Dagmar Brunows contribution places a theoretical perspective on practical questions of archiving. In the film and media sciences, theoretical studies of archiving have been mainly concerned with matters of restoration and digitalisation so far. Dagmar Brunow, however, proposes a paradigm shift. She would like to alter the emphasis of the focus from the contents of the archive as a product for archiving to archiving as a process (and performative act) during the course of which the sources first need to be generated (for example through curator decisions but also categorising/cataloguing, metadata, etc.). Taking the example of the Hamburger feminist artists’ archive „bildwechsel“ and its extremely self-reflective archiving practice, Dagmar Brunow indicates possible methods of archiving (and the reflection regarding this) which can also be of benefit to independent radio stations. The goal is to mentally combine the materiality and discursivity of the archive and in particular to show the significance of archiving for the construction of cultural memory, which is continually created via the media.

Bio

Dagmar Brunow has held the post of editor at the independent radio station FSK in Hamburg since 1996. Her broadcasts (Lorettas Leselampe, Camera osbcura, Spiffy News. Morgenradio der female machos [Female macho morning] have by no means all been archived and even fewer of them are available online. She has taught film sciences and gender studies at various universities in Sweden (Halmstad, Lund Vaxjö, Södertörn) since 1998. Her research is at the interface between media sciences and media memory studies. In December 2014 she completed her doctorate at the University of Hamburg with a dissertation entitled „Remediating Transcultural Memory: Documentary Filmmaking as Archival Intervention“. Publications on: Mediatization of cultural memory, remediation, experimental and avant-garde film, film and video collectives in Europe and media centres in the Federal Republic of Germany, essay film, migration and diaspora in film, feminist film theory, counter-public, alternative media practice, genre cinema, transnationality, archive theory, film and video archives.

LARM Audio Research Archive – Opening radio heritage for research use
Jacob Kreutzfeldt, The University of Copenhagen, Denmark

This talk presents the LARM Audio Research Archive an infrastructure for research in Danish radio and audio heritage and TREAP a platform for transnational research in radio sources. Both are the results of collaborations between researchers, software developers and archives. The LARM platform was developed by the LARM project (2010-2014) to allow researchers to access, collaborate on and share metadata relating to a repository of up to 1 million hours of Danish Radio. The TREAP is presently being developed as a part of the transnational research project TRE (2013-2016) for building up a shared pool of transnational radio references.
I argue for the value – for broadcasters and for researchers – in making huge collections of radio accessible to researchers, and I address some of the challenges to such access in terms of rights management, sustainability and metadata standards. Emphasizing the need for building tools that allow specific kinds of interaction with archive material, the presentation explores the use of radio in a heritage perspective.

Bio
Jacob Kreutzfeldt is Assistant Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, The University of Copenhagen. Kreutzfeldt was a part of the management of the national Danish infrastructure and research project LARM and is presently Principal Investigator in the Transnational Radio Encounters (TRE). Kreutzfeldts research focuses on auditory culture, radio history and aesthetics.

Community radio programmes have created spaces for feminist/women’s organizations and acted as connectors (Thompson et al, 2005) between and amongst social and political movements – including women´s movements – and the audience. Archives of women´s community radio stations provide us with access to programmes, documents and accounts of feminist radio activities around the world. Digitalization has contributed to open access, online and collaborative archives and the ability to communicate the women´s movement and everyday acts of feminist rebellion within and beyond country borders.
Caroline Mitchell will present and discuss how Fem FM and other feminist radio archives (e.g. The Pacifica network) allow us to both study cultures of women´s radio production at different points in history and also hear creative activism afforded by women´s radio stations within and beyond national borders.
Drawing on research carried out as part of the Transnational Radio Encounters Project I will look at how archives can help re circulate programmes and thereby re-sound women back into history.

Lit.: THOMPSON, M. E., Anfossi Gomez, K. and Suarez Toro, M. 2005. “Women’s alternative internet radio and feminist interactive communications.” Feminist Media Studies, 5 (2), 215-236.

Bio

Caroline Mitchell has been active in production, teaching and research about community media and women and radio since 1988. In 1992 she was co-founder of Fem FM the first women´s station in the UK. She combines work as a Senior Lecturer in Radio at the University of Sunderland with work in community media evaluation and training. She is currently PI on the HERA Transnational Radio Encounters project carrying out participatory action research with community radio stations.

