Kara Van Malssen Instructing International Archivists

If any of you are passing through Lithuania next week make sure to stop and say hi to our own Kara Van Malssen while you’re there. Kara will be in Vilnius as an instructor with the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property’s (ICCROM) SOIMA 2011: Safeguarding Sound and Image Collections. ICCROM is an intergovernmental organization (IGO) dedicated to the conservation of cultural heritage. SOIMA is part of their recent initiative to focus on and provide training in the preservation of audiovisual materials to collection caretakers worldwide. Over the next three weeks, 19 professionals from 15 countries will receive training from a team of audiovisual preservation experts. AVPS is proud of Kara and proud to have a member of our team out there fighting the good fight and sharing knowledge.

Chris Lacinak Published In IASA Journal

AVPS President Chris Lacinak’s article “Embedded metadata in WAVE files: a look inside issues and tools” hit the street (and the information superhighway) today in the newest International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives Journal (No 37, July 2011). A PDF version of the article and journal are available to IASA members for free on the website at http://www.iasa-web.org/book/iasa-journal-no-37-july-2011

The article draws on our work with the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative Audio-Visual Working Group (FADGI) in developing the BWF MetaEdit tool for embedding, editing, and exporting metadata in WAVE files, as well as on a study of embedded metadata support within and across audio recording software applications AVPS spearheaded on behalf of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Technical Committee (ARSC TC). Using these experiences, Chris illuminates the real world importance of embedded metadata for the use and preservation of digital materials and, perhaps more so, the great need for practical tools and guidelines that will help people review and manage that metadata with the same integrity as the associated object. Our thanks to all of the contributing FADGI and ARSC members, without whom the projects could not have been realized.

A big shout out as well for Carl Fleischhauer’s article “Developing an MXF audiovisual preservation file wrapper specification in the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative” appearing in the same IASA Journal, another FADGI project that AVPS is proud to be a part of. The Federal Agencies are doing amazing work to drive the field of digital preservation forward and are becoming an invaluable resource, so check ’em out.