Audiovisual Records" was replaced by "Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archive Associations", CCAAA.

Executive Committee in Bangkok, August 21 and 27, 1999.

14 persons attended the meetings.
A main subject was the new status of the section and the membership concerning the section. Other important things to discuss were the projects and the proposed projects of the section, the renewing of the Action Plan of the section and planning of the IFLA conference in Jerusalem in 2000.
The chair and the secretary also took part of the Coordinating Board Meetings for Division VI at the Bangkok conference.
Joëlle Garcia has attended several meetings working with organizing The Joint Technical Symposion in Paris 2000 together with other NGOs in the audiovisual and multimedia field.

Projects:

The two outgoing projects are:

Audiovisual and multimedia management in libraries: a selected bibliography. Leader from the start of the project: Isabelle Giannattasio, Paris, France; from August 1998: Monika Cremer, Göttingen, Germany, and Joëlle Garcia, Paris, France.
The Executive Committee of Round Table on Audiovisual and Multimedia decided at the Amsterdam conference in 1998 to change the project from the shape of a printed bibliography into a discussion list on IFLANET. The discussion list has been established on the site of the Section on AVM. The Standing Committee will try to increase the use of the list.
The original project is completed in September 1999. It has turned into a part of the ordinary activity of the Section on AVM

Guidelines for Audiovisual and Multimedia Services in Public Libraries. Leader: Bibbi Andersson, the City of Västerås, Sweden.
The project is a revision of Provision of Audiovisual Services in Public Libraries from 1987 and an extension to multimedia. The result of the work is a kind of a frame or a structure for further work.

The original project is completed. The result will be used as starting point for a new project: A Preparation for making Guidelines for all kinds of Audiovisual and Multimedia Libraries
Leader: Bibbi Andersson, Västerås, Sweden.
The working group: Bibbi Andersson, Marty Kesselman, Piscataway, USA, Graciela Dacosta, Montevideo, Uruguay and Mircea Regneala, Bucharest, Romania

Another new project :
A survey on legal deposit and copyright in Spanish speaking countries. Leader: Graciela Dacosta, Montevideo, Uruguay.
See p.11

CCAAA MEETING IN LONDON (MARCH 2000)

The General Information Program was established in 1976 to provide the framework for UNESCO's action in the field of information, including libraries and archives. In 1979, the RAMP program was created in 1981 in response to the UNESCO Recommendation for Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images. However, since two separate units within UNESCO administered these two programs, ICA and IFLA proposed the settling up of a forum for general discussion involving all NGOs concerned with audiovisual archiving.
The Round Table on Audiovisual Records (RTAVR) brought together IFLA (Coordinator of Professional Activities, Round Table on Audiovisual and Multimedia Chair and Secretary), International Council of Archives (Audiovisual Subcommittee) and the specialist international NGOs FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives), FIAT (International Federation of Television Archives), IASA (International Association of Sound Archives) for an annual meeting and cooperation since 1981 and UNESCO since 1982. It produced a lot of valuable work but during the last four of five years it has been functionning less well.
So during the Brussels meeting in 1999 it was decided that this group of representatives would act as a counseling body in the future. The general goal should be the coordination of joint policies and activities of the audiovisual archive associations under the name of Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archive Associations.

The CCAAA main duties are:

• to function as a forum for co-ordination, communication and exchange of information between the member organisations
• to initiate, install and carry out projects of common interest for more than one organisation
• to evaluate and assess proposals for projects of common interest to more than one organisation
• to present and promote projects, agreed as CC projects, to external bodies e.g. UNESCO, EU
• to produce and/or endorse position papers and recommendations on issues like legal deposit, copyright, technical standards etc.
• to organise every third year a joint conference to highlight progress in the various fields of AV-archiving, technology, cataloguing, copyright etc.

The CCAAA annual meeting took place in London at the end of March. IFLA was represented by Sjoerd Koopman (Coordinator of Professional Activities) and Joëlle Garcia (Chair of the Section on Audiovisual and Multimedia).

CCAAA members gave a report on their annual activities and conferences and exchanged information on audiovisual matters. The CCAAA composition and terms of reference were discussed. Several proposals for joint CCAAA projects were presented : an Audiovisual archive manual for non specialist archives, regional seminars organised for basic archiving skills with emphasis on Africa and least developed countries, a consultation with manufacturers of analogue video recorders (in April 1998, RTAVR arranged a consultation on preservation of access with manufacturers of analogue tape machines), joint symposia (in January 2000 the CCAAA organized the 5th Joint Technical Symposium), virtual training and information centre for AV archives. We will talk about it in more details during our first Standing Committee meeting in Jerusalem.

