18th SEAPAVAA Conference AV Archives: Why They Matter Lao Department of Cinema, Vientiane, Laos, 26-30 May 2014

Abstract of Presentation:

UNESCO’s Programme for the preservation of the audiovisual heritage originated with the adoption by its General Conference in 1980 of the “Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images”.While the Recommendation has helped to raise awareness of the importance of audiovisual heritage and has been instrumental in ensuring the preservation of this often unique testimony to economic, political and social development, many documents continue to disappear through neglect, destruction, decay and the lack of resources that contribute to an impoverishment of the memory of mankind. Much more will be lost if stronger and concerted international action is not taken.

This paper examines the role and importance of audiovisual documents and UNESCO’s involvement in promoting their preservation through its cooperation with the CCAAA and other NGOs working in the area. The adoption of a World Day for Audiovisual Heritage and the Memory of the World (MoW) Programme which has become the standard bearer for the protection of the world’s documentary heritage in its entirety are two means by which UNESCO seeks to accomplish its objectives.

Through its global action, UNESCO helps to highlight the invaluable work accomplished by professionals that enable film, sound and television recordings to remain accessible by future generations and build equitable knowledge societies.

Mick joined the NFSA in 1988, prior to this he worked for the University of NSW at University College in the Department of Chemistry.

From 2000-2005 Mick was the Chair of the of the South East Asia Pacific Audio Visual Archives Association (SEAPAVAA) Technical Committee and from 2005-2008 Mick was on SEAPAVAA’s Executive Council. Mick remains involved in SEAPAVAA as an Individual Member and continues to provide training and advice to SEAPAVAA and its members.

Mick has contributed to the work of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) Technical Commission, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) Preservation Committee and the International Organization for Standardization’s TC 42 WG 5. TC-42 WG5 develops standards and recommended practices for the care of audio visual materials.

For the past two decades Mick has been providing consultancies and training in audiovisual preservation and collection management on behalf of organisations such as UNESCO, SEAPAVAA, ASEAN and ICCROM. These consultancies have been conducted throughout Oceania, SE Asia, USA, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean as well as Mexico and India.

Mick is a lecturer and tutor in audio visual preservation with the Charles Sturt University on-line course “Preservation of AV Materials” and a guest lecturer with the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation.

Mick has developed many training resources such as the “Film Preservation Handbook” (accessible though the NFSA website – www.nfsa.gov.au). He has recently collaborated with Jim Lindner to develop a case study based training resource for audiovisual preservation training that has now been published by PrestoCentre. Mick is currently co-authoring a book on disaster recovery for audiovisual collections.

Abstract:

The philosophical issues surrounding digital preservation have been debated for many years. However, recent changes in technology and the industries that support traditional forms of archiving have required specialists to focus on more pragmatic issues such as training, procuring new equipment and the development of digital standards and workflows. New technology offers us many advantages in efficiency, audience reach and restoration. However, the focus on new technology makes the retention of older knowledge even more important. As archivists we are not only responsible for preserving content for future generations, we are also obliged to preserve a work’s context in order to understand it. Digitising the content of a film may protect it for future generations, but it may do little to illustrate what original audiences experienced. It is a common claim that a digital version of a vinyl record is not the same as the original experience. While the ability to reproduce the warmth of a vinyl playback using digital technology can be debated, there is no doubt that the experience of putting a stylus on vinyl is vastly different to pressing ‘play’ on an iPod. So what can archives do to preserve these experiences? What responsibilities do we have to do this? This paper will explore these ethical issues and will provide examples of what NFSA has been doing to preserve these authentic experiences by applying a range of historical techniques, including the creation of new wax and lacquer recordings and the application of authentic film tinting techniques.

His work as chair or board member of various professional or community organisations has included The Federation Line Inc., Music Roll Australia, Archive Forum and the Friends of the NFSA. Internationally, he was elected inaugural President of SEAPAVAA from 1996 to 2002, and was ex-officio Council member to 2008. He was inaugural chair of AMIA’s Advocacy Committee and inaugural co-chair of its International Outreach Committee. Since 1996 he has been involved in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program, authoring its current General Guidelines and Companion, and serving in several roles on its Australian and international committees; since 2005 he has chaired its Asia Pacific Regional Committee (MOWCAP).

