Showing posts with label RSG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RSG. Show all posts

Thursday, October 29, 2015

World Day for Audiovisual Heritage - podcast from Radio Sonder Grense on 27 October #wdavh2015

The following package was compiled by the afternoon team of Radio Sonder Grense on Middag op.

Karen du Toit, Afrikaans archivist in the SABC Radio Archive, have selected one of the soundtracks for today. Jan Beukes, one of the first African broadcasters in 1937 on the African service, are relaying anecdotes about the first African broadcasts on radio. It was recorded on October 18, 1955. The soundtrack was originally recorded on acetate record and was digitized on a CD by a sound engineer. Unfortunately, we have many formats in the Archives which are perishing because we are not digitizing fast enough. It is a global problem in all audiovisual archives! "

The podcast translated from Afrikaans:

"The theme for the celebration of this year World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2015" Archives in Danger - Protecting the world's identities! "

SABC Media Libraries are part of archives worldwide highlighting the importance of preserving our audiovisual heritage in the SABC Radio archives. Our audiovisual heritage do not only allow us to look and listen with apperciation to our audio-visual collections, but what is more important, it also shows us who we are!

The Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Association (CCAAA) encourage everyone to participate in the campaign to protect man's AV heritage. The world's audiovisual heritage of sound recordings and moving images are extremely vulnerable due to factors ranging from neglect, natural decay due to technological obsolescence, as well as deliberate destruction.

Accordingly, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) made it part of its mission to create public awareness with the the Global Audiovisual Heritage celebrations annually.

All the world's audiovisual heritage is endangered. Therefore, the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage and the Memory of the World program are the two most important actions identified by UNESCO to help preserve this heritage! The task is on professionals in conservation to help preserve this heritage for future generations, despite the many technical, political, social, financial and other factors that threaten AV survival.

UNESCO encourages everyone to share in the celebrations on October 27 by putting the emphasis on their precious collections to ensure that present and future generations will still be able to enjoy our shared audiovisual heritage. "

Friday, February 13, 2015

World Radio Day - Archivist Karen du Toit package for Radio Sonder Grense (Afrikaans)


World Radio Day is celebrated for the 4th time this year after it was established by UNESCO in 2011.

"From the news and public debate, music and entertainment, radio informs us , captivate and inspire us in a way that no other medium can." 
Archivist Karen du Toit , who is responsible for the Afrikaans language collection in the SABC Radio Archives, compiled a short compilation of the rich collection of radio material that is being kept by the Archives. The programme was broadcasted on Radio Sonder Grense, the Afrikaans language radio station at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. (The programme is in Afrikaans)

Translation of the text:

"SABC Radio Archives preserve a rich cultural treasure sound that includes the history and time period of the South African Broadcasting Corporation as well as that of South Africa .
This radio treasure is made possible by radio itself, which is the main source of our collection . The radio stations are in turn dependent on the archive that makes the material accessible to be uses again . We keep the radio material on sound tapes, cassette tapes, acetate records, mini tapes, CDs and electronically.
Most of the time we can not just press a button to give access, but we need to collect the audio format in the storage room, and dub it in real time and adapted it to make it available again to programme makers, journalists and the public.

As the Afrikaans archivist, it is very difficult to pick some sound clips to illustrate this rich diversity .

I would like to share the following from our Afrikaans language collection :

1. The first broadcast of Radio Sonder Grense on 28 September 1996, with a soundtrack of the late President Nelson Mandela on the importance of this medium.

2. Our first melodramatic radio drama from the thirties, Liefdesdroom (Love Dream), which was broadcasted on December 15, 1937. 

3. With the 25th anniversary of Radio in 1949 in the Cape a Mister CD Fuchs ( the then Regional Director of Natal ) aspoke on the first days in radio. 

4. The first newscast in Afrikaans from Auckland Park.
              
5. Finally, an audio clip of a portion of a reading of a poem of NP van Wyk Louw : "Image of a youth - pigeon and horse". It is read by Fred le Roux in 1965. The youth poem was chosen because World Radio Day this year focuses on youth and radio. 

6. And sometimes we get recognition as archivists, such as the recent death of André Brink. Colleague Bernard Mashiane came in on Sunday to help with sound clippings for producer Wilna Matthee for a feature on the RSG programme Monitor the next morning."

Friday, June 3, 2011

The Weekly Archivist interview: Afrikaans Archivist in the SABC Radio Archives: Karen du Toit

Karen du Toit
SABC Radio Archives
The SABC Radio Archives has Archivists who focus on specific collections for future preservation for our cultural heritage, rebroadcasting and research. This is part of a series of weekly interviews where we will all answer the same questions addressed to us.

