The BA seeks to Archive Arab Television Material
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Alexandria—
The BA held on Tuesday, 19 June 2007, a regional seminar on audiovisual archives entitled "Audiovisual Archives in the Digital Era: A New Deal".
Ambassador Ali Maher, Director of the Peace Studies Institute, stated in the opening speech that the seminar gathers experts to exchange views on preservation of heritage and the use of the new digital systems in archiving audiovisual material. He added that several Arab and European countries participated in this seminar, in addition to specialized international organizations, such as Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), which co-organized the event with the BA. Ambassador Maher mentioned that the archiving project is facing some challenges, as regards to funding, technical issues, duration, and the legal framework concerning intellectual property rights.
Emamanuel Hoog, CEO of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), took the floor and discussed the importance of launching regional initiatives related to digitization and the access to audiovisual archives; digitization and preservation of television archives; archiving news and documentary programs saving human memory, especially that audiovisual material is a requirement of our digital age, which depends basically on digital formats.
Bernard Salome, Special Representative of the BA Director, spoke on the achievements of the BA in digitizing audiovisual material, and stressed the importance of traditional libraries in preserving human heritage throughout ages. He also referred to the idea of digital libraries, which is widely spread in the West, supported by the rapid progress in the techniques of saving, digitizing, accessing, and searching information.
He spoke about the BA, which is "born digital", and is considered one of the biggest scientific and cultural institutions in the world, and not only a traditional library. He praised the cooperation between the BA and the INA, in archiving television audiovisual material in the Arab world. The project will include a huge amount of digital television archival material from Arab televisions.
Daniel Teruggi, INA, spoke on the digital transformation from analogue to digital formats, and how to gain profits from the digital transformation as an important investment process. He also referred to the social role played by the archives within a certain society. He added that possibly, within the coming six years, the process of transformation of digital system into other systems will take place as the so-called "migration of knowledge".
In the second session, chaired by Mrs. Dominique Saintville, INA; Mr. Jean Varra, Preservation and Digitization Program, and Expert in Knowledge Migration Project at the INA, spoke about means of safeguarding archives preserved in analogue format, since archival materials are of a cultural and commercial value especially with the emergence of new television channels.
Varra gave a presentation on the advantages of digital system, and its ability to preserve archived material. He also tackled challenges facing the archiving of audiovisual materials, including the corrosion of old media and containers, and the inefficiency of used techniques, a matter that requires new maintenance and preservation policies.
He also gave detailed explanation on different kinds of mediums, in which television materials are preserved. He also spoke about the acidity of films, and that audiotapes can damage before visual and video tapes, thus, they need to be separated when preserving them, and explained proper preservation and transportation means.
Participants raised questions on the fringe line of the seminar about archiving television material and the problem they face as preservation specialists in preserving rare and old movies as well as other materials.