INTERNATIONAL NEWS

 

International Meeting on Microform Preservation and Conservation Practices Held in Chiang Mai, Thailand

 

        "The International Meeting on Microform Preservation and Conservation Practices in Southeast Asia" was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand on February 21-24, 2000. The objectives of the meeting were to examine preservation needs and practices in Southeast Asia and evaluate the effectiveness of international cooperative projects. Participants in the meeting consisted of scholars, preservation experts, archivists, librarians, and funding agencies.

        Among the issues discussed in the meeting were technical operations, management, policy questions, and future development. The meeting agreed to expand technical collaboration within a country or a region as well as establish bibliographic control.

        The meeting elected a steering

 

 

committee of country representatives and implementing committee with representatives from several professional sectors. It agreed on an action agenda called the "Chiang Mai Declaration" which resolves to establish the Southeast Asia Consortium for Access and Preservation or SEACAP. Its objectives are to encourage, develop, facilitate, and support collaboration among libraries, archives, and other concerned institutions and individuals, provide access to materials relating to Southeast Asia studies; and enhance preservation activities in the region.

        The SEACAP's short, medium, and long-term action agendas include establishing a SEACAP website and listserve discussion group, beginning emergency rescue of damaged microfilm in the region

 

by assessing the scope of the need for remastering of acetate film and polyester, research on the suitability of storage of microfilm in sealed vacuum pouches, digitizing as a means of inputting the microform, gathering information on filming special materials, plan and hold future similar conferences.

 

15 Asean AV from page 1

 

ASEAN-Australia Cooperation.

        This trainirig program on AV archiving through internet uses the courses developed by the Screensound Australia and the University of New South Wales namely; 1) Audio Visual Management, 2) Preservation and Conservation of Audio Materials, and 3) Advanced Audio Visual and Multimedia Management. The program offers two (2) grants per year per ASEAN member country for a period of three (3) years.

        The next semester course which will start in August 2000, the group/participants will be split evenly between the two subjects (Preservation and Conservation of Audiovisual Materials and Advanced Audiovisual and Multimedia Management). This has been the recommendation of Mr. Ray Edmondson, President of SSA and SEAPAVAA in order to have reasonable-sized groups for proper monitoring of the participants.

        Screening and selection of participants for the next course starts this June 2000. Each ASEAN member-country could submit two (2) nominees coming from AV archives institutions to participate in the next course. For interested parties, please contact your national ASEAN-COCI (Committee on Culture and Information) or the SEAPAVAA Secretariat.

SEAPAVAA conducts training from page 2

 

project will help ensure the long term survival of the region's video and audio tape collections which have been widely used to record oral history, tribal rituals, and other culturally significant visual images, records of sights and sound that capture the distinctive flavor of our varied cultural heritages. At the end of the seminar in Manila, Dietrich Schueller expressed his appreciation of the keen interest shown by the participants and hoped that they would pass on their experiences in order to achieve a world-wide community of experts.

        The second phase of the project will be conducted successively in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the National Archives of Malaysia from June 27 to 29, Singapore at the National Archives of Singapore from July 10-12, and in Ho Chi

 

Minh City, Vietnam from July 17 to 21. Jim Lindner of VidiPax, a magnetic media and information migration full services company in New York, USA, and Ian Gilmour and Viktor Fumic from ScreenSound Australia are the resource persons for this phase.

        SEAPAVAA hopes that the second phase will be as equally successful as the first and will help improve the region's collective capacity to manage magnetic media. As SEAPAVAA President Ray Edmondson said in his message to the participants, "it is our shared objective to improve the management, security and longevity of the tape materials available to us. We may not be able to achieve perfection, but we can maximize the possibilities offered by the facilities and skills that we have."

 

 

Page 3 – AV Archives Bulletin

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January-June 2000