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FIAT/IFTA Case Presentations on Researchers Using the Archives

 

Students from the MA programme Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image participated in the 2014 World Conference of FIAT/IFTA. They share their impressions in a series of blog reports. Aleksas Gilaitis wrote this report.

The case study presentations during one of Friday's final sessions gave a unique vantage point to the broadcast-oriented audience of FIAT/IFTA conference. It revolved around the persprective of weathered scholars who use archive materials for their research.

The session consisted of researchers who work with audiovisual archive material. Entertaining and energetic presenters managed to gather the audience in a close, intimate session that had a cozy and discussion-friendly atmosphere. Jasmijn van Gorp and Christian Gosvig Olesen presented on the fascinating Jean Desmet Collection at the Amsterdam-based EYE Film Institute. An exception at this conference, where analogue film materials – not to mention nitrate – were seldomly discussed. The Desmet collection case brought the audience back to the more than 100 years old history of early cinema.

The unique, UNESCO-acclaimed historical collection is one of the extraordinary ones. Its richness and size open new possibilities to understand early national cinema traditions in a very broad way. The project is not in a very advanced stage yet, and is only predicted to have a booming variety of research topics, but its importance in the audiovisual world is undoubtable. The presenters shared the problems related to the complexity of  the Desmet collection, which in fact consists of four different collections. Its large number of items and the different variations of the titles are some of the aspects that complicate the creation of a singular visual database interface.

Dana Mustata from FIAT/IFTA's Television Studies CommissionPhoto Credit: Oscar Timmers.

Dana Mustata, researcher at the University of Groningen, shone a light on the connections between her academic background and television archives. Her case study was related to Eastern European television archives and their insufficiency in producing context around their content. She clearly described the generally little explored world of Eastern European television archives in simple but problematic why’s and how to’s. She stressed the need for cooperation between national archives and researchers. Dana showed some examples of her own research in the Video Active and EUscreen projects, which sought to some of the problematic issues of language barriers, limited metadata and lack of context. Her case is a perfect example that explained why researchers are one of the major collaborators in developing access to audiovisual archives.

Tinne Tuytelaars from KULeuven showcases the AXES prototype. Photo Credit: Oscar Timmers.

Anneles van Nispen & Saskia Waterman (EYE) and Roeland Ordelman & Eva Baaren (Sound & Vision) then presented their new systems and tools to deal with research needs. The tool creation combined the knowledge of the researchers themselves and of archive staff. Major issues raised in this part of the session were: clearing the exact needs of researchers as a separate group of archive users; and filling the gap of collections experts who could link users to the ever-evolving technical capabilities of the archives. Optimistic and ambitious messages closed the session, accompanied with jokes full of youthful energy, leaving the audience with good hopes for and trust in the future of the archival world.

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