Media Archival Studies

This article contributes to television historiography by tracing the entry of television materials into one particular media archive with attention to discourses about the preservation of television (or lack thereof) and factors that influenced the archival process in the 1960s.

The following document provides a statement of principles relevant to each of the major activities undertaken by the different kinds of sound and audiovisual archives within IASA. Individual collectors and owners of private archives may also find the following principles useful as a guide for their ethical responsibilities relating to their holdings. These principles cover both present practice and future developments. References are also given to existing documents that may be helpful to IASA members.

This essay argues that archival paradigms over the past 150 years have gone through four phases: from juridical legacy to cultural memory to societal engagement to community archiving. The archivist has been transformed, accordingly, from passive curator to active appraiser to societal mediator to community facilitator. The focus of archival thinking has moved from evidence to memory to identity and community, as the broader intellectual currents have changed from pre-modern to modern to postmodern to contemporary. Community archiving and digital realities offer possibilities for healing these disruptive and sometimes conflicting discourses within our profession.

The article surveys the evolution of the field over the last two decades, during which much has happened to give it more visible organisational shape, an academic, philosophical and ethical foundation, and a greatly expanded literature base. This has happened against the background of profound technological change as the analog world of 1995 has made way for the digital challenges of today. The author concludes that audiovisual archiving - of which film archiving is a part - is indeed a profession, but is still a work in progress.

This article responds by considering the place of orphan media in the field of audio archiving, focusing specifically on orphan radio. As cultural memory work, radio preservation moves beyond an antiquarian interest in “saving the past” to embrace an agenda aimed at actively diversifying the historical record, enriching our sense of collective audio heritage, and securing cultural resources for building new social identities and imagining other possible futures.

There are certain custodial promises concerning conservation and access that are implicit when an archiving institution makes an acquisition, but fulfilling these to the highest professional and community standards can raise ethical issues that were not obvious when codes of best practice and ethics began to develop. These sources provide models for addressing conflicting concerns, suggesting solutions that may be both satisfactory and productive for the community, the copyright owners, and the archive, resulting in increased and more meaningful access to the kinds of historically and culturally relevant materials we value.

Repositories for recorded sound data produced or received by public or private entities. Existing primarily in the 20th century, they were initially designed using principles, similar to those found in manuscript archives, that have existed since the establishment of a unified administration of archives in Paris in the late 18th century (Archives Nationales, 1789; Archives Départementales, 1796). The 18th-century concern for establishing repositories for records of agencies, recognizing institutional responsibility for the care of documentary heritage, and the responsibility to provide public access, have remained the primary concerns for archives of recorded sound.

This special issue explores the potential for the use of archival recordings as a central part of research to provide a more equitable and enduring outcome for the benefit of cultural heritage communities as well as for ethnomusicological scholarship. As such, we argue for a fairer ethnomusicology, in which access to knowledge-often encapsulated in recordings-is facilitated for all, with ethnomusicologists taking responsibility for their own part in this important process.