Ray is now the Principal of Archive Associates Pty Ltd, a consultancy service affiliated to SEAPAVAA. He has carried out missions or lectured in over 30 developed and developing countries. He writes for professional journals and his regular teaching commitments have included the audiovisual archiving courses at Charles Sturt University (Australia), University of East Anglia (UK) and the George Eastman House School of Film Preservation (USA). His best known monograph, Audiovisual Archiving: Philosophy and Principles was published by UNESCO in 2004. His major writings have been published in ten languages. His doctoral thesis was on the history of the NFSA (2011) and he is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Canberra.

Born in 1943, Ray lives in Kambah, a suburb of Canberra, Australia, with his wife, Sue. They have two sons, David and Peter. His interests include animation, comic art and mechanical music.

Abstract:

Every society honours its live conformists and its dead troublemakers said writer Mignon McLaughlin. The audiovisual archiving profession is now mature enough to have its own university-level training courses, recognised codes of ethics, a professional philosophy, a sense of identity and recognition by UNESCO. Yet if we are to be professionals with integrity we will sometimes have to argue for unpopular choices, defend principles, face conflicts of interest or otherwise grapple with political or ethical dilemmas which have no easy answers. Blind loyalty to a system should not absolve a professional from questioning its fundamental assumptions, nor acquiescing in instructions which breach a principle. Professionals may thereby be branded as dissidents or troublemakers and put themselves at risk. The author argues that sometimes the work cannot advance without “troublemakers”. He presents a number of case studies, and also shares some ethical dilemmas – and their outcomes – which he faced during his own long career.

Besides being a film archivist, Bounchao is a film and TV producer as well as film director. He has directed and produced many documentaries and some feature films. Many of them are broadcasted on national and local television. Bounchao wrote an essay about Lao cinema in the book “FILM IN SOUTH EAST ASIA: Views From The Region” published in 2001 by SEAPAVAA. In 2008, he wrote a 35-page dissertation entitled “Improvement of Lao film sector in the new period “. With the Cinema Department under his direction, many film activities are encouraged, such as film productions, co-productions, film festivals , film week, film projections, film production training, participation in international film festivals. Bounchao has drafted cinema laws to manage and promote the film industry in Laos, and is making policies to attract foreign film-related investments to Lao PDR.

Abstract

Although Laos is small country in South East Asia with the population of only 6.5 Mio , film and AV production has a significant role within the Lao community. Lao films produced during the Indochina War in the past between 1955 to 1975 become historic information of the nation and are frequently utilized in the present in the field of mobile cinemas and televisions. Laos’ colonial past and long history has made its people partial towards old Lao films. However , in this era of the globalization, producing quality and quantity films and televisions have become necessary to keep up with demand, whether it be to entertain locals, exchange with the foreigners, or to keep them for the next generation. All of these changes have made the improvement of Lao cinema sector necessary .

This presentation will analyse several key areas:

• Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating citizens.
• The presentation will examine some terms of definition, role, the party’s decisions for the role, completion, limitation and plan for the film sector.
• In looking at the vital point of “Role”, this presentation will explore the cultural artifacts, communication, education, entertainment, and the gold book for history records of the nation.

In 2011, Mr Hongsombath contributed to improving the skills in archiving and preserving films at the Vietnam Film Institute in Hanoi. Mr Hongsombath actively participates in workshops on the preservation of films to further develop his expertise in this area, as well as to exchange experiences with his counterparts.

Abstract:

This presentation aims to provide an overview of the key elements in conserving and preserving films in Laos. It touches specifically on the work of the Lao Cinema Department and the strategies it deploys to ensure that Lao films of historical significance, national and regional importance are preserved for posterity. These strategies include: providing proper storage for the films; systematically and regularly checking equipment that are critical to maintaining an environmentally-controlled film storage area; monitoring the movement of films from and back to the storage area; labelling and documenting films; conducting quality control checks of the film conditions; and observing professional ethics in film archiving.

