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IASA 2018 Annual Conference

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13:30 GMT

Linguistic and Musical Resources of Seperewa Recordings in the J.H. Kwabena Nketia Archives

From 1952 to 1960, Professor Emeritus J.H. Kwabena Nketia served in the University of Ghana’s Sociology Department where he directed fieldwork projects focused on documenting traditional performing arts practices in Ghana. The resulting recordings and documents are now housed in the Nketia Archives within the Institute of African Studies and have been in the process of digitization since 2015. Drawing from Nketia’s vision of an “African Musicology,” in which scholars not only study, record, and preserve traditional art forms but also practice them as living arts, the authors of this paper explore linguistic and musical resources of seperewa (Akan harp) recordings in the archive. Korankye, as the primary living practitioner of the seperewa tradition examines these recordings as material in reinstating the disappearing tradition in contemporary performance practice. Harper provides context in musical and linguistic structure analysis of the recordings. This paper is part of an ongoing project between Harper and Korankye that explores pedagogical approaches and generative processes in seperewa music.

Chair

Judith Gray

Folklife Specialist, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Judith Gray is an ethnomusicologist who serves as the coordinator of reference services for the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. She came to the Library initially as part of the Federal Cylinder Project team, documenting and returning to communities of origin the... Read More →

Speakers

Colter Harper

Fulbright Scholar, Department of Music, University of Ghana

Osei Kwame Korankye

Music Lecturer, Department of Music, University of Ghana

Monday October 1, 2018 13:30 - 14:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

13:30 GMT

The model of application-oriented audiovisual content aggregation and product service

Shanghai Audio-Visual Archives has accumulated a large number of radio and television programs and materials for many years. It has built a whole-process digital media asset management system and provided an online content search and service. In addition to the efficient storage management of these audio-visual archives, we have never stopped research on how to make the audio-visual files more in line with the needs of the users. With the integration of traditional TV media with new media as well as the actual demands on audio-visual archives by culture and education, it has more practical value and social significance to realize the integration and development of audio-visual archives in all directions.
At present, Shanghai Audio-Visual Archives has been exploring an interactive platform to provide audio-visual content services for different users and groups. According to their demands, we are promoting a theme-oriented and knowledgeable management model of audio-visual content with the help artificial intelligence (AI) and other techniques. We are trying to disassemble and combine the mass audio and video materials, carry on the content aggregation with applied requirements as well as provide the content product service with all its variety, thus we can really create new values for historical audio-visual archives.

Chair

Maximus Magwaza

Account Manager, Jasco Broadcast Solutions

Speakers

Wang Yi

Shanghai Audio-Visual Archives, Shanghai Media Group

Wang Yi has worked in the copyright asset center of SMG as researcher for 9 years. During the working time, she excellently completed many basic tasks including providing the services for the editors, collecting and cataloging the daily news. Besides, she also took part in many important... Read More →

Monday October 1, 2018 13:30 - 14:00 GMT
Room 2: Prof Ernest Aryeetey Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:00 GMT

Audiovisual archives: the bridge to the past

Shanghai Audio-Visual Archives is the biggest professional audiovisual organization in Shanghai. More than 100,000 tapes are stored here — they cover the history of Shanghai, of China, even of the world, including all kinds of news documentaries, feature films and historical archive materials since 1898. Once, these precious audiovisual archives were asleep in the warehouse for a long time, but all of these are constantly changing as people pay more attention to history and culture.
Audiovisual archives have gradually become a bridge between history and reality, materials and culture, users and communities. People can learn about the precious past of their community, the city’s history 100 years ago, the earth-shaking changes that have taken place in this country through audiovisual archives. How could these happen? We will tell you the stories.

Chair

Judith Gray

Folklife Specialist, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Judith Gray is an ethnomusicologist who serves as the coordinator of reference services for the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. She came to the Library initially as part of the Federal Cylinder Project team, documenting and returning to communities of origin the... Read More →

Speakers

Chen Junjie

Shanghai Audio-Visual Archives, Shanghai Media Group

Chen Junjie, the editor and researcher of Shanghai Media Group (SMG), has been engaged in image editing and research for several years. At present, mainly responsible for the content operation and maintenance of the one-stop content service platform—Media Assets Management Network... Read More →

Monday October 1, 2018 14:00 - 14:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:00 GMT

Interface and content in digitized radio programmes: access options for music time in Africa

Last year at IASA 2017 in Berlin, University of Michigan Professors Kelly Askew and Paul Conway presented a status report on a research project designed to explore access options for a collection of 900 radio programs and scripts representing 40 years of broadcasting of Voice of America’s Music Time in Africa (1965-2005). The NEH funded project ends in May 2018, affording an opportunity to showcase preservation and access options for this important collection of radio broadcasts to the African continent. The paper has two sections. First, the presentation demonstrates a custom-designed interface to the collection that is preserved digitally in an enterprise-grade digital repository and streaming service. The primary question in this section concerns the value added by custom access system programming and how the system might be generalized for other collections of sound recordings with associated documentary evidence. Second, the paper exposes some initial findings on the content of the 900 radio programs afforded by the existence of digitized scripts with searchable text, along with metadata that supports geospatial and temporal mapping of the content of the radio programs. The primary question in this section concerns the feasibility of associating Voice of America programming with political, social, and economic activity in a selection of Sub-Saharan nations. The research effort points toward new ways to explore the impact of radio programming in post-colonial Africa.

Chair

Maximus Magwaza

Account Manager, Jasco Broadcast Solutions

Speakers

Paul Conway

Associate Professor of Information, University of Michigan School of Information

Paul Conway is associate professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His research encompasses the digitization of cultural heritage resources, particularly photographic archives, the use of digitized resources... Read More →

Diane Thram

Professor Emeritus, International Library of African Music, Rhodes University

I was Director of ILAM for 10 years and became passionate about music heritage archives, digital return of field collections to their communities of origin, issues in archival ethics and the need to de-colonize collections through heritage activism and promotion of music sustain... Read More →

Monday October 1, 2018 14:00 - 14:30 GMT
Room 2: Prof Ernest Aryeetey Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:30 GMT

A national broadcaster, a national repository? - the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) Film and Video Library

The Film and Video Library of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation was established in 1965. It collects and preserves a variety of programmes and ceremonies such as swearing-in of heads of states, independence declarations, Farmers Day celebrations, daily news coverages etc. As it is with most public archives in our sub-region, a greater part of the collection has been locked away due to obsolete media formats, lack of technical skills to manage the collection, and the climate condition. Meanwhile this unique collection is expected to be the nation’s repository. I will speak about the GBC collection to the IASA community, highlight the challenges being encountered and use the opportunity to open up for help and collaboration.

Chair

Maximus Magwaza

Account Manager, Jasco Broadcast Solutions

Speakers

Terrence Darko Danso

Ghana Broadcasting Corporation

Terrence Darko Danso is a Senior Audio-visual Librarian (Television) for Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. As an audio-visual digitiser, he works hand-in-hand with transmission and his unit serves as the backbone for Television, preserves the Nation’s Heritage and makes sure it stay... Read More →

Monday October 1, 2018 14:30 - 15:00 GMT
Room 2: Prof Ernest Aryeetey Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:30 GMT

Overview of the initial version of IASA-TC 06 video preservation guideline

Unlike earlier guidelines from the Technical Committee, IASA's "Guidelines for the Preservation of Video Recordings, IASA-TC 06", is being published in stages, reflecting the complexity of this topic (much ground to cover) and the still-emerging consensus on best practices. Posted online in mid-2018, the initial version of TC 06 focuses on video recordings on conventional carriers, i.e., videotapes. Although the guideline recommends the conservation and retention of the original tapes, the central preservation action consists of digitization, a term that is applied to the transfer of content from both analog and (some) digital videotapes. Future versions of the guideline will add information digital-file-based video formats and additional types of digital videotapes. For such source materials, the preservation actions may consist of rewrapping the recording in a fresh digital-file "wrapper," or combining digital transcoding with rewrapping.
Two parts of the guideline describe relatively settled matters: (1) "what is video," which outlines the technical complexity of the underlying formats, and (2) detailed information about the conventional carriers held by many archives: ½- and 1-inch open reels, U-matic videocassettes, ½-inch consumer and semi-professional videocassettes, and the Betacam family of professional videocassettes. The guideline also discusses matters for which there is less consensus and/or for which practices are not yet mature, e.g., the selection of digital target formats and methods for the capture of components of the video payload beyond picture and sound, such as captioning and historical timecodes. In addition, the guideline offers a high-level overview of a preservation facility, intended to guide archivists planning either a self-operation or the selection of contractors.