REPORT ON JTS PARIS 2000 - 5th JOINT TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM

Scientific and technical event that was organised for the first time in Stockholm in 1983, then in Berlin (1987), Ottawa (1990) and London (1995), the JTS gathers, at the initiative and with the support of UNESCO, the three international organisations implied in the preservation and restoration of original image and sound materials : Fédération Internationale des Archives de Film (FIAF), International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTVA), International Association of Sound Archives (IASA), and the audiovisual sub committees of ICA (International Council of Archives) and of IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and institutions).
It is a platform for specialists of audio-visual, cinema and sound archives to share scientific and technical researches as well as practical experiences, in order to provide guidelines for action for curators, technicians, researchers ...
The 5th JTS Paris 2000 has been organised by CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie) assisted by CST (Commission Supérieure Technique de l'Image et du Son), with the collaboration of INA (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel) and BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France), and in association with institutions such as AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists), the ARCHIMEDIA network, ARSAG (Association pour la Recherche Scientifique sur les Arts Graphiques), BKSTS (British Kinematograph, Sound and Television Society), and the GAMMA group.
The subject of the JTS Paris 2000 "Image and Sound Archiving and Access : the challenges of the 3rd Millennium" clearly focussed on the implications and the evolutions introduced by the new digital and Internet environments for the preservation of moving images and sounds activities and strategies.
The JTS Paris 2000 presented 30 papers and 8 posters organised in three chapters corresponding to the main present and future challenges :

• Risk assessment in the preservation of image and sound materials
• Transfer and restoration of original image and sound
• Data management systems and migration strategies

1- Risk assessment in the preservation of image and sound materials

Films, magnetic tapes or discs, all original and preservation duplicate media can suffer physical and chemical degradations. If these degradations are not detected, analysed and evaluated in time, the original or duplicated data may disappear.
The vinegar syndrome that affects films on cellulose triacetate base is now fully acknowledged : the spontaneous chemical decay of triacetate film base leads to the deacetylation and chain scission of the polymer. The produced acetic acid catalyses further decay of the polymer. The critical autocatalytic point can then be quickly reached.
Time now is not to further understand the film degradation process but rather to formulate practical preservation strategies for film collections. The quality of the storage environment and the state of preservation of acetate film collections are the major determining factors in implementing a rational preservation strategy.
The conclusions reached by the Image Permanence Institute through their works show that low temperature is the most effective mean to improve the chemical stability of triacetate base films. The macro climate control at low temperature and RH below 50% along with the control of the air quality (to eliminate the degradation products) is the best adapted option.
In the case of large collections a statistical approach can help to carry the evaluation of the extent of vinegar syndrome by providing a probability based sampling model corresponding to the composition of the elements of a collection.
There are many analogies between vinegar syndrome and the pigment binder deterioration of the magnetic tapes. Under the effect of humidity the cross-linking of the binder system decomposes into fragments, which migrate to the surface of the magnetic layer. This leads, amongst other things, to the shedding of pigment particles which accumulate on tape guides and on replay heads.
It is estimated that audio archives world-wide are storing around 30 million hours of tapes, video archives around 10 million hours. Their transfer onto new digital carriers, involving a time factor of 2-3 of the duration of the programme, will take many years if not decades. The estimation of the end of life (EOL) of existing stocks has therefore become an important issue and will enable to define strategies. The best blank media for recording or copying must be selected according to the risk of degradation inherent to their composition, and, in the longer term, we need to monitor the condition of the recordings and of the media in order to determine when to transfer or migrate content.
The estimated life of the data recorded on these media logically seems to depend on the estimated life of the media themselves, but several contributions have confirmed that the permanence of information also greatly depends on the condition of how it was written.
For audio recordings several studies examined CD-R as a possible media. If we take into account the many deep analyses necessary to interpret the complex phenomenon of CD-R writing and the evolutions of degradations due to different factors or to "natural ageing", it is impossible for the moment to consider CD-R as a preservation media for sound recordings, still images, text and digital data, unless appropriate checking procedures based on relevant parameters are run.
DVD-R for moving images will be the next media to probe.

2- Transfer and restoration of original image and sound

Risk appreciation helps decision making. The issue can be to decide which technology for restoration when degradations do not allow a mere duplication on a more stable media, or to set the methodology of transfer on a media compatible with modern playback equipments and providing easy and fast access to data. The decision must always be adapted to strategies in terms of technological evolution, of costs and of expected results.
Beside the fact that media may disappear due to the obsolescence of formats or to physical and chemical degradation, transfers are also set up because the constraints of time and of access cost to audio-visual content are no more accepted by users in the era of Internet. Last but not least, backup and digitalisation programmes frequently have to be defined urgently when new mass storage media for a better extended preservation are still not available and when storage and communication formats are not yet standardised.
Needs must be analysed to determine priorities and methods :

• characteristics of the archive
• criteria of selection and priorities (cases of emergency, preservation of unique originals, priorities related to potential reuse of contents)
• decision on the new formats and on transfer procedures. Experts agree to say that magnetic tape remains for many years the most suitable media to preserve television images. The only widely accepted criteria is that the new preservation format has to be digital and its quality must be compatible with the future use of programmes.