Based at the National Library, the Archives of Traditional Music in Laos (ATML) project was launched in Vientiane in May 1999. Funded initially by the German Research Association (DFG) and the German Association for Technical Development Co-operation (GTZ), it was affiliated with the Fachhochschule Oldenburg-Ostfriesland-Wilhelmshaven in Emden in close co-operation with the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin. Since May 2001, the archive’s activities have been funded privately by Gisa Jähnichen. The main outcomes of the archive’s continuous work are to create systematic musicological data based on various media (sound tapes, video, photo, transcriptions) to be used for further research and for educational and public purposes, and to make the rich and unique musical traditions of Laos accessible for public appreciation. In co-operation with other researchers, Thongbang made field recordings in Houaphanh, Luang Prabang, Xieng Khouang, Vientiane, Bolikhamxay, Khammouane, Savannakhet, Salavan, Attapeu, Sekong, Bokeo, Oudomxay, Sainyabuly and Champassak Provinces.

Abstract:

The ATML is 15 years old. In the time of its existence, it faced many challenges in terms of natural and social environment in the context of the National Library, an important authority for scholars in Laos. Being committed to collect, preserve, maintain and to making collections accessible, the archive had to overcome many culturally patterned habits that contradicted these tasks in one or another way.

The presentation will give an insight into the experiences of the staff and the administration of this small archive with quite a big impact on performing arts in the country. The presentations will be in English accompanied with comments on slides in English and Lao language.

This presentation provides an overview of the strategies deployed by the Film Archive (Public Organization), Thailand, to develop audiences for films. It also shares insights on these strategies.

Apart from preserving films, the Archive has another important mission: developing film audiences. The term “audience development”, refers to developing quantity as well as quality of film audiences. This is a very big challenge for the Archive, especially in the period of digital media. When today’s audience can watch moving images everywhere, including on their personal mobile devices, how then can we persuade them to venture out to watch the films on the big screen with other people? How can we increase public awareness of the intangible value of films, beyond their entertainment value? How can we educate audiences on the importance of appreciating the different styles and genres of films?

Each year, the Archive offers free daily screening, twelve film talks (one talk per month), eight special events, two annual film festivals, two master classes, one film conference, one course on Thai film history, and a school cinema in which students are invited to watch a selected film and discuss about the film. In addition, the Archive offers organised screenings for the elderly and specially arranged groups.

Besides holding activities in its theatre, the Archive also operates the Thai Film Museum which is opened to the public on every weekend and holidays. On weekdays, the Museum is opened to specially arranged groups. The Archive also has a Film Library where the public can access it for free.

Although most of the Archive’s activities face a challenge with the number of attendees, it still has the strong support of regular clients. This “audience development” strategy is not only good for expanding the quantity and quality of film audiences, but also good for the Archive itself to receive public support.

GISA JÄHNICHEN

Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)

Gisa Jähnichen, Prof. Dr., born in Halle (Saale), Germany, currently working on musicology, anthropology, and audiovisual archiving, was doing research over more than 25 years in South East Asia. Magister (Bachelor & Master) in Musicology and Regional Studies on South East Asia from Charles University Prague (Czech Republic), PhD in Musicology / Ethnomusicology from Humboldt University Berlin (Germany); University lecturer thesis (Habilitation) in Comparative Musicology from University Vienna (Austria). Extensive field researches lead her to Southeast Asia, East Africa, Southwest and Southeast Europe. She is teaching at various universities in Europe and Asia, among them Universiti Putra Malaysia. She is an active member of International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) and its Study Groups on “Maqam”, “Folk Musical Instruments”, “Music and Minorities” and “Performing Arts in South East Asia”; International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA); and European Foundation for Chinese Music Research (CHIME).

Abstract:

The paper introduces the history of ARCPA, its relevance to the university and to the recognition of intangible knowledge represented in creative arts. Some challenges of ARCPA’s actual situation and concrete outcomes from the viewpoint of the recordist (Ahmad Faudzi Musib), the researcher (Gisa Jähnichen), and the archivist (Chinthaka Meddegoda) will be discussed. Further, the team wants to promote the idea of implementing basic knowledge on archiving procedures and principles into undergraduate and graduate studies across Southeast Asia in order to increase awareness towards media sensibility and responsibility regarding audiovisual documents used in research and serving the collective memory of the communities concerned.

Each viewpoint contributes another perspective on the same task and may stimulate a differentiated approach to specific needs in the process of collecting, preserving, maintaining and giving access. The paper will help to clarify the roles and profiles of different users and participants in the archival process.

