ADDRESS BY
MR. RAY EDMONDSON
PRESIDENT, THE SOUTH EAST ASIA-PACIFIC AUDIOVISUAL
ARCHIVE ASSOCIATION
AT THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE FOURTH SEAPAVAA
CONFERENCE AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY
"AV ARCHIVING IN THE NEW MILLENIUM: WORKING
TOGETHER TO PRESERVE OUR HERITAGE"
19 APRIL 1999
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA

Honourable Minister Y.B. Dato' Sri Sabbaruddin Chik,

Dato' Habibah Zon,

Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Selamat Sejahtera.

It is good to be here, and on behalf of SEAPAVAA, I would like to thank Dato' Habibah for her welcome. We have a very full week ahead of us and we approach it some zest!

While we are in Kuala Lumpur, we are looking forward to seeing something of Malaysia's capital city. We are also looking forward to the opportunity of visiting the various institutions which collaborate in the preservation of Malaysia's audiovisual heritage. We will have the chance to gain some insight into the film and television history of our host country. All of these are vital elements of the conference week, especially for visitors. Opening such a window on the host country is fundamental to understanding each other, and particularly pertinent to the conference theme.

The theme of our conference is "Audiovisual Archiving in the New Millenium: Working Together to Preserve our Heritage". We are looking ahead to the challenges that face us not only today but tomorrow – and, most importantly, we see them in the context of working together – not separately. Let me reflect briefly on this theme.

The twentieth century has been characterized by the dominance of the audiovisual media, recorded sound, film, radio, television, video – in its various forms. The twenty first century – the first of the new millenium – will see the dominance of digital technology, as images and sound are increasingly created and delivered over the multimedia superhighway, in its many manifestations. We are all adapting to this, and I observe that our host country, Malaysia is among the global leaders in preparing for this new technological era. The internet is already a crucial communication and delivery tool for audiovisual archives; it offers great potential for making collections more accessible; on the other hand, it poses enormous preservation challenges of an entirely new kind.

As we are drawn, ever closer together in a world defined by a complex web of fibre optics we are confronted by our interdepency – our need to work together, to cooperate. This has been part of the rationale and the spirit of SEAPAVAA since it began: discovering how, by working collectingly, we can achieve far more than we could ever accomplish separately. It brings us to share our skills, facilities, ideas and knowledge; it encourages us to gain a familiarity with each other's institutions and to learn with an open mind from different methods and approaches that we have evolved separately. It applies to each of us as individual professionals, just as it applies to all of our institutions – large or small. During this week we are going to analyze some of those cooperative accomplishments: and we are going to look into the future to see how we can grow further in developing shared solutions to the huge tasks which faces us.

We cannot be complacent: we know how large the job is, and how slim are the resources. We know the financial difficulties which presently confront our part of the world. But on the eve of the new millenium we can draw on a fundamental value of our profession: we can take a long view of the future, and build accordingly. I have a conviction that the audiovisual heritage of our region – from Vietnam to New Zealand, from Indonesia to Samoa – will, in the new century, become familiar to the world; and it is we, in our scattered archives, linked, not only by fiber optics,  but by a spirit of common cause, who will achieve this. What seems impossible today will prove possible tomorrow.

We are delighted, indeed a little overwhelmed, to be meeting in this magnificent complex which honours one of the great figures of Malaysian history. I hope we can approach our conference, too, with a sense and perspective of history – both past and future.

Honourable Minister, on behalf of SEAPAVAA, I would like to thank you for officiating at the opening of this conference: we are honoured by your involvement. Through you, I would also like to thank the Government of Malaysia and the National Archives of Malaysia for hosting this conference, for making such excellent arrangements for the week's activities. We are confident that it will be a memorable week for our Association, and for the progress of audiovisual archiving both in Malaysia and across the region.

TERIMA KASIH.