3- Data management systems and migration strategies

EBU is working on short and mid term migrations projects :

• transfer on a digital tape format that will be automatically managed by robot systems
• faster than real time automatic transfer on a digital data mass storage format system where data encoding format will be independent from the recording format.

In transfer/migration operations it is necessary not only to transfer the recorded contents, but also to manage the information on these contents (metadata).
There are a number of vendors offering a variety of solutions to manage the contents and metadata. The functions that the vendors built into their software often reflect the business processes they have worked most closely with (pre-press; newspaper publishing; stock photo sales). Vendors are generally more concerned with adapting the solutions they have already developed to new needs than develop specific software.
Diverse communities contribute to the definition and to the development of metadata. The traditional management community that gathers information producers categories (authors, etc. producing primary information and managing its communication, and libraries, archives, etc. producing the traditional documentary information) and the largely dominated by the Web oriented needs IT world (encoding, storage, communication) imposing a global strategy to set joint standards for platforms and metadata.
Based on practical experiment in the field of space missions data preservation, some pragmatic rules on data preservation have been defined, applicable to data :

• ensure that data is completely independent from the systems used for its creation and management. This rule concerns file structure and encoding methods. It assumes that all "proprietary" data structures and non-standard encoding methods are systematically rejected
• ensure that data is described in terms of both syntax and semantics. The description must comply with the data

and applicable to archival systems : to handle technology developments as well as possible and limit their negative effects through separation of the main functions into services as autonomous as possible (data ingestion, storage, management, access).
A "Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS)" sets up a framework for the general and common comprehension of the issue of long-term archival of digital data and constitutes a base from which to develop complementary standards in the area.

Abstracts can be downloaded (Word or PDF) on the JTS web site : http://www.cst.fr/jts2000. The Proceedings of the 5th JTS will be published in two versions : book and CD-ROM at the end of May 2000 (on-line forms available on the JTS website).

JERUSALEM CONFERENCE 2000
SECTION ON AUDIOVISUAL AND MULTIMEDIA PROGRAMME

4 Tuesday, 15 August : 8h30-11h00

Theme: Multimedia and Library User Education

1. Incorporating library instruction in the curriculum
   MARTIN KESSELMAN and SCOTT HINES (Rutgers University Libraries, Kilmer Library, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA)
2. Interactive web-based library instruction: the WebLUIG tutorial
   ATHENA HOEPPNER (University of Central Florida, USA)
3. Web-supported teaching in the Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria
   THEO BOTHMA and RETHA SNYMAN (University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa)
4. Development of a multimedia library virtual tour
   JESUS LAU, CARLOS MONTANO, BERENICE MEARS and ETHEL MEARS (Universidad Autonoma Central Juarez, Juarez, Mexico)

Research Reports

1. The making of the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia as an interactive information and teaching resource
   KEVIN COMERFORD (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington, USA)
2. Safeguarding our documentary heritage
   ASTRID BRANDT (Direction de l'administration générale, Ministère de la Culture et de la communication, Paris, France)
3. Status of copyright and legal deposit for audiovisual and multimedia in Spanish-speaking countries
   GRACIELA DACOSTA (Montevideo, Uruguay)

4 Thursday, 17 August : 13h00-17h00

Theme: Cooperation between Institutions Concerning Access to Audiovisual and Multimedia Material

1. Multimedia in German libraries - aspects of cooperation and integration
   MONIKA CREMER (Niedersächisische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen, Germany)
2. The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive: a focus for cooperation
   MARILYN KOOLIK (Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, Jerusalem, Israel)
3. Developing and itinerant multimedia collection on Canadian Studies to share among Information Services in Latin America
   PAOLA PICCO (Centre of Canadian Uruguayan Studies, Montevideo, Uruguay), GRACIELA DA COSTA (University School of Librarianship, Montevideo, Uruguay)

STATUS ON COPYRIGHT AND LEGAL DEPOSIT REGARDING AV MATERIAL

In December 1999 the IFLA Professional Board approved a project submitted by our Section. The study to be carried out along 2000 aims to gather information about copyright and legal deposit issues in Latin American Spanish speaking countries.

Some of the aspects to cover are:

• existing laws in force and provisions for AV media
• get to know which national libraries and archives act as repository institutions
• whenever possible, kind of access and availability of these materials.

For more information, contact: Graciela Dacosta. Fax: (598 2) 915 3703. Email: gratia13@yahoo.com

SECTION DISCUSSION LIST