Dr.Dietrich Schüller

The advent of digital technology in the 1980s had a considerable influence on production, dissemination and preservation of audio and video documents. This new preservation paradigm was adopted by sound archives already during the 1990s, followed by video archives, and is presently also entering film archiving. The paper surveys the situation of the past decades and concludes that presently specifically audio and video documents still sitting on magnetic tape, which have not yet been transferred to digital repositories, may be lost, as the availability of reply equipment in operable condition is dramatically shrinking world-wide. At greatest risk and of specific concern to UNESCO are the documents proper of cultural and linguistic diversity, audio and video recordings made over the past sixty years, held in small, notoriously underfunded collections.

The lecture is to be held in English and will be followed by a Questions and Answers session.

Free entry. All are welcome.