CCAHA mounts conference videos

On October 27, 2009, UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA), premiered its new video series about preservation of audiovisual media. The series began with recordings of the two-day conference, “A Race Against Time: Preserving Our Audiovisual Media,” which was offered for the final time in Atlanta, earlier in October.

The conference covered audiovisual preservation basics, film, audio and video preservation, and contracting for reformatting. Faculty included George Blood (Safe Sound Archives), Alan Lewis (independent preservation consultant), and Sarah Stauderman (Smithsonian Institution Archives).

The videos are available free-of-charge at www.ccaha.org thanks to support from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Institute for Museum and Library Studies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

ARSC conference recordings

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) has mounted audio recordings of presentations delivered at its 2009 Conference held in Washington, D.C. Presentations of particular interest include: “The Fight for Copyright Reform and What It Means For You” by Tim Brooks; “The Outlook for Copyright Reform in 2009 and Beyond,” a panel with Jonathan Band, June Besek, Malcolm Grace, Gigi B. Sohn, and Corey D. Williams; “The State of Audio Preservation in the United States: A National Study and Next Steps,” a panel with Patrick Loughney, Gregory Lukow, and Eugene DeAnna; “Scaling Up: Increasing Audio Preservation Efficiency Through Automation and Parallel Transfers“ by Mike Casey; “From Ingest to Web-Site: Creating a Preservation Master and Automating On-line Access” by Rob Poretti; “Born Digital But Not Equal: A Survey of Digital Audio Formats, from Physical Media to Files” by David Nolan; and “Strategies for Preserving Born Digital Audio” by Chris Lacinak.

The recordings are available free-of-charge in M3U and MP3 formats at www.arsc-audio.org/conference/audio2009/index.html.

Emergency workbook

The Federal Library and Information Center Committee has mounted the second edition of the Disaster Preparedness Workbook for Cultural Institutions Within the Military on the Library of Congress Web site.

The new edition, by independent preservation consultant Beth Patkus, and former director of the U.S. Naval War College Library Robert Schnare, updates the original 1998 publication and incorporates lessons learned from the attacks of 9/11. It is a comprehensive look at all aspects of emergency planning, preparedness, and response that should be useful to cultural organizations outside the military.

The 372-page workbook is available for free download at www.loc.gov/flicc/about/FLICC_WGs/disaster/DisasterPreparednessWorkbook.pdf.

BL and the NPO

The British Library incorporated the National Preservation Office into the British Library Collection Care Department and changed its name to the British Library Preservation Advisory Centre. The new department will share expertise with and provide preservation education opportunities to libraries and archives in the UK.

For more information, contact Caroline Peach, the new head of the Advisory Centre, at E-mail: .

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