Iowa State University Special Collections and University Archives brings you a compilation of ISU Athletics from our Audiovisual (AV) Collection, in observance of UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. Enjoy! #AudiovisualHeritage #WAVHD
This year the theme of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is “Your Story is Moving”. Here is the CCAAA Board’s official statement about this year’s theme:
Every year millions of people record stories of all varieties on audiovisual media, ranging from narratives of everyday life to historic events. These moments are chronicled and stored each day on multiple formats and media, whether they are digital or analogue. How do we ensure that this ever-growing corpus that is our cultural history today is preserved and exists in the future? And how do we guarantee that this rapidly accumulating, collective moving story of ours is not lost, as much of our history on these fragile media has been over the past 150 years?
Reliably, thousands of archivists, librarians and preservationists around the world strive to make our world’s cultural heritage accessible and safeguard it for the future. In addition to their daily efforts to provide access to historic collections housed in established archives, archivists actively rescue collections in danger of loss or destruction due to poor climates, less than ideal storage conditions, political unrest or the economic challenges that many countries are confronted with daily.
Our stories are moving in many ways. First, they move through the very act of playing this unique material on the original equipment that transports the object as part of viewing or hearing it, whether it is motion picture film, a vinyl record, an audio cassette or a videotape.
Second, as physical objects, made of organic material, these items are constantly and naturally moving through an ongoing state of decay, are deteriorating, and moving towards inaccessibility as they travel through their own timeline. This constant deterioration serves as an even stronger argument for supporting the ongoing efforts of the world’s archivists to preserve our audio-visual heritage.
Third, in countries and institutions with resources available to digitize collections, the rate at which our stories can now quickly move around the globe, thanks to the newest digital communication technologies now allows us to share our stories faster and ever more widely to more locations around the world than ever before.
Lastly, of course, stories move us emotionally. We see this every year on Home Movie Day, an event that provides a moment for publics around the world to bring their visual cultural heritage to archives and libraries, to view, sometimes for the first time in decades. As they see lost family members, loved ones and ancestors long gone come to life on the screen, tears flow, emotions are high, and these moments of our captured history transport us to new heights as our histories unfold before our eyes. History too comes to life through the power of the moving image and in sound recordings which connect us personally with those events and moments in time which have shaped our memories and who we are.
On October 27, please join us in celebrating our audio-visual heritage, and help us acknowledge the work done every day to preserve our stories so that they will endure for future generations.
Cardinal Tales 