The CEO of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Jan Müller, today outlined the strategy for Australia’s national media archive into the future.
“History can only survive from the materials we preserve,” said Müller in a presentation delivered at AFTRS in Sydney.
Key priorities for the archive’s collection in the new strategic plan are to continue to have a national focus and the manage the transition from analog to digital.
“The National Film and Sound Archive has to be smart, connected and open, to have maximum impact and relevance in Australian society,” he said.
The most important functions of the archive are to collect, preserve and share the national media collection, which began with radio, then television, and now has to capture important gaming and online media content.
“We are dealing with a big database. We need to make sure it is usable and sustainable for the future…
“It is different from the old way of archiving, by putting a film or tape on a shelf and preserving it there for a long time. It’s now more complicated… It raises issues of the sustainability of an archive. We can’t do it alone we need to work with others.
Some of the complication of preserving new media includes selecting and storing games, interactive documentaries and virtual reality. “A virtual reality film recently won an Oscar. This tells us something of what the future of media will be.”
Another of the key priorities for the NFSA between now and 2025 includes the need for a new building, according to Muller, who has been strategising with staff and key stakeholders since he took over at the NFSA last year. He was previously CEO of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.
“It’s urgent now we need to preserve all our assets by digitising them, before the original materials such as tape are gone. Part of this includes the need for a new building.”
He also spoke about how he brought back old machines and retired broadcast staff into the Netherlands’ Institute when digital conversion was undertaken there. “They were such motivated and productive staff, they understood the importance of the work and enjoyed being back at work using the technology they knew so well…”
“For example, DAT existed for only 10-15 years and there were few machines still available to play DATs, so we bought the last 10 machines and brought them to Holland so we could convert those DATs to digital and make them available to people to hear their heritage.”
There are currently 40,000 items per year being collected by the NFSA. “It will never be finished. It will never stop. Digital Archives will always be in transition so we need to be flexible in our strategy,” said Müller.
“We want to be a knowledge centre and enabler…
“Digitising is a race against time to preserve important cultural assets. We need also to provide context and interpret things for the country.”
As part of the NFSA’s strategy to interpret and reach out to Australian’s and show them their media heritage, the Archive has initiated a travelling ‘Virtual NFSA’ display and plans to create blockbuster exhibitions, such as the current Jimmy Barnes exhibition and the upcoming Heath Ledger exhibition.
”We want to make sure people can use our material… We keep memories alive by telling stories with our archive.”
Answering a question specifically about radio from radioinfo, he said: “Radio is a very important part of Australia’s media history. Radio is also part of online and part of the changing future of audio… We want to preserve and share the older content and capture and share the new content as well.”
The full strategic plan lists 5 priorities for the NFSA in the next few years:
PRIORITY 1: DIGITISE THE NATIONAL AUDIOVISUAL COLLECTION
PRIORITY 2: ESTABLISH THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR EXCELLENCE IN AUDIOVISUAL HERITAGE
PRIORITY 3: BUILD OUR NATIONAL PROFILE
PRIORITY 4: COLLECT, PRESERVE AND SHARE MULTIMEDIA AND NEW MEDIA
PRIORITY 5: REDEFINE OUR PHYSICAL PRESENCE