Chair

Dietrich Schüller

consultant, Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Dietrich Schüller, retired director of and now consultant to the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv, has been with IASA since 1972. Starting out as cultural anthropologist – his PhD is in African History – he became increasingly involved in technical matters related to audiovisual archiving... Read More →

Speakers

Carl Fleischhauer

IASA Technical Committee

Carl Fleischhauer worked on a variety of digitization and digital preservation projects at the Library of Congress beginning in 1983. His more recent projects at the Library include the Format Sustainability Web site and coordination of the Audio-Visual Working Group of the Federal... Read More →

Jennifer Vaughn

Editor, IASA

Monday October 1, 2018 14:30 - 15:00 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:30 GMT

Starting a university archives in Kyrgyzstan: what we could do better

The paper will discuss challenges and opportunities for starting a university archives in Kyrgyzstan. Independent, democratic, and post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is going through multiple transformations involving the country’s cultural identity, social structure and public institutions, all of which have an impact on educational and cultural developments. The presentation provides an overview of multiple archival projects of the library of the American University of Central Asia, including the virtual museum of prominent statesman Ishak Razzakov, a collection of oral histories, and 3D exhibit of archaeological artifacts. The projects, initiated and implemented by enthusiastic librarians, are now being revised for improvements to enhance discoverability and accessibility. The presentation will discuss challenges encountered along the implementation, focusing on knowledge and expertise gaps that constrain the successful archival projects. Also included are implications and suggestions on archival expertise and communities of interests needed by librarians in the context of limited archival practices and professional resources. Kyrgyzstan’s system of archives was established in the Soviet era and was designated mainly for maintaining government documentation. Little has changed since then, and there is a significant lack of archival expertise at country’s cultural institutions, especially in maintaining audiovisual materials. As part of the GLAM network, libraries in Kyrgyzstan can potentially fill this gap if exposed to relevant training, best practices and connected to professional networks.

Chair

Judith Gray

Folklife Specialist, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Judith Gray is an ethnomusicologist who serves as the coordinator of reference services for the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. She came to the Library initially as part of the Federal Cylinder Project team, documenting and returning to communities of origin the... Read More →

Speakers

Jyldyz Bekbalaeva

Library, American University of Central Asia

Jyldyz Bekbalaeva is Director of the Library at American University of Central Asia, where she manages library services and resources. Jyldyz is currently a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University, working on such topics as information literacy, instructional technology... Read More →

Monday October 1, 2018 14:30 - 15:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

15:30 GMT

Documentation of traditional music and dances in Ghana: documentation and archiving of the Dagbon Audiovisual Collection at RMC

This paper reports on some of the results obtained during the documentation and audiovisual archiving project of Dagbon music-dance culture in the northern region of Ghana. We describe the digitisation and contextualisation of the data and meta data under the DEKKMMA-Project.
The aim of the project was to record, catalogue and map out a large portion of the not yet documented music-dance culture found in the traditional idiom of music making in Dagbon. By integrating this documentation project at the Africa Museum (RMCA) in Belgium through the DEKKMMA platform, we made a wealth of unpublished material available online for researchers, institutes of learning and the general public. The documentation project is based on long-term fieldwork in the Northern Region of Ghana during the period 1999 – 2010. The audiovisual recordings during these annual field trips include ethnographic materials, artifacts, musical instruments, dance costumes, regalia used during music-dance performances, coming both from the rural areas and from “The Hiplife Zone”, the urban space in and around Tamale. Exemplifying the rich cultural heritage of contemporary Ghana and Dagbon music-dance tradition in particular, this audio-visual collection is not only catalogued and archived at the Ethnomusicological Archive of the RMCA in Tervuren, Belgium, but also locally at the Institute of African Studies University of Ghana, Legon, for perpetuity. The end of the paper presents a case study on how the Dagbon audiovisual collection is applied for new innovative ethnomusicological research and analyses at the University of Ghent, Belgium, in the idiom of embodied music interaction and African musicology.
https://www.ugent.be/lw/kunstwetenschappen/en/research-groups/musicology/ipem/finishedprojects/dekkma.htm
http://music.africamuseum.be/english/index.html

Chair

Judith Opoku-Boateng

Archivist, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana

Speakers

Marc Leman

University of Ghent: Department of Cultural Anthropology and Musicology

Marc Leman is a Methusalem Research Professor in Systematic Musicology and Director of IPEM, the institute for psychoacoustics and electronic music at Ghent University, Belgium. He is a pioneer in the foundations of embodied music interaction paradigm. He published more than 350... Read More →

Dominik Phyfferoen

University of Ghent: Department of Cultural Anthropology and Musicology

Dominik Phyfferoen teaches jazz double bass and is an independent ethnomusicologist. He studied ethnomusicology in Ghana with Professor Kwabena Nketia and cultural musicology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Currently he is affiliated with the University of Ghent... Read More →

Koenraad Stroekens

University of Ghent: Department of Cultural Anthropology and Musicology

Koenraad Stroeken is an Associate Professor in Africanist Anthropology at Ghent University, Belgium. He has published over 50 articles and authored five international peer-reviewed volumes, of which the comparative ethnography Medicinal Rule (2018) and the monograph Moral Power (2012... Read More →

Monday October 1, 2018 15:30 - 16:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

16:00 GMT

Connecting users and communities through repatriation of cultural materials

The post-independence era has witnessed huge efforts being made in the repatriation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage artifacts back to their original indigenous communities. During the colonial era significant cultural materials were taken to foreign lands where some have summarily disappeared with others finding their way into international archives. The advent of independence and international cooperation amongst nations has seen a rise in the repatriation of traditional materials back to their owners. This paper discusses the challenges that populate this gesture as some receiving communities are not readily equipped to derive value in the tangible and intangible repatriated heritage.

Chair

Judith Opoku-Boateng

Archivist, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana

Speakers

Isaac Machafa

Midlands State University

Isaac is a lecturer at the Midlands State University, Gweru, Zimbabwe and is currently a doctoral candidate at UNISA, RSA with research interests in Cultural Heritage, Indigenous Arts promotion, Video Documentation and Archiving in the Arts, Public Sector Ethnomusicology and Community... Read More →

Monday October 1, 2018 16:00 - 16:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

16:30 GMT

Discographers ... or discographies? That is the question.

Our paper will present a brief history of discography, touching on important historical developments and contributors in the field. We will discuss issues that have arisen for discographers due to the shift away from print-based discographies, and we will then look at a variety of recent approaches to bringing discographic data into the digital age. How can we balance the need for recognizing many years of work in the field with the importance of sharing data and making it widely accessible to others for research, additions and corrections? Other questions we will address include: are we done collecting information about records? Are we close to connecting and publishing all this data? Why is it so important to contribute in this field? We in the IASA Discography Committee are very committed to exploring these issues, but who are the other stakeholders?

Speakers

Peter Laurence

Librarian for Recorded Sound & Media, Harvard University

Filip Šír

Sound Documents Manager, National Museum, Prague

Filip Šír, DiS. is the coordinator for digitization of audio documents in the Digitization and New Media Department of the National Museum. Since 2012, he has been focusing on a comprehensive solution for the issue of audio documents, from the principles of sound document care to... Read More →

Monday October 1, 2018 16:30 - 17:00 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

16:30 GMT

Reconnecting Ghanaians with Robert Sutherland Rattray (1881-1983) wax cylinder recordings

Captain Robert Sutherland Rattray (1881-1938) studied anthropology at Oxford. He spent many years studying the Ashanti. He became District Governor for the Ejura region of Ashanti in 1911 and head of the Anthropological Department of Asante in 1921. As part of that role he made roughly 35 brown wax cylinder recordings in the area in 1922, representing some of the earliest recordings from West Africa and certainly the first explorations of the so-called 'talking drum', or surrogate speech in which the drum is used to convey speech in the form of messages and literature. The British Library has digitised these wax cylinders and at this conference is bringing digital copies to the Institute of African Studies where they will be made available for study. This paper will explore the broader theoretical and methodological context within which such 'reconnection' activities are undertaken as well as the potential impact they can have on local and international knowledge exchange.

Chair

Judith Opoku-Boateng

Archivist, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana

Speakers

Janet Topp Fargion

Lead Curator, World and Traditional Music, British Library

Janet Topp Fargion is an ethnomusicologist with research interests in South Africa and the Swahili Coast. She graduated with a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1992. She joined the British Library in 1994 as Lead Curator of World and Traditional Music where she... Read More →

Monday October 1, 2018 16:30 - 17:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

09:00 GMT

Archaeology starts in your own backyard

One of the main goals of every culture heritage institution is to be able to communicate and share their collection with the public and other institutions. Although it might seem that the digital era has been underway long enough to provide all institutions with the necessary time for gathering digital evidence and cataloguing, the process is often very long and painstaking.
The National Museum has the largest collection of recorded audio in the country. A great part of it is not catalogued digitally but only exists on paper (cards, lists), which is a problem for the public, institutions and the Museum itself, as it is not always clear what we already have in our collections and whether to acquire certain items or not, or whether we are able to help other institutions with research, etc.
The crucial step for a large cultural heritage institution is to make a proper inventory of all the items in their collection, in our case sound recordings. The archeology often starts “in your own backyard”, by making a basic list or chart to start with. This often involves combining sources that range from the sound-carrier themselves to various handwritten notes and descriptions, as well as typewritten cards. This basic chart can later be transported in bulk to digital catalogues for public access.
Our team has tried a different approach on our collection of 10” standard records, using photography as the main tool. We present a quick and cost-effective way to compile digital evidence of tens of thousands of items within months, an achievement which has been unprecedented within the NM.

