Maurice's blog

International Seminar

Preserving Endangered Audio Media – Rethinking Archival Strategies for Conservation of Analogue Audio Carriers 

Berlin, June 9-10TH, 2011

Fradique LizardoFormer ILKAR collaborator Maurice Mengel is applying lessons learned from ILKAR's inspection procedure on a different archive. Mengel will prepare the Centro León's Fradique Lizardo collection for digitization. The late Lizardo was one of the most influential Dominican folklore collectors of recent decades. His collection was acquired by the Centro Leon, one the country's leading cultural institutions, in 2000. The current project is financed by a Grammy Foundation preservation planning grant.

At the 2009 IASA conference in Athens, Elena Gómez Sánchez and Albrecht Wiedmann presented an outline of the ILKAR's research methodology and first preliminary results.

Albrecht Wiedmann (Ethnological Museum in Berlin) introduced the ILKAR project, the project's main objectives and described the research carried out so far for cylinders. Emphasis was put so far on improving the casting process in which positives are made from negatives.

I received the following e-mail today from Bill Klinger through the ARSC Listserv. It is very encouraging to see how slowly, but steadily important information resources for our field become more accessible. Such activities facilitate research and early-day practice in the audio archives:

ILKAR inside the exhibit: Albrecht Wiedmann, demonstration of modern phonograph.ILKAR is part of the exhibit "A Different Approach to the World: The Humboldt-Forum in the Berlin Palace -- A first look at the lab". The exhibit opens on July 9 2009 in the Altes Museum in Berlin, Germany and exhibts key ideas for the Humboldt-Forum, the new museum which will be built next to Berlin's famous museum island.

Following the Lars Koch's presentation of the ILKAR project at the IASA annual conference in 2008 in Sydney, we submitted an article for the IASA journal in which we describe the project, its objectives and the first preliminary results.

The article is entitled "ILKAR: Integrated Solutions for Preservation, Archiving and Conservation of Endangered Magnetic Tapes and Cylinders" and written by Lars-Christian Koch, Stefan Simon, Elena Gómez-Sánchez, Maurice Mengel and Albrecht Wiedmann.

ILKAR will be visible at the new exhibition "KulturGUTerhalten" which currently takes place at the Altes Museum in Berlin.

kulturGUTerhalten - Restoring the Archaeological Treasures of the National Museums in BerlinOpen Laboratory