Would you be happy if we lost large parts of our cultural history?
Jun 23, 2014 at 04:33PM The budget cutbacks at the National Film and Sound Archive will result in 28 staff being made redundant.
While some may be employed elsewhere it's my belief that this demonstrates a complete lack of understanding by all Governments - State, Federal (and of all Parties) to the significant amount of work that's being done by skilled staff to maintain a programme to digitise our cultural history for future generations to enjoy and use for research purposes.
Geoff Gardner a former Melbourne Film Festival director who blogs at Film Alert has criticised the decision to make redundant 28 staff members before a new three-year strategic plan is completed,
In part his comments mirror discussions that I have had with several Government Departments over many years. This comment highlights the enormity of the project :-
“If large scale digitisation is not addressed, the majority of the national audiovisual collection will be rendered inaccessible in a digital environment. At the current pace of in-house digitisation (as of June 2013), and based on the collection size established in the revaluation in 2012/13 (2,064, 000 items) the timeframes for comprehensive digitisation range from 67 years (for audio) to 93 years (moving image) to more than 260 years (documents and artefacts). However many of those analogue formats would have deteriorated beyond usability at this point.
Consultation meetings will conclude in September and a strategic plan will be released before the end of 2014. A separate consultation process around the new business model for screening loans and nontheatrical lending collection will begin shortly.
The Archive also encourages people to email comments to [email protected], or write to the NFSA at GPO Box 2002, Canberra ACT 2601.
Have your say soon folks! especially if you want access to audio, video and documents in the future.