Session Policy Guidelines on the Production and
Preservation of Digital Audio Objects

Presenter

 Dietrich Schüller
Phonogrammarchiv - Austrian Academy of Sciences


ABSTRACT

Audiovisual archives hold a responsibility for the preservation of cultural heritage covering all spheres of musical, artistic, sacred, scientific and communications activity, reflecting public and private life, and the natural environment, held as published and un-published recorded sound and image. This paper presents a forthcoming document, which sets out IASA policy in the form of guidelines, and is intended to provide guidance to audiovisual archivists on a professional approach to the production and preservation of digital audio objects. This includes the production of digital surrogates from analogue originals for the purposes of preservation, as well as the recording of original material in digital form intended for long-term archival storage. This document concerns itself with sound carriers or formats, but not with piano rolls, MIDI files or other systems, which are player directions rather than encoded audio. The Guidelines are produced by members of the IASA Technical Committee


SPEAKER BIO

Dietrich Schüller is director of the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. A specialist in audiovisual preservation and restoration, he has worked as a consultant to a number of audiovisual archives worldwide. He was Chair of IASA Technical Committee for many years. He is now Vice-President of the Intergovernmental Council for the Information for All Programme, and Chair of the Sub-Committee on Technology for the Memory of the World-Programme of UNESCO, member of the European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA) and of the Audio Engineering Society. He is author of numerous publications on audiovisual preservation, lecturer at several Austrian Universities and visiting professor at the Teachers University of Fuzhou, China. He is also engaged in national and international training seminars on audiovisual archiving, more recently in Mexico, the Caribbean, China, the Philippines, and Singapore.