AV achives are not only the key building blocks of the treasures of archives and audio-visual/film industries, their significant role in the cultural heritage of people and society and in turn nations is undeniable. In order to maintain a very long-term sustainability of the archive materials, preserving their container and the content is vital.

Hong Kong Film Archive has had been taking several important steps forward recently in preserving the film heritage of Hong Kong, facilitating research and bringing film art to the community, including restoring a number of very classic films and introducing them to the community, enriching and enhancing the Hong Kong film database, totally revamping the cataloguing and database film information system of the Archive, and digitizing some endangered film prints and other AV materials of obsolete formats.

This paper provides an insight into the process and outcomes of those completed projects, and shares with the audiences the hurdles likely to overcome for those still in-progress.

She is involved in the work of the Sub-Committee on Marketing of the Memory of the World Programme of UNESCO, World AV Day Celebration of the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archive Associations (CCAAA) for the last five years.

She also coordinates the Philippine participation in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) cooperation projects in the field of Culture and Information.

Abstract:

AV archivists and their custodial institutions face many challenges in their task of preserving and providing access to their AV collections. They are mostly hampered by a lack of clear professional reference points as basis for archiving work. Hence, they encounter much difficulty in seeking financial support and resources for their needs. More importantly, AV archiving has to be recognized as a distinct profession all over the world.

The concern for the development of a codified theoretical basis for the AV archiving profession only came about in the 1990’s. The decades of practical experiences of pioneer AV archives have provided the foundation for a philosophy for AV archiving which define the values, ethics, principles, standards and perceptions and other bodies of knowledge required of any professional field.

As a young and rapidly developing profession, we need to create a professional image of AV Archiving in the minds of the public. This process, called branding, utilizes both the use of logo, slogans, text, or symbol and the mass media to draw attention, communicate understandable messages, and create a positive communication environment to help prepare the ground for the AV archivists’ advocacy and promotional work . The use of advocacy among AV archivists regarding the profession will constitute an important feature of branding the profession. Overtime, if the communication is consistently delivered according to brand promise of benefits and value, the image becomes associated with a recognized level of credibility, quality and satisfaction.

This presentation will look into examples of branding strategies undertaken on the international, regional and national levels, identify some challenges and attempt to offer recommendations on how branding could be enhanced.

Communication is increasingly digital and visual. The combination of camera phones that capture digital images and video with online social media platforms such as Instagram, Flickr and YouTube is resulting in a proliferation of visual documentation. As digital devices for image capture become more affordable and broadband subscriptions increase, people are adopting social media platforms for accessing, sharing, managing, and storing their digital image and video collections. At this early stage it is important to examine the risks and benefits presented by social media platforms (operated by for-profit businesses) to ongoing access and long-term preservation of user-generated content. This paper will discuss research being conducted by media professionals and archivists into managing and preserving images and video in social media platforms. Emphasis will be placed on the impact of service provider’s legal agreements (e.g., Terms and Conditions) on the ownership and future use of content held within video-sharing and social networking sites, along with a discussion of the threats to the trustworthiness of digital images and videos accessed and stored in social media platforms. The services provided by video-sharing and social networking sites are typically free for members and include a significant amount of storage upon sign-up. As a result, individuals and organizations are embracing these services as discovery portals and archival repositories without weighing the benefits and risks. This topic is especially important to the archival and digital curation/preservation community as they begin to consider methods for acquiring user-generated content held within social media platforms.

Prof Besser is also actively involved with museums and the art community. He was one of the founders and served on the Management Committee of the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project, and directed a Mellon-sponsored study of image distribution from museums to universities. For several years he was in charge of long-range information planning for the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and for many years he headed information technology for Berkeley’s University Art Museum. His most recent work in this area involves examining issues of organization, access, and longevity for new media art in collaboration with the Electronic Cafe International and a group of museums with electronic art collections.

Abstract:

Moving images that seem “everyday” and historically unimportant when they are shot, often later become of key importance to understanding the history and culture of their time period. Home Movies from the 1960s help us to understand the way that people dressed, what their homes looked like, and how family members related to each other at that time period. The films shown to High School students and seemingly unimportant television shows help us to understand why children grew up thinking that women should not work outside the home.