Chair

Will Prentice

Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Will Prentice is the Training and Dissemination Manager for the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project at the British Library, where he has worked since 1999. He is Chair of the IASA Training & Education Committee, sits on the IASA Technical Committee and is a Trustee of the EMI Archive... Read More →

Speakers

Anthony Allen

Petr Ferenc

National Museum, Czech Republic

Filip Šír

Sound Documents Manager, National Museum, Prague

Filip Šír, DiS. is the coordinator for digitization of audio documents in the Digitization and New Media Department of the National Museum. Since 2012, he has been focusing on a comprehensive solution for the issue of audio documents, from the principles of sound document care to... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 09:00 - 09:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

09:00 GMT

The historical importance of old African popular music recordings

African popular music records go back to the 1920s and consequently their lyrics are relevant to historians - and in particular what is called the ‘history of the inarticulate’. Originally this was a method of drawing on European folksongs in order to understand what the illiterate peasants were thinking during the medieval period, as compared to the histories written down by aristocrats and elites. However this history of the inarticulate approach can also be applied to old popular music recordings whose lyrics give a glimpse of what street people were thinking in days gone by. This paper examines the content of mid-20th century highlife songs that dwelt on themes that reflected the breakdown of the traditional Ghanaian extended family system that was taking place due to modernising processes: like urbanization, the cash nexus and imported Euro-Christian ideals of the nuclear family and patrilineal inheritance. Whereas colonialists and social planners saw the African extended family as a ‘brake on progress’ and encouraged moves towards small monogamous families, highlife music was able to provide the urban and rural poor with a running commentary on this family fragmentation. Consequently many highlife records were about male migration and broken homes, neglected children and orphans, ‘juju’ accusations and inheritance disputes within the family. Indeed 12% of the 1930s to 70s highlife records in the holdings of BAPMAF popular music archives that I chair are on these topics. This is one example of how old highlife records allows the voice of the subaltern classes, whose point of view is not usually written down, to be fixed in time and so provide historians with vernacular critiques of colonialism and westernization.

Chair

Lynn Johnson

e.tv Pty Ltd., e.tv Pty Ltd.

Library systems manager for 10 years at e.tv, South Africa's first independent, free to air, terrestrial television station and home of eNCA, South Africa's first 24 hour broadcast news service. Work with digital asset managements systems that manages news and programme content and... Read More →

Speakers

John Collins

University of Ghana Music Department & the BAPMAF African Popular Music Archives

Since 1969 John Collins has worked as musician, band leader, music union organizer, writer, researcher and archivist in West African popular and neo-traditional performance. He obtained a degree in sociology/archaeology from the University of Ghana 1972, ran his Bokoor highlife band... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 09:00 - 09:30 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

09:30 GMT

Sound mapping as a tool for connecting communities to sound recordings

The Islamic call to prayer, the adhan, azhan, or namaaz, is recited five times daily as a way of signifying prayer times to Muslims. Over the past 7 years I have been involved in a research project of collecting field recordings of the call to prayer from mosques around the world and using a web-based sound map to geo-locate, share these recordings, and reach contributors outside of my own network. In this paper, I will offer a perspective of how the sound map as tool can participate in a discourse on the accessibility of archival materials to broader audiences, as well as the collection of archival materials from broader audiences. The paper will also consider that there may be an inverse relationship between accessibility of materials and archival standards, and will look at how this impacts the breadth of accessibility versus the temporality of accessibility. What are the benefits and pitfalls of sharing compressed formats of archival recording through sound maps and widely accessible streaming services, that allow for broader dissemination, search ability, and ultimately access, and does this impact our understanding of the role of the archive? What can a soundmap offer in connecting users, materials, and communities and how can we leverage such a form of digital media toward archival ends? And finally, at a time when there are communities and people who are disappearing across the globe due to conflicts, how can tools like the sound map help us to archive and document these places.

Chair

Will Prentice

Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Will Prentice is the Training and Dissemination Manager for the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project at the British Library, where he has worked since 1999. He is Chair of the IASA Training & Education Committee, sits on the IASA Technical Committee and is a Trustee of the EMI Archive... Read More →

Speakers

Diana Chester

Lecturer in Media Production, University of Sydney

Diana Chester is a digital media artist, scholar, teacher, and musician. Her work draws from sound studies, archival studies, and the ethnographic study of expressive culture in religious festivals and traditions. Her current scholarly research includes sonic archiving and artistic... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 09:30 - 10:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

10:00 GMT

Accessibility to music heritage field recording collections: right of communities of origin?

Creation of online access to the historically significant Hugh Tracey Collection of early recordings of African music created from the late 1920s – early 1970s, housed at the International Library of African Music in South Africa, was accomplished late in 2008 with the help of funding from international and national donors. This was considered a great achievement. It served its purpose well among research scholars, musicians, students and the general public who somehow – perhaps through a Google search - found out about the Collection. All of these ‘communities’ have internet access. However, on-line access has not meant the recordings are reaching the communities where they were originally created by the collector, Hugh Tracey. Most often source communities are remote, marginalized rural villages throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where internet access is not guaranteed. Also, most often the descendants of the artists recorded by Tracey either do not know that the recordings exist or, if they do remember that there was an Englishman who made recordings of their grandfather or grandmother, they have no idea what happened to them. This paper discusses reasons why there is a need to reach out and return recordings to their communities of origin and issues encountered in doing so. Further, it reports on current projects in digital return of music heritage collections archived in Australia, USA and Canada, in addition to ILAM’s efforts.

Chair

Will Prentice

Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Will Prentice is the Training and Dissemination Manager for the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project at the British Library, where he has worked since 1999. He is Chair of the IASA Training & Education Committee, sits on the IASA Technical Committee and is a Trustee of the EMI Archive... Read More →

Speakers

Diane Thram

Professor Emeritus, International Library of African Music, Rhodes University

I was Director of ILAM for 10 years and became passionate about music heritage archives, digital return of field collections to their communities of origin, issues in archival ethics and the need to de-colonize collections through heritage activism and promotion of music sustain... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 10:00 - 10:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

11:00 GMT

Incidental archiving of indigenous knowledge: a re-reading of Ama Ata Aidoo’s The Dilemma of a Ghost

The birth of Art appears to be the beginnings of archiving, which is now a deliberate collection and preservation of indigenous knowledge and knowledge systems for posterity. This is because creative works are the artists’ vocabulary of experience in life and its living, in the context of their cultural milieu. The dramatist, as a chronicler of developments in life reflects details beyond the obvious story to give expression to cultural specifics. This paper demonstrates how the performing arts in general, and Aidoo’s play The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965) in particular serve as a reference point for indigenous knowledge in the form of Akan/Fanti philosophies. The paper concludes that beyond its posture as a repository of Akan/Fanti worldviews, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in performance, gives the worldviews a fresh life and opens opportunities for contemporary interpretations.

Speakers

Dr. Sarah Dorgbadzi

Theatre Arts Department, School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana-Legon

Tuesday October 2, 2018 11:00 - 11:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

11:30 GMT

Early Gold Coast recording pioneers in the 1920s

Speakers

Rainer Lotz

Tuesday October 2, 2018 11:30 - 12:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

12:00 GMT

Exploring the Dunbar Music Archive

Speakers

Dr. Minnita Daniel-Cox

University of Dayton

Tuesday October 2, 2018 12:00 - 12:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

12:00 GMT

Unlocking our Sound Heritage: training a nation to care for its collection

"Unlocking Our Sound Heritage" is a five-year, £18.8 million project funded in part by the UK Heritage Lottery Fund, intended to transform the care of audio collections in the UK. In part it is assisting with digitisation of collections at the British Library and elsewhere, but an equally important goal is raising awareness of the value and vulnerability of audio collections, among collection holders and the general public across the UK. This is being done through the dissemination of training across a national preservation network, alongside a programme of learning and outreach events. This will engage directly with communities, sharing curated packages of digitised audio following research identifying priority audiences and relevant collection types.

Chair

Pio Pellizzari

IASA Vice President

Pio PellizzariStudied musicology, roman philology and French literature. He was a scientific collaborator for musicology at the libraries of the Universities of Lausanne and Fribourg (Switzerland) elaborating musical inheritance and producing catalogues of musical works. He taught... Read More →

Speakers

Will Prentice

Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Will Prentice is the Training and Dissemination Manager for the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project at the British Library, where he has worked since 1999. He is Chair of the IASA Training & Education Committee, sits on the IASA Technical Committee and is a Trustee of the EMI Archive... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 12:00 - 12:30 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

13:30 GMT

Access and accessibility: the role of the archivist in the age of global information exchange

The National Archives of Israel has developed its collection in 5 years from 40,000 recorded hours to over 100,000 hours of audio-visual material from various sources. The collection is mostly digitized, catalogued and available on the web site of the National Library of Israel. The detailed catalogue is in Hebrew but names and subject heading are available in English as well on the main library's catalogue site.

