ASRA 2025 Conference

Reflections on “Deadline 2025”
The Past, Present, and Future

Sydney, Gadigal Country and online

30-31 October 2025

Day 1

Thursday, 30 October 2025

Conference Registration

8:30

Welcome 

9:15

Recovering the Unrecoverable Panel tbc

9:45

Play it again – Recovering analog audio from degraded tapes using synchrotron X-rays

Sebastian Gliga, Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland)

The Magnetic Tape Alert Project has identified millions of audio and video tapes containing unique recordings that are in urgent need of digitization. About 30% of these tapes are suffering from degradation, which can prevent their digitization using conventional playback equipment, in which the play head is in physical contact with the mechanically tensioned tape. Compounding the issue, original hardware and spare parts are becoming significantly harder to find.

At the Swiss Light Source of the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, we use synchrotron X-rays to investigate magnetic materials. Based on X-ray spectroscopy, we are developing a unique non-destructive readout method for the recovery of audio signal from magnetic tapes using circularly polarized X-rays by exploiting the X-ray magnetic circular dichroism effect. Our method reads out the magnetic information stored on the tape without contact. This is in stark contrast to a play head, which touches the tape, placing it under mechanical stress. In addition, we digitize the raw signal, exactly as it is recorded on tape (magnetic signal). Whereas play heads sense the magnetic field (derivative of the magnetic signal stored on the tape), which needs to be processed by dedicated electronics to reconstruct the audio signal. Thus, our method preserves the tape mechanically, and extracts the raw audio signal before equalization. In collaboration with the Swiss National Sound Archives, we have established the possibility of reading out analog signals from ¼-inch tape. Furthermore, we successfully demonstrated signal recovery from artificially aged and damaged tape as well as from tape with sticky shed syndrome (without baking).

While proof-of-principle results will be presented for segments of ¼-inch tape, further development of the technique will allow the recovery of entire tapes with high resolution in various multitrack formats using the same equipment, eventually remediating the need for original readout equipment

  • Sebastian Gliga is a physicist at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. He grew up in Canada and earned his PhD in Germany, working on nanomagnetism. He currently uses X-rays to study the magnetic properties of materials at the nanoscale — tens of thousands of times thinner than a human hair.

Sebastian’s passion for recorded audio was sparked by his mother, a musician, and is grounded in physics. He leads the development of an X-ray based technique to recover signals from magnetic tapes and collaborates closely with the Montreux Jazz Digital Project (Switzerland) and the British Film Institute (UK) on preservation efforts.
Sebastian has held research positions at Argonne National Laboratory (USA), the Max Planck Institute (Germany), and ETH Zürich (Switzerland), and has published more than 65 peer-reviewed papers.

  • Peter Alyea, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA tbc 

    IRENE: Analyzing Images to Digitize Sound on Historic Audio Recordings

  • Gabriele Franzoso, Swiss National Sound Archives, Bern, Switzerland - tbc

    Recovering DATs affected by mold, layer adhesion and tapes with advanced vinegar syndrome

  • Chaired by Mick Newnham

Virginia Madsen

11:00

[Navigating the ABC Radio National collection]

Pete Kolomitsev - State Records of South Australia

11:30

When the National Film and Sound Archive published its Deadline 2025 discussion paper in 2017, chatter moved around Australian memory institutions. Some were well on the way to achieve the goal and were quietly confident. To others it was horrifying news and yet another thing to keep them awake at night. State Records of South Australia (SRSA) were definitely on the eyes-wide and white-knuckle end of that spectrum.

This paper will look at what it took to get SRSA from a position of blissful ignorance of Deadline 2025 to a full swing mass digitisation project of the permanent AV records across 23 government Agencies and over 7000 individual items, with the project slated to be completed right on the death knell of 2025.

This paper will explore the threads, from the early executive proposals and site visits to collection reviews and audits, pilot projects, procurement, triage and weeding, and finally rolling up the sleeves to pack boxes of AV material ready to be shipped off for digitisation. Finally looking at the next steps with the digital preservation of this precious asset

Who doesn’t love a deadline?