These ephemeral films and videos are critically important for teaching and learning about a historical time period. But they also are critical for disciplines ranging from Women’s Studies (looking at how females are portrayed) to historicizing science and technology (seeing what technology people had in their homes, how advertising talked to people about scientific breakthroughs, etc.), to the study of culture or sociology (looking at how behaviors and attitudes change over time). Showing a few short clips of these ephemeral works can be far more effective teaching tools than having students read an entire book. And this type of archival material could provide the basic resources for thousands of student papers and hundreds of theses and dissertations. And they can also be important for remixing into creative works, particularly those that comment about culture, history, or human relations.

The ephemeral videos of today are on the Web, YouTube, Facebook, and other social media. This paper will examine both why it is important to save these ephemeral works, and how archives can find new and interesting ways to save these and make them available to researchers, teachers, and the general public. Specific activities around saving media related to sociopolitical movements (Occupy, Arab Spring) will be highlighted.

Television news often serves as the first, most vivid draft of history and shapes the conventions of political speech and civic participation around the world. The media industry has embraced digital production and web-based delivery over multiple platforms. Massive digitisation efforts are underway to make the historical record readily accessible, shareable and exploitable. Web-based video repositories ranging from those offering amateur content, catch-up television offered by broadcasters and other on-demand Internet streaming services are immensely popular and generate a staggering amount of web-traffic. The widespread availability of SmartTV’s and other networked multimedia devices offer new opportunities for content to be explored. The challenge is to offer ways for specifically target user groups (journalists, visitors to media museums, senior citizens) to explore vast collections of video content more fluidly, by exploiting alternate ‘triggers’ such as visual examples and speech. This will result in highly personalised, engaging experiences.

A second, major, trend is that digitization allows much more ‘participatory’ modes of engagement between archives and their users. Through publication and linking, attention can be brought to even the most obscure artefacts. One of the unique properties of the objects in the collections of archives is their richness in terms of the breadth and variety of topics they cover and the quality of contextual data about them. The Web provides the opportunity for these to surface and satisfy the needs not only based on popularity, but also based on ad-hoc interests. In an online context where sharing is the norm, it becomes almost a necessity for archives to make their collections available online in order to retain and support community interest. In effect, archives and their users are now also part of what Abraham Bernstein calls the ‘global brain’, the intelligent network formed by users, together with the information and communication technologies that connect them. New services are being launched that explore opportunities this brings to archives.

In the SEAPAVAA paper, we focus on three issues:

• Vision of a more connected archive
• ‘Reanimating’ the archive using web-based technologies
• Integrating new modes of user participation
• Preconditions of making this vision into reality.

Abstract: NHK has been changing its broadcasting system from tape-based to file-based. Last year, we also changed over to a new archive system with many merits in usability and management. Over 600,000-hour footage is stored in our archive. Digitization of tapes is estimated to take five more years. Once they are digitized, the management cost of the archive drops dramatically. Data transfer from files to files is much easier than converting from tapes to files. With larger capacity and faster media migration, the file-based system will be adaptable for future technology.

The new archive system enables us to enhance our metadata. Auto-generated program worksheets containing thumbnails of each shot are under development. Copyright information is input by the producer in charge. So, all the information is integrated into one worksheet, which is convenient for secondary use and promotion for DVD and VOD. Our archive system is equipped with a convenient search engine with improved information security, user-optimized function, and user-interactive database. Moreover, archive information on TV/radio programs, still pictures, music CDs, and reference books are integrated in the system; the item that a user is looking for can be retrieved by a single search engine from all categories.

We are also putting effort into the Internet services along with the broadcasting service. We hope our new archive system with enhanced metadata will play a part in future broadcasting systems combined with communication media.

Abstract: The Archive eXchange Format (AXF) has revolutionized the way management systems archive, store and preserve file-based assets, providing a standardized and open file-system and encapsulation mechanism for files of all types and sizes – not just media assets. But this is only part of the story and reach of AXF. AXF is also key to reliable cloud-transport of file assets (and asset collections) providing stream-based exchange, in-path payload/file validation, full provenance history and more all in a fully self-describing package along with the carriage of related structured and unstructured metadata. AXF is key to several cloud-based services available today proving its significance and relevance outside of archive applications.

