Forty Years of IASA – a brief introduction By Grace Koch and Albrecht Häefner You may wheedle only a weary smile out of some people if you tell them that this year is the 40th anniversary for IASA . Only 40 years – that’s ridiculous! For them, a millennium or, at least, a centenary is the minimum period to commemorate an event such as 500 years of the Gutenberg Bible (1455 – 1955), or 500 years of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1492 – 1992), or the 300th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1985). On the other hand there are people who think that being married for 40 years to the same person may be a very long time. IASA members have many special memories of friends, of working together and of being part of an organization that is truly more than a professional society. Those 40 years have been very special. Let us keep up this kind of comparison, which is a perfect fit to describe IASA’s history. Let us start in 1969 in Amsterdam, a defining moment that challenged some young and angry sound archivists to band together in order to become more independent. Contrary to their more venerable relatives, such as the paper- based archives, libraries and museums who had created long-standing associations dealing with their own requirements, these sound archivists tumbled into their first adolescent crisis when they saw the need to separate from IAML, their parent organization, and to create their own Association, IASA. So much has happened since then! IASA gained independence and autonomy from IAML with its own constitution, widened its scope to all audiovisual media, and adopted its own philosophy. IASA has travelled around the world with annual conferences, its members have spoken peer-to-peer with institutions of equal status through the CCAAA, it has dealt with the crossing over of analogue to digital – in other words, IASA has gone far. It is respected, it has a say, it is in demand. In September 1981, David Lance, one of IASA’s founding fathers, said “… The Association became ‘adolescent‘ and subsequently reached ‘adulthood‘ and even ‘maturity’. We believe that is where we are now. The celebration committee debated how to present IASA’s development in the best way. Initially we considered taking all presidential reports printed in the Phonographic Bulletins and IASA Journals and publishing them as a description of IASA’s history. The large number of pages involved and the question of who would actually read them persuaded us to reduce the volume down to the first and last reports of those Presidents who wrote for the Bulletins and Journals. We have chosen to include, however, all of the Presidential articles by David Lance because they document much of the early organizational development. We are sure that not only the landmarks of IASA but also the continuous development of the Association can be seen from their writings. Additionally, there are some articles on IASA’s ‘prenatal’ phase, its first shaky steps and its launch as well as a special history of IASA. We have left in most of the original spelling errors so that you can see how far we have come and have tried to keep at least a semblance of the original typefaces. We have put the titles in hypertext so that you can go immediately to the articles that you choose from the Table of Contents. Last but not least this commemorative work contains a “picture book” of all programme covers and some accompanying material from the annual conferences. We chose to publish a CD rather than a print version so that we could include a larger number of important documents. In the year 2019, IASA members may find that this CD contains enough material to serve as a strong basis for a major work on the subject “Fifty Years of IASA”. Although IASA is certainly not a marriage agency, it has spawned a number of romances. Rolf Schuursma, IASA’s first Secretary-General, and Anne Briegleb, Vice President in 1976, set a good example when they met through IASA, fell in love and married later. Who knows how many other such relationships have been encouraged through mutual involvements in IASA. We shall see what the future will bring. Therefore, happy birthday, dear IASA, ad multos annos! The life expectancy of modern people is about 80 years, and we wish IASA an existence at least as long or even much longer. And let us join those who believe that 40 years are sufficient to celebrate. We are simply building up a good tradition as we can see by our great celebration of IASA’s 30th birthday in 1999 in Vienna. IASA – 40 years: an overview1 Ilse Assmann (ed.), Grace Koch, Dietrich Schüller, George Boston, Crispin Jewitt, Kurt Deggeller, Eva Fønss-Jørgensen BIRTH OF IASA In the summer of 1969 in Amsterdam, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) was established to function as a forum for international cooperation between archives preserving recorded sound and audiovisual