The archive makes an effort to create an in depth cataloguing, however, with the growing number of digital material and digitized material that the archive accessed each year, the catalogue is behind the collection and is not sufficient enough.

Thus, the role of the archivist and subject specialist as mediators became more crucial and more time consuming. Can we "archive the archivist" and provide knowledge of audiovisual materials in a different way?

The presentation will include a description of the collection and examples of mediating specific repertoires to customers and open the subject for further discussion.

Chair

David Larsen

Managing Director, Africa Media Online

David Larsen is Managing Director of Africa Media Online (AMO). Once a journalist and photographer David founded AMO in 2000 with the vision of enabling Africans to tell Africa’s story. AMO enables Africans to tell Africa's story by creating a digital trade route for African media... Read More →

Speakers

Gila Flam

Director, National Sound Archives, Israel

Etnomusicologist. The Director of the Sound Archives of the National Library of Israel for over 25 years. Expanded the collection and digitized the historical collection between 2007-2013. Interested in ethnographic recordings and provision of access internationally.

Tuesday October 2, 2018 13:30 - 14:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

13:30 GMT

Activist farmers on film: preserving the recordings of the National Farmers Organisation

In 1955, the National Farmers Organisation (NFO) formed a small activist group in the U.S. midwest to remedy the rapidly decreasing prices of diverse agricultural products. This grassroots organisation soon became a national political movement, with membership surging to tens of thousands of farmers across 35 states. The NFO-led protests of the 1960s were rooted in the radical ideas of the broader historical period. Many outside of the NFO saw withholding actions, boycotts, and the push for collective bargaining as revolutionary and controversial. The NFO established the Public Information Department to support the large national scope of the organization. This unit developed TV and radio programs that were distributed to members and broadcast stations across the country. The NFO recordings not only document the growth of the NFO movement, but also provide insight into how the organisation built a following of independent farmers with the use of audiovisual media as a "social media" in a way that was relatively new. This collection offers a window into technology adoption by social and political movements.

This talk will be about digitization of the NFO film collection, funded by a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Recordings at Risk program. I will present an informal guide – aimed at smaller institutions – on managing workflows, including: identifying a fund-able collection, what to expect from your vendor, how to work with other departmental teams, and how ensure your collection’s accessibility. For this project, one of our biggest challenges was developing workflows to create closed captioning (CC) in-house. I will be sharing our student-friendly, DIY process for providing CC for AV records, which ensures accessibility compliance and allows search engines to index transcripts, increasing online record visibility.

Chair

Neil Garner

Director, Training for TV Ltd.

After studying music at the University of Surrey and teacher training in Bath, Neil Garner joined the BBC as a Post Production Operator, working on a wide range of tasks from transmission to telecine and editing to quality assessment.In 1990 he joined the team at the BBC Academy’s... Read More →

Speakers

Rosie Rowe

Owner/Founder, The AV Collective

Rosie Rowe serves as the founder and owner of AV Collective LLC, where the primary professional emphasis lies in the conceptualization of AV preservation infrastructure, workflows, and projects. These solutions are tailored to be both approachable and practical for diverse institutions... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 13:30 - 14:00 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:00 GMT

A study of the media asset management system field selection based on copyrighted material collection

Media Asset Management has entered a digital era. With the increasing need for a new media ecology for content, media organizations are bound to use a large amount of third party content in operation. Since the copyright awareness of media and users has been developed, the days of "the free lunch" are gone. Under this context, media asset management urgently requires the introduction of third party content management. This essay, starting from field setting, analyzed the shortcomings of the current media asset management system on copyrighted material based on the focuses on copyright information and fine management of copyrighted material collection. By combining SMG Copyright Asset Center’s practical experience of establishing the source sharing platform, the essay studied the need for field setting of media asset management system based on copyrighted material collection in the aspects of copyrighted material’s basic information, copyright information, resource information and file information, thus providing references for the establishment of media asset management system based on third party content management in the future.

Chair

David Larsen

Managing Director, Africa Media Online

David Larsen is Managing Director of Africa Media Online (AMO). Once a journalist and photographer David founded AMO in 2000 with the vision of enabling Africans to tell Africa’s story. AMO enables Africans to tell Africa's story by creating a digital trade route for African media... Read More →

Speakers

Fang Han

Shanghai Audio-Visual Archives, Shanghai Media Group

Han Fang is an Acquisition Manager of Copyright Content Acquisition Department at the Copyright Assents Centre of Shanghai Media Group.

Tuesday October 2, 2018 14:00 - 14:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:00 GMT

Film digitization: a collaboration between National Records and Archive Services of Malawi and REI Foundation Limited

The paper talks about the mission, objectives, and work of REI Foundation Limited (RFL). It then discusses the collaboration that has been formed between the National Records and Archive Services of Malawi (NARS), RFL, and Tokyo Coon, with the aim of preserving and making the digitized audiovisual collections widely and easily accessible to the public.

The research further discusses how the digitized film collection is connecting users to the archival materials, as well as how it fosters a sense of community as it helps in understanding societies and cultures better and offers an accurate documentary record of events and human actions.

The paper also describes experiences, strategies, techniques, processes, and equipment (hardware and software) that this project is using to digitize, preserve, and provide access to digital collections. The paper concludes with a number of possible strategies that NARS is planning to use in order to increase accessibility of the digitized collections with the aim of seeking input from other professionals.

Chair

Neil Garner

Director, Training for TV Ltd.

After studying music at the University of Surrey and teacher training in Bath, Neil Garner joined the BBC as a Post Production Operator, working on a wide range of tasks from transmission to telecine and editing to quality assessment.In 1990 he joined the team at the BBC Academy’s... Read More →

Speakers

Bright Joshua

National Records And Archive Services of Malawi

Bright Joshua is a regional archivist and head of the audiovisual section of the National Records and Archives Services of Malawi (NRAS). He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematical Sciences, has worked as an intern at the Bundesarchiv Film Archive in Berlin, Germany. He... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 14:00 - 14:30 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:30 GMT

Open access: the case of the National Cultural Audiovisual Archives of India

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.

Chair

David Larsen

Managing Director, Africa Media Online

David Larsen is Managing Director of Africa Media Online (AMO). Once a journalist and photographer David founded AMO in 2000 with the vision of enabling Africans to tell Africa’s story. AMO enables Africans to tell Africa's story by creating a digital trade route for African media... Read More →

Speakers

Irfan Zuberi

Project Manager, National Cultural Audiovisual Archives, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts

Irfan has been involved with the arts for nearly 20 years as researcher, cultural consultant, editor, festival curator and audiovisual archivist. He holds a Master of Philosophy Degree from Delhi School of Economics with a thesis titled ‘Theodor W. Adorno’s Theory of the ‘Culture... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 14:30 - 15:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:30 GMT

Perished Diamonds: the effects of lost film archives on cultural heritage and creativity in Ghana

Perished Diamonds is a 40-minute documentary that takes a detailed look at Ghana’s Film history from Post-Independence, the controversial sale of the film industry, and the effects it has had on filmmaking and Ghana’s historic film archives, with testimonials from some of Ghana’s veteran filmmakers including Kwaw Ansah, Rev. Dr. Hesse, Charles Bucknor, Ernest Abbeyquaye, and Prof. Kofi Awoonor. This presentation will give a brief on the film "Perished Diamonds" and further discuss how an almost non-existent film heritage is affecting general creativity in filmmaking and other cultural heritage related activities in Ghana.

Chair

Neil Garner

Director, Training for TV Ltd.

After studying music at the University of Surrey and teacher training in Bath, Neil Garner joined the BBC as a Post Production Operator, working on a wide range of tasks from transmission to telecine and editing to quality assessment.In 1990 he joined the team at the BBC Academy’s... Read More →

Speakers

Anita Afonu

Director, Roaming Akuba Films, Accra - Ghana

Anita Afonu graduated from the National Film and Television Institute in 2010 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Her first feature film, Perished Diamonds documents the history of Ghanaian cinema and the effects the loss of its archives has had on the Ghana film industry. In 2014 she received... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 14:30 - 15:00 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

15:30 GMT

Ancestral Voices, Traditional Knowledge Labels; Archive-Comunity Collaborations

Chair

Tommy Sjoberg

Archivist, Folkmusikens hus

Speakers

Judith Gray

Folklife Specialist, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Judith Gray is an ethnomusicologist who serves as the coordinator of reference services for the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. She came to the Library initially as part of the Federal Cylinder Project team, documenting and returning to communities of origin the... Read More →

Guha Shankar

Sr. Folklife Specialist, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Guha Shankar (Ph.D., UT-Austin), is Senior Folklife Specialist in the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, where he serves as project coordinator of Ancestral Voices, a collaborative curatorial initiative with indigenous communities and co-directs the national Civil Rights... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 15:30 - 16:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

16:00 GMT

The Magnetic Tape Alert Project: safeguarding the documents proper of cultural and linguistic diversity

Magnetic tape recording, already developed in the mid-1930s, spread all over the world after WW II. Audio recording first, then video, relyied on this technology, until in the later 1990s the predominance of this recording and storage medium began to erode: recording, postproduction and storage became part of the computer world. To date, all magnetic tape formats, audio and video, analogue and digital, are dead. As magnetic tape was on its retreat, production of new equipment, spare parts and professional services ceased. There is agreement that in the course of the forthcoming decade magnetic tape collections that have not been transferred to digital repositories will be lost because of the lack of replay equipment in operable condition. While generally greater and well-funded archives have already safeguarded their holdings, or have planned to do so in due course, an important part of the audiovisual legacy is still outside archival custody, typically recorded and held by research and cultural institutions without preservation plans and adequate budgets. With the Magnetic Tape Alert Project, IASA and UNESCO intend to join forces in raising awareness of the imminent threat. By assessing the quantitative dimension of the situation, a realistic basis shall be provided for an action plan to safeguard this highly endangered legacy of cultural and linguistic diversity recorded over the past 60 years.

