To celebrate UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, the Audio Engineering
Society has established a scholarship to cover travel and registration costs to fund
participation by an audio archivist from an emerging nation in the 2018 AES
International Conference on audio archiving, preservation and restoration. The
conference will take place June 28 to 30, 2018, at the United States Library of
Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) in Culpeper, Virginia,
USA.

“This event presents a remarkable opportunity to bring researchers and practitioners
together for three days to discuss critical preservation issues and to focus on
strategies that will support and encourage collaboration and interoperability between
industry and the preservation, restoration and archiving communities,’ said
conference chair John Krivit. “To serve the mission of UNESCO’s World Day for
Audiovisual Heritage, we want to make it possible for a deserving audio archivist to
gain knowledge they can bring home to aid the preservation of the audio artefacts of
a language and culture.’

With a theme of “Discover, Remember and Share,’ UNESCO’s (United Nations
Educational, Science and Cultural Organization) World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is
a commemoration of the adoption, in 1980 by the 21st General Conference, of the
recommendation for the safeguarding and preservation of moving images. The vision
for the event also encapsulates the motivation behind AES’s technical conference on
audio archiving, preservation and restoration. “Audiovisual archives tell us stories
about people’s lives and cultures from all over the world,’ states the event website.
“They represent a priceless heritage which is an affirmation of our collective memory
and a valuable source of knowledge since they reflect the cultural, social and linguistic
diversity of our communities. They help us grow and comprehend the world we all
share. Conserving this heritage and ensuring it remains accessible to the public and
future generations is a vital goal for all memory institutions as well as the public at
large.’

Topics for the AES’s conference on audio archiving, preservation and restoration will
include object-based preservation & material science, handling and storage of audio
carriers, new developments in material research, preservation by digitisation,
mechanical vs. optical transfer, restoration of obsolete disc formats, preservation
issues for emerging high-end audio formats, preserving legacy professional formats
(including multitrack tapes and obsolete digital formats), storage and access
technology, current status and future development of digital archives, metadata,
aesthetic considerations in digital restoration of historical audio, public/private
collaboration for preservation and access, and considerations for archiving in
preserving commercial audio. The conference program will include a tour of the
NAVCC.