Audiovisual research
collections
In the 20th century, thousands of recordings were made during
academic field work, of dance, rituals, language, music and
song, poetry and stories. In addition, numerous interviews
and documentaries were produced in research projects.
Some of this material is now held by archives, but often
it is kept in academic departments –or even by individual
researchers – as little known ‘hidden collections’:
minimally documented, haphazardly stored under suboptimal
conditions, and at serious risk of being lost altogether.
These materials reflect cultural and linguistic diversity,
especially as much of what they document has by now disappeared.
They are primary sources for oral history studies, and provide
insight into the concerns and methodology of researchers at
the time. Therefore they should be kept accessible for future
research projects.
"Anthropology demands
the open-mindedness
with which one must look and listen,
record in astonishment and wonder
that which one would not have been able to guess."
Margaret Mead
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A working group in TAPE will locate collections of this type
and study the particular requirements for access and re-use,
focusing on the potential of digitization for creating distributed
content-based archives.
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AV
research collections | Access, delivery and
presentation
Training
Working groups 
