IASA 2018 Annual Conference

The National Cultural Audiovisual Archives (NCAA) was set up with the objective of identifying and preserving the cultural heritage of India available as audiovisual manifestations. During its pilot phase (2014-2018), it is working towards making 30,000 hours of non-commercial, unpublished archival audiovisual recordings available online in the public domain, guided by the principles of open access using open source technological tools. The NCAA is an archive of archives, with 22 institutions whose audiovisual repositories forms the base of the collections that are being digitized and made accessible, giving NCAA a wide geographical coverage, representing a diversity of voices and providing a platform of inclusivity. The partnering institutions of NCAA represent variety along multiple axes – governmental/non-governmental, regional/pan-Indian, archives/museums and research centres/production houses – but have come together due a “shared base of common and mutual values, resources, interests and aspirations.” (Deocampo, 2017) It is the first time that a national network of audiovisual archives has been made possible in India through the NCAA as its partnering institutions have come together to build a community of archives which can articulate infrastructure, financial and technological needs of their sector as a pressure group. This paper will discuss the aforementioned issues in detail imbued with the perspective of participating in building a movement of audiovisual archiving that transcends boundaries.