Bold strides or tentative steps? How community media share and archive content online
Joost van Beek & Kate Coyer, Central European University Budapest, Hungary

Joost van Beek and Kate Coyer present the research they conducted for the European project CAPTCHA – Creative Approaches to Living Cultural Archives on the online archiving and sharing practices of community media. Through a combination of case studies and interviews, they have explored efforts by community media in different countries, with different histories, and starkly varying resources, to facilitate greater access to their valuable audiovisual content online.

Shifting media use patterns mean that even smaller community broadcasters are likely to see an increasing share of their listeners prefer to tune in to their content when, where and how they like. Online platforms for sharing content also provide ways for communities to explore, search and interact with content which linear broadcasting lacks. With their broad networks of volunteers and long tradition of civic participation and innovation, community broadcasters are in some ways especially well-positioned to experiment with these. However, their frequently scarce financial resources and reliance on volunteers also pose constraints.

The researchers conducted close to twenty case study reviews of individual community media websites, as well as some shorter reviews and a national overview of practices among German community media, to analyze the scope of content and features offered and issues of structure, design, navigation and interactivity. In parallel, they conducted over fifteen in-depth interviews with people who have been involved with building or managing online archives or work with them on a day-to-day basis. They gathered further input from a range of community media practitioners at conferences and workshops.

While the research will result in customized recommendations for media at different stages of creating, expanding or re-evaluating their online archives and sharing practices, the researchers will use this presentation to present preliminary findings and invite public feedback.

The study’s interest in best practices extends to the technical and design solutions different stations have arrived at, but is at least as focused on the organizational and conceptual strategies broadcasters are deploying. Conceptually, do they prioritize providing regular radio listeners with the means to catch up with their favourite programs and broadcasts they missed? Pulling in a diverse online audience to explore content by theme or subject? Optimizing the exchange of content between stations? How do they juggle the different accompanying requirements? Internally, how do they establish effective work flow processes and ensure content and archiving standards, while encouraging optimal engagement by volunteer program makers? What training and guidance is provided, and how is user feedback gathered?

Bio

Joost van Beek has been a researcher with the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) of the Central European University in Budapest since 2009, and previously worked at the Open Society Institute. Kate Coyer is Director of the Civil Society and Technology Project for the CMDS and co-organizes the Center’s flagship summer institute on internet policy advocacy. They previously co-authored a book chapter on Community Radio in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Opportunities and Challenges, and they are co-authors of A Safe Space No More? Looming Threats to Internet Freedoms, the Hungary country report of the Internet Freedom Report 2014. Joost was a contributing researcher and editor of Hungarian Media Laws in Europe, and Kate served as project advisor for that study.

Kate has engaged extensively with community media going back to when she helped build community radio stations with the Prometheus Radio Project. In addition to her research on media policy, communication rights, social media and digital advocacy, reflected in publications including chapters in The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy and Media Freedom and Pluralism, she co-authored the Alternative Media Handbook, contributed to the Community Media Sustainability Guide, served frequently as public speaker and trainer on community media-related issues, and co-organised several workshops on community media in Europe.

Radio Urban FM is in front of implementing two projects (activities) which have to do with digital archiving: 1) The establishment of a permanent digital library of radio outlets that during the 14 years of existence Urban FM has produced and broadcast. In Kosovo electronic broadcasting media (Radio and TV) starting from next year is passing entirely in digital mode, i.e. there will be no use of analog anymore. As such Radio Urban FM is in the need to exchange experiences and receive “know how” on the issue of digital archiving. 2) One of the biggest projects that Radio Urban FM is planning to initiate in the beginning of 2015 is the establishment of café-library Urban Radio Press Café – a gathering place for journalists, civil society, editors and/or of generally young people where they (while having their regular daily coffee) they will have the opportunity to have access in print and digital radio and press outlets. In the place will be a small library which will include the section where the digital library via PC`s, will be provided to guests. In this sense, when established this library will be unique (the first and only one in Republic of Kosovo) where we will provide audio / radio outlets for guests. People can listen to audio material in our place – starting from short radio stories produced by Urban FM, complete shows of Urban FM VJ`s but also shows and radio outlets from different world wide radio stations, as well books (in audio format), radio- documentaries, radio-drama`s etc.

Bio

Berat Gashi is one of the main coordinators in the process of establishing this café-library of Radio Urban FM in Prishtina.