documents. IASA’s beginning is directly linked to IAML (International Association of Music Libraries). IAML supported the floundering first few years when IASA lacked infrastructure and resources to host its own conferences. IAML had been officially founded in Paris in July 1951. Its Radio Library Commission which also had a Radio Sound Archive Subcommittee was primarily interested in music recordings. Before IASA came into existence, earlier attempts to unite sound archivists were made. The first initiative came from linguists who, in 1962, formed IALSA, (International Association of Linguistic Sound Archives) at a meeting in Amsterdam. In 1963 already, IALSA was absorbed by a newly founded organization, the Fédération Internationale des Phonothèques (FIP). The inactivity of FIP, however, led to the decline of the organization which practically faded away during the early 1970s. IASA was founded after sound archivists within IAML expressed, in view of the inactivity of FIP, their intention to form an international body for all kinds of sound archives. The first meeting took place in the Département de la Musique of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris on September 4, 1968 and was attended by IAML members Patrick Saul (Director of the British Institute of Recorded Sound), Vladimir Fedorov (Director of the Department and President of IAML), Dr. Kurt Dorfmuller (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München), Dr. Herbert Rosenberg (Director of the Nationaldiskotek in Kopenhagen), Dr. Israel Adler (Director of the Jewish Music Research Centre at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem), FIP president, Roger Décollogne (Director of the Phonotèque Nationale), and oral historian, Rolf Schuursma, Rolf Schuursma from the Institute of History at the University of Utrecht, represented spoken word archives. Dr. Adler was the Chairperson. At first a joint committee was intended between the Record Libraries’ Commission and the newly founded IASA. In principle the roles were clear: IAML was interested in music recordings and IASA in all recordings. IAML also represented a branch of librarianship, whereas IASA was a response to the fact that sound recordings were more often held in an archival environment - a separate professional context. IAML was not sufficiently open to the technical challenges in the sound archives, which are most acute in the areas of unpublished recordings, generally held in archives, rather than the 1 It should be noted that this article does not pretend to be complete at all. It is merely an overview of 40 years of activities and growth for IASA. Research has just started and it is hoped that over the next few years a complete history of IASA will be available – Ed. 1 published phonograms held by IAML member libraries. It would take a while before full agreement was achieved to avoid overlapping and even competing activities between IAML's Record Libraries’ Commission and IASA. The actual foundation of IASA took place in 1969 during the course of the IAML Annual Conference in Amsterdam. On August 18, 1969 Lou Hoefnagels (Director of the Theater Klank en Beeld), Rolf Schuursma, Patrick Saul, Donald L. Leavitt (Library of Congress), Philip Miller (Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound in New York), Dietrich Lotichius (Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg), Herbert Rosenberg, Claes Cnattingius (Swedish Radio), and Timothy Eckersley (BBC), met at the Institute of Theater Klank en Beeld (Institute for Theatre Sound and Image) in Amsterdam to prepare the draft constitution. They would become known as the founding members of IASA. The formal launch of IASA took place on August 22, 1969 with 24 participants. The official name of the new organization was the International Association for Sound Archives. The first Executive Board was made up by Don Leavitt (President), Patrick Saul (Vice-President), Claudie Marcel-Dubois (Vice- President), Rolf Schuursma (Secretary), and Claes Cnattingius (Treasurer). During the joint IASA/IAML Conference in Leipzig in June 1970, a decision that IASA should have its own periodical, led to the birth of the Phonographic Bulletin. The first issue was in A4 format with different shades of green for the cover and lettering and highlighting the IASA logo designed by Rob van der Elzen, a graphic designer with the Film Research Foundation. From Issue no. 16 onward the lettering on the cover was changed to black, and in 1977 the A4 format was replaced by the B5 format. IASA’s publications would regularly change and be updated to improve communication and to facilitate the exchange of information between members. The first issue of the Phonographic Bulletin was launched by Rolf Schuursma and Phita Stern (Utrecht) during the 1971 joint IASA/IAML conference in St Gallen, which was also the first conference where IASA had a separate program.