IASA-BAAC 2026 Conference

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11:00am EEST

Wartime Recordings of Voskovec and Werich: Optical Digitisation of Damaged Lacquer Discs Using the INA-Saphir System: Technical Resilience and Preservation Refresh Strategies

Thursday October 22, 2026 11:00am - 12:00pm EEST

Education hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

The Sound Laboratory of the National Museum has recently expanded its preservation workflows for severely degraded historical sound recordings through the implementation of non-contact optical scanning technologies. Since 2023, the INA-Saphir system has been used to digitise lacquer discs that cannot be safely reproduced using conventional mechanical playback. This approach enables the recovery of audio content from cracked, delaminated, and fragmented carriers and represents a viable preservation strategy for vulnerable sound recordings from the World War II period.

This contribution presents a case study of wartime radio broadcasts by Voskovec and Werich, produced during their exile in the United States for transmission to occupied Czechoslovakia. The original lacquer discs, manufactured and used under wartime conditions, exhibit significant material degradation that limits their accessibility today.
Focusing on applied preservation practice, the paper outlines key stages of the optical digitisation workflow, including condition assessment, capture, signal reconstruction, and post-processing. It highlights practical decision-making in handling fragile media and demonstrates how material analysis informs the selection of appropriate digitisation strategies. The case study illustrates how optical scanning can function as a resilience-oriented approach for preserving obsolete and physically compromised audio carriers that are otherwise unplayable.

Speakers

Geoff Tyson

Sound Engineer, National Museum, Czech Republic

Geoff Tyson is an audio engineer at the National Museum in Prague. Since 2020, he has specialized in the restoration, preservation, and digitization of old historical sound carriers from the 19th and 20th century.

Filip Šír

Head of Digitization Department, National Museum, Czech Republic

Filip Šír is a specialist in the preservation of historical audio heritage in the Czech Republic. Since 2012, he has focused on national coordination, digitization, and long-term conservation of sound documents. He works at the National Museum as head of digitization department... Read More →

Thursday October 22, 2026 11:00am - 12:00pm EEST
Education hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Long Presentation, In Person

global Y
Zoom link https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81977024051
Zoom password 867213

1:30pm EEST

Beyond Checksums: Conformance Checking as a Core Component of Authentic Digital Preservation

Thursday October 22, 2026 1:30pm - 2:30pm EEST

Education hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Born-digital audiovisual collections increasingly enter archives with incomplete provenance information, heterogeneous production environments, and varying levels of technical quality. While checksum-based fixity methods reliably confirm bit-level stability after transfer, they do not reveal structural defects already present within files—defects that may affect authenticity, accessibility, and long-term preservation decisions.

This joint presentation brings together archival practice and tool development by the Austrian Mediathek and Jerome Martinez, developer of the MediaInfo project. From the institutional perspective, the Austrian Mediathek presents how systematic conformance checking was integrated into ingest workflows for born-digital audiovisual materials and how this reshaped internal assessment and decision-making processes. Based on the analysis of 4,771 incoming files, the archive identified internal inconsistencies such as truncated bitstreams, container irregularities, and mismatches between declared and actual data structures that remain invisible in traditional workflows.

Complementing this practice-based view, the MediaInfo developer introduces the principles behind the conformance checker, explaining how structural analysis at container and bitstream level makes such inconsistencies detectable and interpretable.

By combining operational archival experience with tool-level insight, the presentation demonstrates how conformance checking strengthens authenticity assessment, improves risk awareness at ingest, and supports informed, transparent preservation planning.

Conformance checking complements fixity by making structural integrity visible—turning stability into trust.

Speakers

Marion Jaks

Long term preservation, Österreichische Mediathek

Marion Jaks is a digital archivist at the Österreichische Mediathek (Austrian Mediathek) in Vienna, Austria. She holds a degree in History and completed professional library training at the Austrian National Library. Her work at the Mediathek spans both analogue and digital collections... Read More →

Jérôme Martinez

CEO, Affiliation MediaArea

Lead developer of #MediaInfo and technical consultant to a variety of projects within the fields of broadcast video, audiovisual archiving, and web video.

Thursday October 22, 2026 1:30pm - 2:30pm EEST
Education hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Long Presentation, In Person

global Y
Zoom link https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81977024051
Zoom password 867213

2:00pm EEST

Decentering Archival Authority: Informal Networks, Post-Custodial Practice, and the IASA Ambassador Framework

Thursday October 22, 2026 2:00pm - 3:00pm EEST

Statehood hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Contemporary archival discourse increasingly emphasizes the need to move beyond custodial paradigms toward more distributed, relational, and participatory models of stewardship. Within the field of sound and audiovisual heritage, this shift is particularly urgent, as preservation and access are shaped by global asymmetries in resources, infrastructure, and institutional authority. Mobilizing meaningful collaboration across such disparities remains a central challenge, especially where the outcomes of collective action are long-term and not immediately tangible. Within the framework of the IASA, emerging initiatives such as the Ambassador Committee, offer a productive forum for rethinking archival engagement through a post-custodial and decolonial lens.

Participants on the panel will critically examine structural and contextual barriers—including funding inequities, technological divides, and institutional silos—while also interrogating how such constraints intersect with questions of power, representation, and epistemic authority. Conceived as an open and dialogic forum, the panel invites participants to contribute to the co-development of strategies that strengthen informal networks of mutual support and exchange with a participatory platform for shaping the future direction of the Committee. We encourage attendees to actively engage in defining its forthcoming goals, priorities, and activities. This panel also serves as an entry point for broader engagement.