Chair

Tommy Sjoberg

Archivist, Folkmusikens hus

Speakers

Dietrich Schüller

consultant, Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Dietrich Schüller, retired director of and now consultant to the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv, has been with IASA since 1972. Starting out as cultural anthropologist – his PhD is in African History – he became increasingly involved in technical matters related to audiovisual archiving... Read More →

Tuesday October 2, 2018 16:00 - 16:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

16:30 GMT

Challenges of appreciating and preserving sound and audiovisual resources at a university centre: a case of Arewa House Nigeria

The paper seeks to present the pathetic perception about the existence of valuable sound and audiovisual archival resources in many research institutions in select West African countries such as Nigeria. The research identifies that preservation and conservation of archival sources is unwittingly biased against unorthodox materials due to low competence to deal with systemic ways these rare kinds of materials are managed. Until collection and retention policies of most African archives are diversified from the customary ways, communities and nations will continue to lose their Archival wealth without knowing. A case of recent obliteration of valuable past BBC TV and radio records due to lack of understanding of these categories of materials calls for deep advocacy by professional networks about the fundamental nature of sound and audio-visual archives. The paper describes the strategies being developed by the famous Arewa House, Centre for Historical Documentation and Research of the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria in Kaduna, Nigeria to develop a programme for the training of archivists to appreciate character of sound and audio visual materials, methods of preservation and conservation as well as creating accessibility to public users as valuable source of information about the past.

Chair

Tommy Sjoberg

Archivist, Folkmusikens hus

Speakers

Abubakar Sule

Arewa House, Centre for Historical Documentation and Research, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria - Nigeria

Tuesday October 2, 2018 16:30 - 17:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

16:30 GMT

New audiovisual legal deposit law in West Africa: innovations and challenges in the digital age

The 2003 UNESCO convention for "safeguarding intangible cultural heritage" combined with the celebrations of ‘’World Day for audiovisual heritage" are raising general awareness of the need to preserve and safeguard important sounds recordings and moving images, in Africa, for the next generations, as well as to meet the cultural identity challenge in a globalized world. Based on many surveys conducted in its eight member countries, from 2004 to 2014, the West African Economic and monetary Union (WAEMU) issued a common legal audiovisual deposit to bridge the legislative gap. This paper shows how audiovisual materials deterioration and loss are due to weak legislative framework. It also explores and examines the new legal infrastructure (unique in all the world), with an emphasis on its innovations and limits in the digital age. It discusses also the challenges of implementing that common regulation in the eight member states.

Chair

Richard Ranft

IASA Board / IAML webmaster

Richard Ranft serves on the Executive Board of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) and is webmaster for the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML). Until 2020 he was Head of Sound & Vision at the British... Read More →

Speakers

Oké Félicien Hounwanou

Tuesday October 2, 2018 16:30 - 17:00 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

09:00 GMT

The Great Migration: year one, lessons learned in public digitization

For the last year, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) has pioneered a public digitization program known as the Great Migration Home Movie Project. Three days a week, we welcome a member of the public and their family into our conservation lab to have their home movies and audio recordings digitized with a level of care that would typically require hundreds of dollars at no cost. At the end of each appointment, the original media are returned to the family along with digital copies of their home movies on a USB thumb drive. Additionally, the family may opt-in to participation in our growing, publicly accessible collection of African American home movies. The project has been well received by the public, but it has not come without certain challenges. These challenges come in many forms and touch on different aspects of media conservation, institutional bureaucracy, advocacy, customer service, emotional labor, and digital literacy. Along with showcasing some of the project’s successes, this paper will place an emphasis on the lessons NMAAHC has learned over time and how we have approached the challenges that have arisen. It is our hope that after hearing our presentation other institutions will be empowered to start their own public digitization programs.

Chair

Lindsay Mattock

Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of Iowa

Lindsay Mattock is an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science. Her work focuses on the archival practices of non-institutional archival spaces, such as media collectives and community archives. Her ongoing digital project, Mapping the... Read More →

Speakers

AJ Lawrence

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

AJ Lawrence is the Media Archivist for the Robert F. Smith Digitization Fund at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. He has been with the museum since 2017 and previously worked with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting... Read More →

Wednesday October 3, 2018 09:00 - 09:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

09:00 GMT

Unlocking shared histories: Mau Mau and the connection of communities

This paper will detail a case study on how collaboration and cooperation in audiovisual archival research and use can better connect users, materials, and communities for improved understanding of shared histories. Taking the exploration of Mau Mau heritage as its case in point, it will provide insights into how a small group of researchers in Kenya and the UK approached and collated widely scattered audiovisual material depicting Kenya’s successful fight for independence and freedom from British colonial rule. Through the lens of this case study, we will share:

Details from our research and mapping of archival material in UK and Kenya, including obstacles to access and user engagement
Subsequent plans and strategies to better connect users with materials in UK and Kenya (including two exhibitions and a museum)
Strategies, benefits, and challenges of collaborating across borders
Techniques for gathering and archiving new audiovisual records
Benefits and outcomes of collaboration with key stakeholders (KHRC, broadcasting houses, Mau Mau War Veterans’ Association, FOCAL International archive members, Getty Images / AP Archive etc., and the Imperial War Museum)
Conclusions on how to better utilize dispersed audiovisual archives for public education across borders and improved user engagement across communities

Chair

Rainer Lotz

Speakers

Susan Kibaara

Museum of British Colonialism and Nairobi City County

Mary Njoroge

Kenya National Archives

Olivia Windham Stewart

Museum of British Colonialism

Wednesday October 3, 2018 09:00 - 09:30 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

10:00 GMT

Artists find creativity in the Audio Archives

The cultural heritage that comes from our archives is communicated through the use of preserved materials. However, history can only be told from the materials that are determined worthy of saving. Preservation decisions are, therefore, drawn from an assessed secondary value, which may not be obvious or clear. In the case of sound and audiovisual archives, secondary use can be fraught with obstacles, both physical and statutory. But audiovisual materials can offer, not only the ability to evince history, but the ability to tell new stories.

This paper describes various ways that artists use recorded materials to create new works and the various ways those new works connect with scholars, students, and the public. Specifically, the author will look at three uses of materials from the Drexel Audio Archives by visual artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, British musician and composer Bitty McClean, and Wilco guitarist Nels Cline. While the use of audio materials benefited these three artists, the use also benefits the Archives by guiding preservation decisions and providing visible exploits that demonstrate the Archive's value.

Chair

Rainer Lotz

Speakers

Toby Seay

PhD, Music Production Studies | Professor, Music Production | Director, Drexel Audio Archives, Drexel University

Wednesday October 3, 2018 10:00 - 10:30 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

10:00 GMT

Towards a shared standard terminology in the description of audio phenomena in sound archives of the global digital era

In the form of general comments or time-markers, the description of audio flaws and peculiarities of a sound document is part of the audio archiving practice as it formulates the link between the history of the carrier and the nature of the recorded sound, at the time of digitization. For the end user of today and tomorrow, in a context of worldwide globalization and sharing, the accessibility of audio collections cannot do without a good understandability of the idioms used in this description. Yet, we observe that the terminologies used are not the same between two countries, two institutions, two digital collections, two digitization operators. With 13 years of experience in digitizing audio carriers for the largest European institutions, Gecko has acquired a rare and valuable knowledge of these issues. In this paper, a project manager from Gecko will present a practical survey on the homogenization of the specific descriptive audio technical words, based on past and on-going digitization projects. Concrete solutions will be proposed, that avoid both inaccurate or erroneous idioms and prevent the coexistence of many different words for one audio phenomenon. The presentation also aims at opening a discussion on the topic of one-to-one idiom matches between languages, with the future in mind.