It is a way of getting a better understanding of what an Archivist do, as well as gets a better insight into the scope of our collections in the SABC Media Libraries.

The Archivist answering the questions this week is Karen du Toit. She is a member of the cataloguing Team in the SABC Radio Archives. She focuses on the Afrikaans collection, which mostly comprises of the Afrikaans radio stations of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. She has been with the Radio Archives for 6 years.

This week I am answering my own questions, as were addressed to all of the other archivists.
My Life and career.

Education:
I grew up in Kempton Park where I went to school.
I acquired a Library and Information Science degree in 1988 at the Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit, now called the University of Johannesburg (UJ). In 2001 I completed a BA Afrikaans Honors at UJ, and in 2005 I completed a BA Information Science Honors, also at UJ.

Career:
I started to work as a librarian in 1989 at the Transvaal Provincial Administration in the Library and Museum Services, where I helped indexed and catalogued the books being sent to all the provincial libraries.
After that, in 1990, I started to work as an Archivist at the SABC in the SABC News Archives. We worked in shifts and edited catalogued and classified audio-visual material of broadcast news. We also had to do requests for journalists and producers.
In 1998 I started to work as a Reference Librarian in the Newspaper Cutting section of the SABC Information Library. It involved the Digital selection and cataloguing of newspaper articles to make it electronically available to the journalists and producers.
In 2005 I got the job of the Afrikaans Archivist in the SABC Radio Archives. It combined my love for the Afrikaans language and literature beautifully with my passion for information mining. As an archivist I have to make sure that the broadcasted material of today will still be available as a cultural heritage for the generations to follow!

Personal Life:
I got remarried again seven years ago, and now I have a toddler of two and a half, as well as a teen of nearly eighteen.  We stay in Roodepoort. We enjoy the reconstructed family life tremendously now with the little one!


Please tell us about a normal day in your studio. What material do you work with?

Each archivist is a specialist on his own field of focus, because we are only one Archivist which focuses on a language or radio Station. In my case it is Radio Sonder Grense. My days do not look the same. I have to verify the existing collection. I have to catalogue and add new material to our collection. I also need to catalogue different formats, such as min-discs and reel-to-reel tapes, and have to convert it digitally to CD or to Dalet, a Digital Audio System. I have to help with requests if the relevant request team member is not available or when there are a crisis.
I also help with our Web 2.0 presence of the SABC Media Libraries. We have Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as a SABC Media Libraries website and a blog that needs constant updates and content.

Tell us more about the collection you focus on and the scope of material you need to preserve.

My collection consists of Afrikaans audio and broadcast material going back as far as 100 years.
The collection consists of material from Die Afrikaanse Diens, Radio Suid-Afrika  and Afrikaans Stereo of previous years. Since 1996 it called Radio Sonder Grense. We also have audio recordings done in the studio, as well as recordings in the field, such as Afrikaans festivals and interviews.
I still get a kick out of listening to poets reading their own poetry that was recorded long ago. They have of course died long ago as well, but they left us with this valuable legacy!


Do you struggle with technical difficulties, and if so, what?

As audio archivists, we always have an issue with the correct recording and transfer rates, as well as getting the most perfect storage bit rates. There is also the issue of restoration vs destruction of our audio collections. How far do we need to restore our collection, before we actually start to damage it more? New software comes on the market, but we do not always get access to it because of budgetary constraints.
I am also looking forward to the Digital Library project which will digitize our collections. It wiull solve many of our issues with the different formats and it becoming obsolete.


If you have an anecdote about a specific piece of interesting audio material, please share it with us.

I hear interesting audio material every day. This week I catalogued the 2002 interview with Isidor Davis, a former archivist here at the SABC, who tells of how the SABC recorded messages from South African soldiers during World War Two. They did the recordings on acetate records. When the shelling and fighting got very bad, the needle jumped too much, and they could not record. We still have that recordings in our archives, and the BBC were also very interested in acquiring it.

Tell us why you enjoy doing the work that you do.

I love working with historical material that I know is of great heritage value. I also love hearing stories and interviews with inspirational people. I learn new things every day.
How many people also can say that they get to listen to radio dramas and poetry as part of their job? That is the best!


Related posts:
The Weekly Archivist Interview with the Manager of the SABC Radio Archives
The Weekly Archivist Interview: acetate restoration in the SABC Radio Archives
The weekly archivist interview: Sound engineer in the Radio Archives
The weekly archivist interview: Ikwekwezi FM
The weekly archivist interview: Music archivist
The weekly archivist interview: News and actuality
The weekly archivist interview: Sport archivist
The weekly archivist interview: Channel Africa collection