30 years rolled by: Archiving physical archives of oldest European non-commercial student radio station Radio Študent Ljubljana
Marko Doles & Andraž Magajna
MTLRŠ, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Within Museological-technical laboratorium of Radio Študent (MTLRŠ) project of archiving physical (paper) archives from 1984-2009 has been finished. In collaboration with National Archives of the Republic of Slovenia (Ministry of Culture) we have selected, sorted and catalogued all kind of paper documents created on and connected with Radio Študent. The archival material (some also from very beginnings in 1968-9) contains legal and juridical documents regarding establishment of Radio Študent, old rule books, records of meetings of editorial boards, short and long termed plans of the Radio, internal and external correspondence, financial reports, central register of coworkers, radio listings, texts for broadcasts and programs, lists of played songs, materials about events organized by the Radio, posters and more and more. In the National Archives of Republic of Slovenia fund of Radio Študent has increased from 144 boxes to more than 400 boxes; in other words the fund of Radio Študent has expanded for app. 30 linear emeters. All the archive material is accessible for all scholars, researchers and other enthusiasts.
The short presentation will give a quick inside in the process of archiving paper (physical) documents, its accessibility, meaning, usage and application. It will also highlight our methodology used for (not only paper/physical) archiving – including fieldwork and on-air ethnography, which has been found out for only possible and most prolific way to get some archival material from ex-coworkers and their personal archives. Specific radio program broadcasted live at the end of the project – based on the application of archived material in collaboration with our listeners, composed of micro-reconstructions (which could be seen as one specific way of archiving) – will also be presented.

Bio

Marko Doles lives between Ljubljana and Pivka. As Bachelor of Arts in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, he created and launched Museological-technical laboratory of Radio Študent. Since 2004 he works on Radio Študent – as sound technician and member of Music desk. Besides he is drummer, DJ and one of the leading persons in underground movements in Pivka.

Andraž Magajna lives in Ljubljana. Since 2010 he works on Radio Študent – first as program moderator and text interpreter, later also as sound engineer. Since the establishment of MTLRŠ, he is part of its crew. Besides he sometimes takes part in audio interventions, installations and performances. He has graduated in the field of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology on the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. He likes punjena vešalica and Wienerschnitzel.

From manual analogical recording to Radioco, our Free Software automatic digital archiving of live broadcasting system at CUAC FM.
Jose Maria Casanova, Fernando Souto & Isabel Lema Blanco
CUAC FM, A Coruña, Spain

CUAC FM, the Community Radio of A Coruña, has evolved from the cassette tape analog recording on its foundation in 1996 to current digital times implementing automatic recording, archiving and publishing systems. This has been a challenge to community radio station but through Free Software technologies, the adoption of organizational policies and plenty of volunteer work it can be possible. CUAC FM is the community radio station that broadcast community programs to the A Coruña metropolitan area. We are located in Galicia in the North West of Spain. It is managed by the Cultural Association known as Colectivo de Universitarios Activos. All this years and diversity have allowed us to deal with the evolution of media archive and recording technologies. This talk will be about the learned lessons over the years in digital audio recording, media archiving and publishing, recording scheduling, time synchronization and its integration with our mobile application and website. We will show the evolution and how technology has impact in how we manage our organization and the quality of the contents. We will present our recently developed broadcasting radio recording scheduling system Radioco developed in collaboration with Student of a Master Degree Thesis at University of A Coruña. This development done by Iago Veloso for CUAC FM is available as open source with GPLv3 license at http://radioco.org/about/, the recording system can even run in a Raspberry Pi as low cost solution. Radioco manages automatically the audio since the program are scheduled to they being published in a podcast. Radioco has been designed to be managed from a web browser, manage the scheduling of the radio station, record the live shows and publish the RSS podcast information included the information provided by each weekly show.

Bio
Jose Maria Casanova, Software Engineer and free software activists that participates in Spoiler, a live radio show about TV series aired on CUAC FM, the community radio that broadcasts to A Coruña Area. He is volunteer in the Technological Committee of CUAC FM leading the migration to GNU/Linux systems and Free Software at the broadcasting station. He has been committed to the promotion of Free/Open Source Software in different communities as GNOME and GPUL. He is also one founders of the Open Source consultancy Igalia. He teach software engineering at the University of A Coruña and has been the director of the computer science degree thesis about Radioco broadcasting radio recording scheduling system.