Chair

Lindsay Mattock

Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of Iowa

Lindsay Mattock is an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science. Her work focuses on the archival practices of non-institutional archival spaces, such as media collectives and community archives. Her ongoing digital project, Mapping the... Read More →

Speakers

Emiliano Flores

Project Manager, Gecko

Born in 1975 in Clamart, France, Emiliano Flores graduated in sound engineering in 2000 at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière (Paris region). From 2000 to 2009, Mr Flores worked as recording, mixing and mastering engineer for independent music labels. In 2009, Mr. Flores... Read More →

Wednesday October 3, 2018 10:00 - 10:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

11:00 GMT

Accessibility and meta-archiving across cultures: projecting a new database for Berlin sound archives

Two sound archives are going to move into the Humboldt Forum in Berlin in 2019: The Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv (Ethnologisches Museum – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) and the Lautarchiv (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). Both archives have their own databases but as they want to cooperate intensively, it is being considered if data from both archives could be brought together. In addition, enabling international and intercultural cooperations is a particular concern of the Humboldt Forum. Thus, on the one hand, data should be made accessible—particularly with regard to online access; on the other hand, questions around the legal situation are still unanswered. Another challenge lies in the configuration of a meta-archive: We are looking for a database layout which will allow us to collect ideas, details, and references that might be important, but are not yet verified. Moreover, we want to provide information about the different kinds of usage: How often have researchers, artists, journalists, students, made use of a certain recording? How has it been used, and what was the person who used it interested in? This information may be interesting for future research as well. Solutions for these challenges should meet the respective requirements of both archives, which contain different kinds of recordings, and they are up for debate. This paper approaches the aforementioned problems and engages in discussing potential solutions.

Chair

Gila Flam

Director, National Sound Archives, Israel

Etnomusicologist. The Director of the Sound Archives of the National Library of Israel for over 25 years. Expanded the collection and digitized the historical collection between 2007-2013. Interested in ethnographic recordings and provision of access internationally.

Speakers

Frauke Fitzner

Humboldt Forum

Frauke Fitzner is working in musicology and German literature. She is a doctoral candidate at Tuebingen University and a research associate at the Humboldt Forum. Her research focuses on the history of listening and the history of German musicology.

Wednesday October 3, 2018 11:00 - 11:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

11:00 GMT

Making sense of silence: online archives and Afrikaans music heritage

While doing research for a book on the history of recorded Afrikaans music, the author undertook extensive searches of online discographic archives that yielded invaluable information on the earliest Afrikaans and Africana recordings. This information helped to establish the identity of the first recording artist in the Afrikaans language (dating to 1906 and previously omitted from all literature on the subject), as well as the first recordings of the national anthems of the two Boer republics (during the Anglo-Boer war in January 1900, by Dutch singers in Europe). However, none of the online archives had any actual sound clips of these recordings. This 'silence' brings with it its own challenges in terms of making sense of the information and disseminating this new knowledge to a wider audience. This paper seeks to interrogate the limitations of online archives, but also its value in widening perceptions on music heritage.

Chair

Terrence Darko Danso

Ghana Broadcasting Corporation

Terrence Darko Danso is a Senior Audio-visual Librarian (Television) for Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. As an audio-visual digitiser, he works hand-in-hand with transmission and his unit serves as the backbone for Television, preserves the Nation’s Heritage and makes sure it stay... Read More →

Speakers

Schalk Van der Merwe

Postdoctoral Fellow, Stellenbosch University

Dr Schalk van der Merwe is an author, lecturer and professional musician that divides his timebetween the classroom, the stage and the studio. He lectured in history at Stellenbosch Universityfrom 2005 to 2017, and as social historian has specialised in popular music. His embeddedexperience... Read More →

Wednesday October 3, 2018 11:00 - 11:30 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

11:30 GMT

Shaping the future of audiovisual archiving

Managers of Audiovisual archives worldwide face a bewildering variety of challenges now and in the future. What should be their key policies and strategic priorities over the next few years? “Towards a New Audiovisual Think Tank”*, a White Paper released in January 2018 by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, with input from a new Think Tank of experts in the Audiovisual field, focusses on ten recommendations for the next ten years, based upon strategic priorities around which action, research and development and resources could be organised. Each recommendation is accompanied by a timeline of the first actions to take. These are being explored in depth by a series of working groups who are working in consultation with the wider archival and cultural community, with the aim to produce handbooks, strategy papers and other publications to help articulate and shape the most important activities for audiovisual archiving.
*Peter B. Kaufman, Towards a New Audiovisual Think Tank for Audiovisual Archivists and Cultural Heritage Professionals (Hilversum, NL: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, 2018).

Chair

Gila Flam

Director, National Sound Archives, Israel

Etnomusicologist. The Director of the Sound Archives of the National Library of Israel for over 25 years. Expanded the collection and digitized the historical collection between 2007-2013. Interested in ethnographic recordings and provision of access internationally.

Speakers

Johan Oomen

Manager Research & Heritage Services, Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision

Johan Oomen is Head of Research and Heritage Services at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and a researcher at the User-Centric Data Science group of the VU University Amsterdam. Throughout his practice, Oomen works on initiatives that focus on providing access to digital... Read More →

Richard Ranft

IASA Board / IAML webmaster

Richard Ranft serves on the Executive Board of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) and is webmaster for the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML). Until 2020 he was Head of Sound & Vision at the British... Read More →

Wednesday October 3, 2018 11:30 - 12:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

11:30 GMT

Steps toward digital archiving at Radio Vénégré in the Central Plateau Region of Burkina Faso

Founded in 1998, Radio Vénégré (located in the town of Ziniaré, northeast of Ouagadougou) set itself the goal of informing the local population about such topics as agriculture, livestock farming, ecology, education, health, women’s life, local politics, and news. The radio programmes are broadcast in the Moré, French, and Fulfulde languages. Some shows are pre-produced while others are broadcast live and involve direct interaction with listeners, in particular with members of the Radio Vénégré Listeners Club.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2018, the radio station is currently digitizing some of its earliest programmes, many of which had been saved on audio cassettes. A consultancy organized by the Deutsche Welle has been involved in helping Radio Vénégré develop basic low cost archiving procedures. Training sessions have dealt with the topics of migration to digital formats, safe storage, and back-up routines, as well as metadata schemes and access scenarios.

Standards have also been developed for the archiving and collection management of the digital-born material that Radio Vénégré has been producing since 2010. As part of its anniversary celebrations, the broadcaster is working towards creating an online collection of some of the audio documents produced over the course of the past twenty years. This collection will afford interested listeners in Burkina Faso and worldwide time-independent access to a selection of Radio Vénégre’s most significant radio productions.

Chair

Terrence Darko Danso

Ghana Broadcasting Corporation

Terrence Darko Danso is a Senior Audio-visual Librarian (Television) for Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. As an audio-visual digitiser, he works hand-in-hand with transmission and his unit serves as the backbone for Television, preserves the Nation’s Heritage and makes sure it stay... Read More →

Speakers

Mary Ellen Kitchens

Head of Content Management, Bavarian Broadcasting

Jean-Baptiste Sawadogo

Director, Radio Vénégré

Wednesday October 3, 2018 11:30 - 12:00 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

12:00 GMT

Data driven documentation strategy: tracing archival networks

Documentation strategy is a collaborative appraisal methodology designed to expand archival holdings through identifying gaps in the documentary record. Documentation strategies acknowledge the inability of a single archives to document the complex relationships between records creators and the breath of documentation associated with any one subject or locality. This paper will frame the data-driven Mapping the Independent Media Community (MIMC) project as documentation strategy, exploring the potential to expose the archival networks preserving the distributed collections of the Media Arts Center Movement and Independent Film and Video in the United States and abroad.

MIMC seeks to historicize the Media Arts Center Movement through an analysis of the social networks that emerged between moving image makers and the institutions that supported the production, distribution, exhibition, preservation, and study of their works. The MIMC database aggregates data from primary source materials, but also draws linked data, including authority records and EAD/EAC encoded archival data. Uniting disparate pieces of archival collections and placing them into historical context, the project seeks not to collect, but to understand how archives were collected, identifying gaps in the archival record, and acknowledge both the traditional archival institutions and non-archival organizations that serve as the de facto repositories for these collections. This paper will explore MIMC as a work of digital scholarship and appraisal tool for archivists, suggesting ways in which the affordances of the semantic web can be exploited to undertake documentation strategies and unite time-based media collections held within traditional and non-traditional archival spaces.

Chair

Gila Flam

Director, National Sound Archives, Israel

Etnomusicologist. The Director of the Sound Archives of the National Library of Israel for over 25 years. Expanded the collection and digitized the historical collection between 2007-2013. Interested in ethnographic recordings and provision of access internationally.

Speakers

Lindsay Mattock

Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of Iowa

Lindsay Mattock is an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science. Her work focuses on the archival practices of non-institutional archival spaces, such as media collectives and community archives. Her ongoing digital project, Mapping the... Read More →

Wednesday October 3, 2018 12:00 - 12:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

12:00 GMT

The archives as a public medium: reimagining description, access, and audiences for NPR's All Things Considered, 1971–1983

In the United States, National Public Radio’s (NPR) Research, Archives & Data Strategy (RAD) team was recently awarded grant funding from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to preserve and make accessible All Things Considered open reel recordings from 1971–1983. Now that RAD has digitized and secured this audio for future use, the project’s focus has shifted to making the collection more accessible and discoverable. Through this paper, I will explore how RAD is reimagining workflows and collaborations for enriching metadata, description, and points of access in order to reach new user groups, including historians and researchers.

