Proposal:
1-International archiving.
In the interest of an international scope and the
interest to make these recordings available to the public the recording
and archiving of the recorded material should meet certain international
requirements.
The above has been brought to your attention at
my visits to the US conventions..
2-Practical implementation
Independent and with respect to what has been done
so far in the US, these activities have taken place in various settings
also in Europe.
Because of the smaller scale of the European countries
we rather prefer to do these recordings at conventions only with visitors
from abroad. It is a incorrect use of convention time at the convention
where you can do such recordings all year around in the environs.
More over a substantial part of the interviewees
do not visit the convention because of age and traveling restrictions.
The non US recordings have to deal with the variety
of languages to be used which often must be respected as the interviewee
lacks enough knowledge of the English language and the interviewer might
as well lack the native language of the interviewee.
3-Language
Although subtitling in English is a helpful mean
it can never replace the original version.
The recording means in Europe used to be as simple
and portable in order to show up at locations where and when appropriate.
Too much misunderstanding because of language problems
nags to days society already.
4-Equipment
US recordings have been done using digital video
recording on video cassette.
In Europe audio recordings were done on cassette
recorders, minidisk recorders, to day on modern MP3 recorders and on iPods.
combined with to days digital photo's of the interviewee.
5-Standards
Another item is the standard exchange format of
such recordings. With the fast growing acceptance of file formats this
is a opportunity to standardize a format which make it possible to make
these recordings available to a greater public via CD, DVD, MP3 etc.
Is AES standards 31 the right place?
6-Inventory
As by today we are unaware of what have been done
on oral recordings around the world in total, it might be a good idea to
make inventory of the recordings which have been made so far.
This certainly will help to structure the program
for the future schedules.
Referring to the above it would be of imminent importance
that the HC together with their members would deal with this matter before
referring to guidelines (Email Irv Joel Jan.22) which are unfamiliar to
others involved. (Subject for the historical meeting program)
International activities like this ask for an international
approach.
Guidelines need to be a result of cooperation between
the parties involved.