Fernando Souto, Software Engineer and mobile development geek and entrepreneur founder of Appeiros, a mobile apps development company. He has been a community radio activist that collaborates in the Technological Committee of CUAC FM. He has developed the first automatic recording and publishing system based in scripts and the CUAC FM mobile app for Android and IOS. This app allows the access to the audio archive of the different CUAC FM shows and allows live audio streaming. Fernando stared in the CUAC FM morning humorist show QNEP and now has his own live show Spoiler about TV Series.

Please check here.

We invite you to register your participation at the conference till the end of May. The conference is free of charge. There will be German and English translation. If you are interested to join the conference and need further information, please don´t hesitate to contact us: info@livingarchives.eu

Call for Participation EN,
Deadline 31.01.2015:
“Radio Archives in European Community Media” 

Convocatoria de participación ES,
Deadline 31.01.2015:
“Radio Archives in European Community Media” 

01.10.2014, EN
Second CAPTCHA press release – ARCHIVIA14 report

01.10.2014, D & EN
Second CAPTCHA press release – cover letter

17.06.2014, D & EN
First CAPCHA press release – cover letter

First CAPCHA press release – project introduction

Deadline 31.07.2014, EN
ARCHIVIA 14 – Open Call

As with most media production, producing your pre-production is always concerned with the who, where, what, when and how of the production. These questions in planning, are also exceedingly important when distributing your content afterwards.  You need to know who your subject is, what they will talk about, where the interview will be held etc.  These things will go a long way to describing your media. No matter the site you’re submitting to, or the type of content, the vast majority of these rules apply.

The major search engines all work in a very similar matter.  They search for valuable content and their criteria for what is deemed valuable, is very similar and simple. They will want, and as a result you will want your content to be well ordered and well formatted.  You want the sentences to be short and legible (see Flesch-Kincaid readability test).  And start at the start.

The most valuable information for search engines is at the beginning; the title, the first sentence, the first paragraph.  The focus of the description should be mentioned in these and throughout the body of the text.  The focus of your media should also be the focus of your description.

Writing a Title for a Media Description

Often when titling a piece of art or media, there can be a tendency to write the title in an abstract or ethereal manner, describing a sense of the piece rather than the content itself.  If you think of film titles, often they have no direct descriptive relationship to the content of the film.  For the purposes of search, unless someone knows exactly what they are searching for, these are largely useless.

The focus of the media should be clearly outlined in the title.  The title will be considered, by most searches, as the most important signifier of what the content is.  If your piece is on interculturalism, the syrian conflict or whatever this should be contained within the title.  Put yourself in the mind of the searcher.  How do you connect your audience with your media and what will they be looking for?  Always be: think of the who, what, where, when etc.

If the media is part of a series, put the series name in the title. If it is part of a larger event, add that also.  Connect your media to other media items by relating themes, events etc.  Ask yourself, what will people who are interested in your content be looking for? Theoretically your title can be as long as you like, at least as long as the word count that is imposed by the site you are using.  In the case of a title, attention should be paid to how the results are listed.  If we take the example of Youtube: you will notice that when results are listed, if the title is longer than 60 characters (give or take) with spaces, the title then becomes clipped.  If your title is longer than that limit, order the title with the most valuable information for the viewer first.

Writing the Description

When writing the description of media, reiterate the key points that are used in the title: the focus of your media.  If the characters that appear in the piece are renowned in their field, use their name, their title or their area of expertise as it relates to the piece.  Mention the key points that are raised within the piece.  It is not uncommon for almost entire transcriptions to appear within a description.

To increase the likeliness of being found, your description should hammer home whatever the focus of the media is.  In search engine optimization terms, the density of your keyword focus can be very important.  If we take for example the focus of your piece is interculturalism, you will want to mention this word in your title and in your description.  For the purpose of this example, the word ‘interculturalism’ is the focus of your piece and thusly the ‘Focus Keyword’.  Keyword density should be 1-3%.  Less than that and search will not consider your piece as being about interculturalism, any more than 3% and search engines can consider your piece as spam.  It will assume that you are attempting to cheat the system.  The focus of your description should also relate to the title so there is coherency between the two.

Always keep in mind the focus of your media and relate that to your description.  Repeat that word or phrase.  Always keep in mind the who, what, where, when etc. and think then of how people will find you.

The necessity of sustainable archiving has been a subject of discussion for the civil media community for a few years now, and the project, called “CAPTCHA – Creative approaches to living cultural archives,” aims to provide new insights on how to securely make community media content accessible online. The project encompasses both research in best practices and the development of a model for archiving.