IMAGICA Corp. introduces practical example for Data Asset Management. The Data Asset Management is key factor for digital content. It includes keywords such as meta data, transcode, file transfer, media and server. And we show how to build the workflow for that. We also share some challenges through our current project.

Media production, collection and acquisition have all been widespread activities at Universities for decades and the use of media for instruction and learning has long had its place in the halls of higher education. However, its care and preservation have not traditionally been a concern at the majority of institutions in the United States, even those with the largest and most prominent of Libraries and the rapid rise of digital media has pushed analog content even further into the shadows on most campuses. The recently completed “Illinois Media Census” has identified over 400,000 analog media items across the University of Illinois’ Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) campus and has opened the eyes of many to the time-sensitive problems facing the preservation of audio-visual materials

Many of the issues facing UIUC are shared by institutions of higher education across the United States. While there are characteristics that make the University environment unique, the challenges faced are not new to the world of A/V preservation: funding, staff knowledge, professional and pre-professional training, technical infrastructure to support preservation activities, copyright, description and access. One conclusion is clear however: collaboration and cooperation between institutions is going to be an absolute necessity. Cross-institutional collaboration has not just the potential to make preservation more feasible for institutions but to make collections with national and international importance vital, relevant and accessible to users. This paper will examine the current state of media preservation at American Universities and pose some examples of collaboration which could be potentially applicable to institutions globally.

Abstract:

Archival crises of moving image preservation undergird concepts of Filipino national cinema and the very conduct of Philippine film historiography. A prime mover in regional audiovisual archiving, the Philippines hosted the first SEAPAVAA general meeting in 1996, but became a late implementer of the archive dream due to the precarity of state archives: the first national film archive (1982-1986) was shuttered with the ouster of the Marcos regime, and a new national film archive was only established 25 years later, in 2011. Measured against the 115-year span of Philippine film history, national film archives have only existed for a mere 6 years. My conference paper will address the temporal and political fragility of Filipino film archiving due to insufficient funding, weak legal mandates, and the deterioration of media storage formats; the tension between decentralized privatization and state archives; and competing understandings of the “public” so often invoked by archival preservation efforts.

The workshop will provide the opportunity for participants to practice the basic techniques involved in a recovery project, such as salvage and stabilisation, and to gain an understanding and appreciation of the advanced conservation requirements for full recovery of individual objects. A major part of this workshop will be for participants to work with case studies and plan and critically review a collection recovery operation.

The workshop will focus on physical collections such as films and tapes. However some overview discussion of managing digital disasters will also be included.

About the Workshop Presenter:

Mick Newnham is currently the Manager of Conservation & Research, at the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) of Australia based in Canberra, Australia. In his role as a researcher, Mick engages in original research on issues surrounding the conservation and long-term preservation of audiovisual media such as film, magnetic tape and optical discs. This research has been widely published and has been incorporated into preservation practices and commercial products across the world.

Mick joined the NFSA in 1988. Prior to this, he worked for the University of NSW at University College in the Department of Chemistry.

From 2000-2005 Mick was the Chair of the of the South East Asia Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA) Technical Committee and from 2005-2008 Mick was on SEAPAVAA’s Executive Council. Mick remains involved in SEAPAVAA as an Individual Member and continues to provide training and advice to SEAPAVAA and its members.

Mick has contributed to the work of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) Technical Commission, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) Preservation Committee and the International Organization for Standardization’s TC 42 WG 5. The TC-42 WG5 develops standards and recommended practices for the care of audio visual materials.

For the past two decades, Mick has been providing consultancies and training in audiovisual preservation and collection management on behalf of organisations such as UNESCO, SEAPAVAA, ASEAN and ICCROM. These consultancies have been conducted throughout Oceania, South East Asia, USA, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean as well as Mexico and India.

Mick is a lecturer and tutor in audio visual preservation with the Charles Sturt University’s on-line course “Preservation of AV Materials” and a guest lecturer with the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation.

Mick has developed many training resources such as the “Film Preservation Handbook” (accessible though the NFSA website – www.nfsa.gov.au). He has recently collaborated with Jim Lindner to develop a case study-based training resource for audiovisual preservation training that has now been published by PrestoCentre.

Mick is currently co-authoring a book on disaster recovery for audiovisual collections.

BELINA SB. CAPUL

CHRISTOPHE AUGIAS