Speakers

Audra V. Adomenas

President, Lithuanian Archives Project

Audra Adomenas is an archivist and nonprofit leader based in Chicago. She is the founder and president of the Lithuanian Archives Project (LAP), established in 2009 and incorporated in 2012 as a not-for-profit organization in the State of Illinois, USA, dedicated to preserving, digitizing... Read More →

Patrick J Midtlyng

President; Head of Recorded Sound Processing Unit Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division, IASA; Library of Congress

Patrick Midtlyng is the Head of the Recorded Sound Section at the Library of Congress’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA. He is responsible for the management and direction of the Recorded Sound Section and oversees all aspects of the National Collection... Read More →

Judith Opoku-Boateng

Director, J. H. Kwabena Nketia Archives of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana

Judith Opoku-Boateng is University Archivist at the University of Ghana, where she leads the development and coordination of the University’s archival systems. With over two decades of experience in audiovisual heritage preservation, she has led major initiatives in audiovisual... Read More →

Perla Olivia Rodriguez Reséndiz

Professor, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Investigadora del Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliotecológicas y de la Información de la UNAM.
Cuenta con estancias de formación en la Radiotelevisión Italiana (RAI) y la Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, España. Desde hace quince años es docente de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Ha diseñado y producido series radiofónicas, televisivas y multimedia con fin... Read More →

Dr. Marija Dumnić Vilotijević

Senior Research Associate, Institute of Musicology SASA

Marija Dumnić Vilotijević holds MA and PhD in ethnomusicology from Faculty of Music of theUniversity of Arts in Belgrade. She is Senior Research Associate at Institute of Musicology of SerbianAcademy of Sciences and Arts. She specialized in similar institutions of Austrian and BulgarianAcademies... Read More →

Thursday October 22, 2026 2:00pm - 3:00pm EEST
Statehood hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Long Presentation, Hybrid

Zoom link https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86939636277
Zoom password 289030

4:00pm EEST

Hearing Udi Voices: The New Online Edition of the Austrian Phonogrammarchiv as Infrastructure for Vulnerable Sonic Memory

Thursday October 22, 2026 4:00pm - 5:00pm EEST

Events hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania: Great Hall

In its 1899 founding document, the Phonogrammarchiv (Austrian Academy of Sciences) was conceived with imperial ambition: to document all languages and dialects of Europe—and then the world. In the following decades, researchers and missionaries equipped with the Archive‑Phonograph contributed to this project. Many people were recorded under conditions of violence—under colonial rule, or as prisoners-of-war during WWI—while others later experienced displacement or minoritisation, as imperial, colonial, or national ideologies prevailed, as in several of Adolf Dirr’s Recordings from the Caucasus (1909–1910).

This paper presents the new online version of the Phonogrammarchiv’s ongoing Edition Series, The Complete Historical Collections (1899–1950), focusing on its first edition mentioned above. This publication provides open streaming, interactive transcriptions, and downloads for study and sharing, while discussing the context of production. We address collaborative editing, open access, and accessibility for descendant communities and communities of practice, critically engaging with online publication amid uncertain digital futures and global inequalities.

The second part turns to the earliest known audio recordings of the Udi language, made by Dirr. Situating the recordings within the Udi community’s history—marked by repeated displacement and persecution, including upheavals shortly after the recordings—we highlight the fragility of minority archives in times of political crises. Currently, the audio recordings, photographs and related materials are being prepared for presentation in Zinobiani, the only Udi village in Georgia, highlighting the significance of these discoveries for small communities. Finally, we discuss the ethics and politics of recirculation, on and offline, and argue for the vital role of linguistic documentation as part of community memory and identity.

Speakers

Conny Gruber

Academy Scientist, Phonogrammarchiv (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Conny Gruber is an ethnomusicologist at the Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, responsible for publications and editions. They earned their doctorate at the University of Vienna on the interdependency of gender within dance spaces in southwest Madagascar. Gruber’s... Read More →

Alexander Kavtaradze

Invited Lecturer, Ilia State University (Tbilisi, Georgia)

Alexander Kavtaradze, based in Tbilisi (Georgia), holds a DPhil/PhD in Cultural Studies on the topic, “On the edge of time, space and memory: The Udis of Georgia and Azerbaijan”. His research focuses on the Udis and their historic homeland, Caucasian Albania. He serves as an invited... Read More →

Thursday October 22, 2026 4:00pm - 5:00pm EEST
Events hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania: Great Hall

Long Presentation, In Person

4:00pm EEST

Radio Haiti Archive: Toward a Community Politics of Repatriation

Thursday October 22, 2026 4:00pm - 5:00pm EEST

Education hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

This presentation tracks dissertation work on how various groups view the repatriation and return of the Radio Haiti Archive, which the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University in North Carolina, USA, currently houses, and the role the Haitian diaspora plays in such efforts. It tracks the concepts emerging from the literature on archival repatriation, describes two interlocking bodies of theoretically informed scholarship: critical archival studies and anti-colonial archivy that serve as theoretical lenses to help frame the research and through which to examine archival repatriation and return, outlines the case study methodology pursued using specifically the methods of interviews and archival research, and offers findings.

Speakers

Sony Prosper

PhD Student, University of Michigan

Sony Prosper is a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan School of Information in the United States of America. His research has concerned archival return and repatriation, how members and volunteers of community and grassroots archives conceptualize records, and how their conceptualizations... Read More →

Thursday October 22, 2026 4:00pm - 5:00pm EEST
Education hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Long Presentation, In Person