Both workshops were addressing the archives’ managers, technicians and librarian, preparing them for the inevitable changes that are taking place in audio and video archiving today.

The archives in the Central Asian states can look back at a long tradition. However, the current changes in technology are posing serious threads to the holdings. If the archives want to avoid rendering their documents inaccessible they will have to digitize them rather sooner then later.

Uzbekistan’s Republican Broadcasting House has just recently updated the equipment of its production and broadcasting studios and is proud of its state-of-the-art computer technology. However, it now faces the challenge of converting the 100 000 tapes and 10 000 hours with important analogue recordings to its server, which will be delicate and time consuming task.

The workshop provided the technicians with the rules, skills and background information, which is required for this conversion. AIBD’s consultant Karl Lippe also emphasized on the importance of an adequate and efficient workflow, which will enable the archivists to finalize this task in a reasonable time. Anvar Muratov, the Director of the Broadcasting House, pointed out that this workshop came just in time for his organization and that it has enabled the staff to make best use of its new equipment as well as of its valuable sound archive.

AIBD had invited Dietrich Schueller, the Director of the Phonogram Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Vice President of UNESCO's Information for All Programme (IFAP), as a guest lecturer for the workshop in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The Central State Archive for Film, Photo, Video and Sound Recordings hosted the workshop. 29 participants from various Kazakh radio stations and cultural and scientific archives took part in this workshop. It exposed the participants to the state of the art in preservation of analogue and digital audio and video carriers, the conversion from analogue to digital and the selection of adequate digital formats. Also issues related to the development of the archive catalogue system were covered and recommendations were given for the development of an electronic database system. Alla Seitova, the Director of the Central State Archive expressed here sincere gratitude for having the unique opportunity of an exchange of experience between Central Asian and European archivist.