Since 1976, NPR has entered into partnerships with cultural heritage institutions to open its archives to the public; today, the University of Maryland at College Park administers public access for the majority of the NPR collection. However, RAD’s policies and priorities for metadata, description, and access to its archives have historically focused on the newsroom as the primary user. NPR also faces a legal barrier to publishing the content online because NPR does not hold the copyright to various elements of program episodes, for example, musical recordings or third-party content produced by freelancers. All Things Considered is public radio’s first national program and NPR’s oldest and longest-running show. RAD recognizes this collection as a valuable historic resource and looks forward to overcoming these barriers to reach wider and more diverse user communities.

Chair

Terrence Darko Danso

Ghana Broadcasting Corporation

Terrence Darko Danso is a Senior Audio-visual Librarian (Television) for Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. As an audio-visual digitiser, he works hand-in-hand with transmission and his unit serves as the backbone for Television, preserves the Nation’s Heritage and makes sure it stay... Read More →

Speakers

Nicolette Khan

Archivist, National Public Radio

Nicolette Khan is an audio archivist with NPR’s Research, Archives & Data Strategy (RAD) team. She is currently working on a National Endowment for the Humanities funded project to digitize, preserve, and increase public access to the early years of NPR’s All Things Considered... Read More →

Wednesday October 3, 2018 12:00 - 12:30 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

09:00 GMT

Innovation to enable accessibility to the African National Congress Archives

Since 2011, Africa Media Online has been involved in the digitisation of the African National Congress Archives at the University of Fort Hare in Alice, Eastern Cape, South Africa. While the archive is largely paper-based, there is a significant audiovisual component. The longevity and size of the project has enabled Africa Media Online to invest in technologies to capture material at the internationally accepted standards and also to innovate in the area of preservation of, and access to, the digital files. This paper will give insight into the innovations leveraged by Africa Media Online including digital preservation methodologies, the incorporation of an open source content management system (CMS), and the utilization of technologies developed as part of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). Africa Media Online has also developed an innovative platform for the outsourced capture of metadata for this and other digitisation projects in Africa that utilizes open standards and a thesaurus that we have been developing called the African Archival Thesaurus. Part of this initiative has been to build a community of volunteers around the platform called Metadata for Africa that we are hoping will enable access to underfunded and endangered African heritage resources.

Chair

Janet Topp Fargion

Lead Curator, World and Traditional Music, British Library

Janet Topp Fargion is an ethnomusicologist with research interests in South Africa and the Swahili Coast. She graduated with a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1992. She joined the British Library in 1994 as Lead Curator of World and Traditional Music where she... Read More →

Speakers

David Larsen

Managing Director, Africa Media Online

David Larsen is Managing Director of Africa Media Online (AMO). Once a journalist and photographer David founded AMO in 2000 with the vision of enabling Africans to tell Africa’s story. AMO enables Africans to tell Africa's story by creating a digital trade route for African media... Read More →

Thursday October 4, 2018 09:00 - 09:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

09:30 GMT

Recorded sound in Czech Lands

This presentation introduce new publication Recorded Sound in Czech Lands, the first comprehensive contribution to mapping the history of the sound industry in the Czech lands or the Czechoslovak Republic.
Provides data excerpted from the press of the period, publications and corporate catalogues, knowledge gained by examining physically-found gramophone records and other materials.
The collected materials relate to all of the record companies that imported gramophone records to Bohemia, Moravia, and to the Czechoslovak Republic after 1918. Alternatively, they also include records recorded in this area with the participation of Czech, Moravian and Slovak soloists and orchestras.
The gramophone record distributors of the relevant brands, size and type of the recorded repertoire, as well as a list of prominent artists who recorded for the relevant company are specified for each record label represented here. With a few exceptions, information was not systematically provided about recordings originating after 1946, when the recording industry in Czechoslovakia was nationalized and the national Gramofonové závody enterprise was established

Chair

Janet Topp Fargion

Lead Curator, World and Traditional Music, British Library

Janet Topp Fargion is an ethnomusicologist with research interests in South Africa and the Swahili Coast. She graduated with a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1992. She joined the British Library in 1994 as Lead Curator of World and Traditional Music where she... Read More →

Speakers

Filip Šír

Sound Documents Manager, National Museum, Prague

Filip Šír, DiS. is the coordinator for digitization of audio documents in the Digitization and New Media Department of the National Museum. Since 2012, he has been focusing on a comprehensive solution for the issue of audio documents, from the principles of sound document care to... Read More →

Thursday October 4, 2018 09:30 - 10:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

10:00 GMT

I just found my grandma on your webpage! Accessibility and collection of oral history interviews at the Österreichische Mediathek

The Österreichische Mediathek is Austria's archive for the collection of Austria's audiovisual cultural heritage. Among the more than 2 million recordings we currently take care of, oral history interviews are playing an increasingly important role. Within the last 15 years, we built one of the largest oral history collections in Austria, containing interviews from different sources on various analogue and digital carriers.

Apart from the different thematic priorities that range from testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust to reflections of every day experiences of migrants at the beginning of the 21st century, the ways in which we are able to provide access to these documents can vary strongly. In addition to legal issues, in recent years there have been increasingly ethical questions regarding the online publication of this sensitive content.

How can we respond to an increasing awareness of privacy concerns? What are the main obstacles for permanent online access? What happens to interview collections after the end of project funding? Building on our problems, challenges and experiences from different collection projects and the participation in aggregation projects such as Europeana Sounds, I would like to address some of the challenges related to the long-term online availability of our oral history collections.

Chair

Janet Topp Fargion

Lead Curator, World and Traditional Music, British Library

Janet Topp Fargion is an ethnomusicologist with research interests in South Africa and the Swahili Coast. She graduated with a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1992. She joined the British Library in 1994 as Lead Curator of World and Traditional Music where she... Read More →

Speakers

Johannes Kapeller

Media Archivist, Österreichische Mediathek

Johannes Kapeller is media archivist at the Österreichische Mediathek since 2003. He studied Cultural Anthropology and Communication science at the University of Vienna. His main work areas are Public Relations, Project Management, Visitor Care and Cooperations. Since 2016 he is... Read More →

Thursday October 4, 2018 10:00 - 10:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

10:00 GMT

The Private Papers of Nana J.K. Mbimadong, 1922-2013

Nana Obimpe, known in private life as Joseph Kwesi Yumpo Mbimadong (1922-2013) was an educationist, politician, academic, advocate and traditional ruler. This paper seeks to present the life story of Nana Obimpe and how local, national and global politics made him establish his own archives. Through his collections we are able to understand local processes and practises of chieftaincy, resistance and economic life.

Chair

Aaron Bittel

Director of World Music Archives and Music Librarian, Wesleyan University

Aaron M. Bittel is Director of the World Music Archives and Music Librarian at Wesleyan University. He previously served as Archivist-Librarian and Head of Digital Projects for the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, one of the largest and oldest ethnographic audiovisual archives in North... Read More →

Speakers

Dr. Samuel Aniegye Ntewusu

Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana

Thursday October 4, 2018 10:00 - 10:30 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

11:00 GMT

Gathering voices: Community based preservation of Oregon's Tribal Sounds

Chair

Toby Seay

PhD, Music Production Studies | Professor, Music Production | Director, Drexel Audio Archives, Drexel University

Speakers

Nathan Georgitis

University of Oregon Libraries

Thursday October 4, 2018 11:00 - 11:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

11:30 GMT

Thinking sonically in public radio: uncovering affect in the acoustic archive

In this piece, I discuss the need for a sonic turn in public radio studies to expand our modes of inquiry and bring the field into the 21st century. First, I provide a brief overview of the theoretical benefits of a sonic approach to public radio scholarship. Next, I outline research on radio that exemplifies such an approach. Once the case for sonic thinking is established, I address the practical consideration of acoustic archive accessibility. I argue that scholars studying public radio are in a unique position to work with archivists to make this archive accessible and thereby facilitate a sonic turn through collaboration.

Chair

Jennifer Vaughn

Editor, IASA

Speakers

Laura Garbes

Brown University

Laura Garbes is a doctoral student in sociology at Brown University interested in the intersection of race, organizations & cultural production. She has spent the past summer working with National Public Radio on a project uncovering a set of 100 programs from the NPR archive that... Read More →

Thursday October 4, 2018 11:30 - 12:00 GMT
Room 2: Prof Ernest Aryeetey Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

11:30 GMT

Using digital media in culture and biodiversity heritage conservation in Ghana

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines heritage as "our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations." UNESCO, also, views cultural and natural heritage as both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration. Access and control over heritage resources play very important roles in shaping social and power relations at the community, national, and international levels. Consequently, it can be said that access to heritage assets and resources, including oral traditions, archaeological sites, historical landscapes, nature, and wildlife, is both a matter of human rights and social justice. To this end, we deem it important that people of all ages, genders, and economic status are given fair and equitable access to the heritage resources of Ghana. This is particularly true of areas where access to specific heritage assets and resources tended to influence peoples access to ancestral lands, political power, and religious rites. In this panel we will discuss ongoing attempts at using digital media and technology to record, analyze, archive, and disseminate audiovisual culture and natural heritage, using photography, GIS, and UAVs for the facilitation of easy access to cultural and biodiversity heritage assets in Ghana.

