3. Questions for the fortune teller
• Will audio-visual archives exist in 100 years?
• Will archives still hold ‘physical’ collections in 200
years?
• Will there be a need to collect and preserve in our
future world?
• Are ‘physical’ archives coming to an end?
5. What are we really talking about?
• We are talking about fundamental shifts in thinking
• What does this really mean?
• How is cognition changing to build capacity?
• How will organisations stay ahead of the curve?
• What are our priorities for digital preservation?
6. Traditional Transformed
System Future
•Objectivity
•Subjectivity/reflexivity
•Process
•Intelligence
Te les
•Truth
ch
ru
•Questions not answers
no
log
y
•Facts •Stories and interpretation
Acc
•Archivists es
pres s not
erva •Curators
tion
•Control
•Freedom
•Limits
•Limitless
r
ove
ss
•Academy oce
Pr tent •Community/participatory
con
•Parochial management
•Professional leadership
7. Let’s describe what’s going on
• Physical collections are being ‘put on hold’
• All efforts are going to ‘digitising collections’ there is
• Already there is a decrease in analogue format
usage, leading to a decrease in the availability of
analogue stock. What happens when we can’t buy
35mm film stock any more?
• This is our collective future reality
12. The organisational response is BIG
• Project funding is making possible the
establishment of comprehensive digital
preservation
systems including migration programs
• Digital infrastructure is being separated from IT
• Staff skills sets are changing and disappearing
13. New methods of material collection
• Direct feed and off-air digital harvesting and injest of
material including websites, radio and TV
• Emerging digital content forms are going into
collections ready for use, eg ‘mash ups’
• Digital images and marketing media will soon be able
to be downloaded for movies
• ‘Crowd Sourcing’ allows public to improve our
information
15. How users are accessing material
• There is an increasing expectation by users to access
cultural archives via the web and ‘apps’
• The rapid publishing of data will continue to build
• Social media is becoming increasingly sophisticated
• Emerging technologies such as smartphone
applications will get ‘smarter’ and better
16. Users make their own remixes
through Creative Commons
• The move towards Creative Commons – share, remix
and reuse legally
• The rise of ‘mash-ups’
• Users saying “Give it to us and let us do it”
17.
18. Central issue is rights management
• Well researched and precedent-setting rights
management policies are crucial
• Further copyright legislation reform and a growth in
the number of intellectual property lawyers
19. We noticed:
•An increasing expectation by users
to access cultural archives via the
web
•The rapid publishing of data
•Social Media’s role in promoting
cultural institutions
•Emerging technologies such as
smartphone applications,
augmented reality and semantic
web
21. Let’s learn from others what works
• What represents ‘best practice’?
• Who is leading the way?
• What are they doing and how?
• Can we do it alone or do we need partnerships?
• How do we balance preservation and access?
• How do we think in the long not the short term?
• How do we ‘hedge’ our bets?
34. Good story for audio-visual archives
• In the next 100 years, we will still be looking for,
finding and caring for the majority of the works of the
last century
• There is a re-birthing of the film and sound culture of
20th C so it is secure and easily useable - wordwide
35. Bad story for audio-visual archives
• The ‘Archive’ has promoted a major program;
published a commemorative book; pitched a number
of media productions and in so doing failed to attract
any attention from mainstream media for either
promotion or partnering
• Our investment in what was produced cannot be
balanced with projected revenues
• Government is disappointed – after all that funding
not enough has been done
36. Current pressures on a/v archives
• Imbalance in terms of the recognised purpose of the
‘Archive’ between collecting, preserving and making
the material accessible
• Technology makes things go faster but how do we
ensure that our ‘commitment to care’ is not swayed
by our ‘commitment to give’
37. Trends that we should hedge against
• Assumptions about limiting preservation, eg we don’t
need to fully preserve film if we can telecine it
• Lessening and limiting intellectual engagement about
the collection
• Assumption of ‘access’ at all costs
38. The real danger that we face now
• Archival values not being seen to be
aligned but rather in competition
with access
40. Blue skies Stormy weather
+++
Adapted well
Adapted well to
to change and
core values change but core
Adapting to change
Adapting to change
sustained values are gone
+++ Sustaining our core values ---
Long hot Climate change
summer Has not
Core values
still there but --- adapted to
did not adapt change and
well to core values
change gone
41. Where to now
Understand how the Understand the
‘Archive’ operates changing environment
Identify the elements that will
enable the ‘Archive’ to adapt to change
while sustaining core values
42. “So much to do! Digital information is
forever – or the next five years,
whichever comes first….”
A presentation by Susanne Haydon
Film Specialist and Strategist