In the first CAPTCHA radio show about the first CAPTCHA project meeting, you can hear impressions from the exchanges that took place during the meetings and from excursions to Radio Tilos, the famous independent radio station in Budapest, and the Open Society Archives. During the 62 minutes of this program, questions are raised like: How are you archiving? Who is using the content? What do you think about the cooperation of the European community media at the moment? What will community media look like in 20 or 50 years?

download
The following people appear: Virág Bottlik (Radio Corax, Halle), Gábor Csabai (Tilos Rádió, Budapest), Kate Coyer (Central European University, Budapest), Thomas Diesenreiter (Radio Fro, Linz), Helen Hahmann (Radio Corax, Halle), Gabriella Ivacs (Open Society Archive, Budapest), David Knox (Near Media Coop, Dublin), Paul Loughran (Near FM, Dublin), Franziska Stübgen (Radio Corax, Halle), Georg Wellbrock (Radio Corax, Halle)

Halle (Saale), Germany

Radio FRO
community radio

Linz, Austria

Near Media Co-Op
community radio & TV

Dublin, Ireland

Communication Studies,
Central European University,
Budapest, Hungary

Project team

Radio CORAX

• Helen Hahmann – project coordination
• Virág Bottlik – PR coordination
• Franziska Stübgen – design
• Georg Wellbrock – programming documentation series
• Marian Mortell – webprogramming www.livingarchives.eu

Radio FRO

• Ingo Leindecker – coordination, event management, programming webtool
• Thomas Diesenreiter – coordination, event management
• Joachim Losehand – conference curator, event management
• Thomas Kreiseder – public relations
• Ralf Traunsteiner – programming web tool
• Pamela Neuwirth – editorial creation of archival collections and visualizations

Near Media Co-Op

• Paul Loughran – coordination, event management
• David Knox – event management, programming documentation series
• Peter Kelly – event management, programming documentation series
• Alan Weldon – programming documentation series

Center for Media and

Communication Studies

• Kate Coyer – leading researcher
• Joost van Beek – coordination, researcher

The goal of the project CAPTCHA is to empower community media, and the media producers working there, to increase the accessibility of their programs, by promoting the exchange of content and exploring sharing platforms, tackling the economic, technical and legal issues they face, and increasing awareness and practical know-how about the digital tools that are available now to facilitate collaboration and accessibility.

The project will review and analyse existing strategies community media are deploying to create and use archives, and identify examples of best practice. During workshops and conferences, experts and practitioners will discuss the economic, legal and technical aspects of archiving, including questions of copyright and fair use. In the course of the project’s events and collaborations, we will explore innovative and sustainable methods of facilitating the storing, editing and using of community-produced audio and video materials in collaborative and democratic ways, and develop a new, open source tool to facilitate archiving interfaces. The project partners will produce and share thematically related broadcasts, run a project site with findings and useful examples and materials in different formats, and publish project results in print as well as online. We welcome the input of media producers, researchers and consumers alike.

A significant part of the research, however, will focus on processes and practices as well as products. How have successful models of functioning archives been realized? The Center is conducting interviews with people who have been directly involved with planning or building online archives, and with community media volunteers who work with them on a day-to-day basis as producers, editors or administrators. How do they organize the archive? Who plays what role in the archiving work flow? What training, guidance, moderation or archiving policies are needed? This way, we want to identify and evaluate different models of planning, action and collaboration. Specific attention will be paid to the question of how to develop archiving platforms and formats in sustainable ways, avoiding the pitfalls of project- and funding-dependent temporary initiatives, and taking into account the volunteer-based nature of community media.

In order to evaluate the success of community media archiving models and the needs they need to meet, the Center will conduct survey research to recruit feedback from community media viewers and listeners as well as those actively involved themselves. What are their expectations from community media streams, downloads and archives? How do they use and interact with the sites, and how do they experience the ease of design and navigation of the site or sites they visit? What are their frustrations, and what would they still like to see?

All research will be practice-oriented, tailored to the needs of community media practitioners and activists, and will be driven by the information needs that emerge during the workshops that are at the heart of the project. The research should be able to identify the specific priorities in access, process and presentation that apply to community media. It aims to arrive at recommendations that can inform the work of community media organizations which are planning to launch an online archive, or expand or review the archives they already run, as well as individual community media producers.