Chair

Toby Seay

PhD, Music Production Studies | Professor, Music Production | Director, Drexel Audio Archives, Drexel University

Speakers

William Narteh Gblerkpor

University of Ghana, Legon

William Narteh Gblerkpor is a lecturer in Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, and Master of Philosophy degree in Archaeology from the University of Ghana... Read More →

Thursday October 4, 2018 11:30 - 12:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

12:00 GMT

Evolution of data management for new uses of INA's collections: construction of a data lake

The French National Audiovisual Institute was responsible since 1974 for the preservation of the audiovisual heritage produced by national broadcasts. The massive digitization of these collections in the 1990s, the digital capture of 162 channels since 2001, the opening of a "general public" website in 2006, are some of the steps taken by the Institute to take into account the digital technologies to benefit the audiovisual preservation. However, because of a historically "fragmented" IT architecture, the Institute has been suffering these last years from an under-utilization of its millions metadata collected in support of audiovisual collections, in particular in the frame of the legal deposit of radio and television. This is why since 2014 the Institute has been remodeling its documentary IT, in close coordination with the construction of a "data lake", which will allow merging the metadata from all enterprise tools (documentary, legal, commercial). The adoption of a linked data policy tends to develop new ways of using metadata, guaranteeing their quality, whether they come from external sources or from internal activities of documentary description. The presentation will describe this multiyear project, which aims to harmonize metadata as well as to promote new uses of these contents: online editorialisation, new offers to Ina’s clients for footage or complete programs, exploration and analysis of Ina’s collections by researchers and students, data mining. The construction of the data lake will help to develop more relevant and accurate offers to Ina’s partners in the respect of intellectual property and legal frame.

Chair

Johan Oomen

Manager Research & Heritage Services, Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision

Johan Oomen is Head of Research and Heritage Services at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and a researcher at the User-Centric Data Science group of the VU University Amsterdam. Throughout his practice, Oomen works on initiatives that focus on providing access to digital... Read More →

Speakers

Eleonore Alquier

INA

Eleonore Alquier is project and development manager in the Collections division of Ina. She’s in charge of the refoundation of the collections management IT system and of the collections development strategy, coordinating transversal projects connected to audiovisual description... Read More →

Anne Couteux

Project Manager, INA

Thursday October 4, 2018 12:00 - 12:30 GMT
Room 1: Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

12:00 GMT

Music archival policies and barriers in Zimbabwe in the age of global information exchange

The paper explores music archival policies and barriers in Zimbabwe in the age of global information exchange. I unveil how the high demand for open and equal access to musical information is being handled in Zimbabwe with the emergence of professional music archivists. I discuss music educators, consumers, and musicians’ experiences in a contemporary context. Using ethnographic methods of informal conversational interviews and participant observation, I investigate the nexus between music consumers and music materials in the Zimbabwean community. The analysis draws on Bourdieu’s (1977) theoretical perspectives as a lens to view the status quo in music resource accessibility in the country. Results show a yawning need to embrace practical, legal, and technical issues to enhance access to music archival materials in Zimbabwe against a harsh economic environment. General institutional library archives, music recording studios, efforts by individuals with a passion for music archiving, and oral transmission are the main avenues where music archiving has survived in Zimbabwe. Securing the country’s audiovisual material heritage cannot be left to chance in the 21st Century. Zimbabwean musical memory professionals need to mobilise resources and set up professional music archives.

Chair

Toby Seay

PhD, Music Production Studies | Professor, Music Production | Director, Drexel Audio Archives, Drexel University

Speakers

Wonder Maguraushe

Midlands State University

Thursday October 4, 2018 12:00 - 12:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

12:00 GMT

The Audio Archive in a Box project

The Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound (RHA) represents one of the greatest audio collections in the United States and is an incredible resource for music lovers, performers, composers, and researchers. As technology advances, our users’ expectations for how to access and interact with our collections change; for example, it is increasingly common for users to carry their personal music libraries with them, via cell phones and computers or via the cloud. In 2017, staff members in RHA were awarded a grant from the New York Public Library (NYPL) to create a portable, secure audiovisual streaming platform to increase outreach and accessibility to the collections. With a Raspberry Pi miniature computer and open source software, we successfully introduced an additional, user-friendly access point for patrons that maintains NYPL’s standard for secure streaming. This virtual “reading room” facilitates easy access to our collection materials for patrons at branch locations across New York City. The Raspberry Pi and supporting open-source software show promise as jumping-off points not only for RHA’s outreach efforts but also for other libraries and research centers who may be inspired to further adapt this model for new and unanticipated purposes.

Chair

Jennifer Vaughn

Editor, IASA

Thursday October 4, 2018 12:00 - 12:30 GMT
Room 2: Prof Ernest Aryeetey Seminar Room Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

13:30 GMT

[CANCELED] Conservation, digitization, and sound diffusion of the Henrietta Yurchenco Audio Library of the CDI

The Henrietta Yurchenco sound library of the CDI protects the sound heritage of the indigenous peoples of Mexico through hundreds of mechanisms that allow the preservation of the historical and diverse memory of indigenous peoples. These mechanisms have made it easier for us to maintain the various media in an optimum state of conservation that allows us to digitize and store information. Currently, work is being done to develop a platform that allows the dissemination of the collection.

Chair

Peter Laurence

Librarian for Recorded Sound & Media, Harvard University

Speakers

Octavio Murillo

Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas

Aurora Valderrama

Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas

Aurora Valderrama Maldonado studied Ethnomusicology at the School of Music of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He studied with private tutors in various courses of traditional Mexican music. He has done fieldwork in indigenous communities, in various regions of Mexico... Read More →

Thursday October 4, 2018 13:30 - 14:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:00 GMT

Heritamus: curatorship for all

"The Archive," that collection of organized data, suffers from a tragic scientific plot. "The Archived," "The Recorded," "The Preserved," "The [UNESCO] Enlisted" are the multiple faces of "The Valued." The officers of this new (too powerful) ideology, "The Archivists," are, in fact, gatekeepers, who have a critical impact on future representation. The act of "collecting," "registering," "archiving," "documenting," "studying"; and the act of writing, of speaking, of telling the story, of representing, and of displaying has been the privilege of a cast of officers, manipulating their technical expertise and/or theoretical tools. This fact has been assumed (and "published," another instance of power) by the social sciences since mid-80s: the celebrated "poetics" and "politics" of social sciences. Still, this tragic machine of social construction of scientific facts and heritage has kept far too many people away from those power tools: stakeholders, entire communities, and musical practitioners.

With Heritamus, a three-year European project that gathered a transnational consortium, we tried to overcome this problem by bringing democracy into the "archive," connecting users with tangible (historical sound recordings) and intangible materials (practitioners knowledge), contributing to democratic access, not only to information, but specially to the production of the information itself.

This paper will introduce the theoretical framework of the project, the archival tool designed, and the digital sound archive of Museu do Fado, the archive that will first experiment the Heritamus tool for the democratic archive, giving the right to curate sounds and knowledge to all, in particular to the ones who make them.

Chair

Peter Laurence

Librarian for Recorded Sound & Media, Harvard University

Speakers

Pedro Félix

integrated researcher, Instituto de Etnomusicologia / FCSH-UNL

Pedro Félix is a researcher at INET-MD since 1997, at Instituto de História Contemporânea since 2013, and collaborates with the Fado Museum since 2005. He has developed fieldwork on musical groups in Portugal, technology, phonographic publishing industry, sound heritage. This work... Read More →

Thursday October 4, 2018 14:00 - 14:30 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper

14:30 GMT

Research and development of a media archive knowledge graph based on ontological concepts

Based on a digital media archive management platform, this paper studies the ontology model of media data, reviews the adaptive technical methods and tools according to the required entity relations, establishes a media Knowledge Graph, and designs a prototype system based on the Knowledge Graph Retrieve to automate the intelligent retrieval of associated media assets. Based on the annotation data provided by the existing digital media files, this article manages the data, creates the media ontology, and defines the corresponding ontology concepts and relation sets. It then details efforts to analyze the data format of the existing digital media archives management platform, to realize the text data extraction technology, and to extract the entity and entity relations from it to establish the Knowledge Graph. Compared with traditional keyword-based full-text search, the retrieval method based on the Knowledge Graph can effectively improve the quality of search and resource arrangement, application, and efficiency. Especially in the fields of digital archives and cultural media, resource management and search results can be knowledge-based and can provide great practical value.

Chair

Peter Laurence

Librarian for Recorded Sound & Media, Harvard University

Speakers

Tang Zhaoqi

Shanghai Audio-Visual Archives, Shanghai Media Group

Zhaoqi Tang has been engaged in the management of television audiovisual archives for many years. He was involved in the design and led the development of the SMG media asset management system. In recent years, his main work focused on television program copyright information management... Read More →

Thursday October 4, 2018 14:30 - 15:00 GMT
Main Hall / Auditorium Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon

Presentation, Paper