  • Pete Kolomitsev is the Deadline 2025 Project Manager State Records of South Australia and a member of the ASRA Board

Jeff Brownrigg

12:00

‘Stone Tapes’… and the Endurance of Voices, Visions and Spirits

Every so often strange theories arise to explain even stranger happenings. The world of logic and good sense sometimes become the victims of an urgent need to understand events that seem to have no foundation in contemporary science. This was certainly true at the National Film and Sound Archive in the later 1980s and the 1990s. Stress and anxiety in the workplace appeared to engender a haunting. The building, the old Institute of Anatomy, had since the 1930s and up to 1984 housed a large collection of bones and body parts and for a time it was Canberra’s morgue. Old photos showed galleries of skeletons and there was much more. Sir Colin Mackenzie (who established the Institute) had a serious interest in phrenology, which, by the mid part of the 20th century, had been largely abandoned. A skull said to be Ned Kelly’s was kept at the Institute and, it was said, the body of a well-known murder victim, the Pyjama Girl. All of that history generated a reputation and, perhaps, expectations that something of that past might linger in the place. In the early 1990s the Archive generated torchlight tours of heritage buildings, after dark. At the same time, I began to gather stories from all parts of the NFSA concerning apparently inexplicable things people had seen or heard…or felt. Marylin Dooley and I set up a special tour for those interested in the paranormal. We specialised in ‘voices that come to us across time’ and ‘flickering images of the past’. They were a huge success. And then, quite recently an account of the haunting of the British Museum (BM) in London seemed to have curious parallels with the Canberra experiences. The researcher seeking to collect and explain the ghosts there, spoke of the fabric of the building and the artefacts it contained, amounting to a form of ‘stone tape’; structures capable of preserving those voices and visions from the past. Was the NFSA suffering a residual effect left over from the Institute? Or was something else happening?

  • Dr Jeff Brownrigg is a cultural historian who has spent more than 60 years recovering and making accessible, the lives of vanished Australians. In 1971 he moved to the UK to pursue graduate studies. Returning to Australia in 1974 he spent several years developing curriculum to improve aural and visual literacy for young people. He began working at the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) in 1986. After 20-odd years at the NFSA in various roles - first as Head of Sound and Radio Collections and later, Head of Research and Academic Outreach - in 2005 he moved to the University of Canberra as an Adjunct Professor of Cultural Heritage Studies. More recently, he has worked in the Australian Studies Institute (ANU) where the research goes on.

Recent books include: Anzac Cove to Hollywood (2010), Heaven Earth and Canberra: Shakespeare and the Ghosts of Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive (2021), On Behalf of the People of Ireland (2022).

The State of Sound Archives in State Libraries 2025 Panel

1:30

  • Andrea Hensing-Matto
    State Library of South Austraia

  • Katie Flack

    State Library of Victoria

  • Damien Cassidy
    State Library of New South Wales, ASRA

  • Farah Kabbani
    State Library of Western Australia

  • Alexander Laird
    Libraries Tasmania

  • Swee Chen Wong
    State Library of Queensland

This panel will explore the current landscape of audio digitisation within cultural institutions, using 2025 as a milestone for reflection and forward planning. We’ll begin by examining the percentage of audio collections that have been digitised to date, and how this compares to total holdings—highlighting the balance between published and unpublished materials.

Panellists will discuss the technical and logistical challenges posed by legacy magnetic formats and share insights into which formats have proven most difficult to digitise and why. We’ll also look at the status of ongoing digitisation efforts, including what remains to be done and the key barriers—whether financial, technical, or resourcing.

Beyond digitisation, the conversation will turn to digital preservation strategies: what systems and repositories are being used to ensure long-term access, and how institutions are managing the resource demands of ingest over time. We’ll consider how audiovisual preservation is being balanced against other institutional priorities.

Through case studies and shared experiences, the panel will reflect on both successes and challenges, offering practical insights and lessons learned. Finally, we’ll look ahead to post-2025 priorities, inviting discussion on future directions, collaborations, and innovations in audiovisual preservation.

  • Andrea Hensing-Matto is an experienced audio engineer with over 21 years in the field, including more than a decade dedicated to audiovisual preservation and digitisation at the State Library of South Australia (SLSA). Currently serving as the AV Preservation Coordinator, Andrea plays a key role in leading preservation strategies and workflows, with a strong focus on the national Deadline 2025 initiative—an enduring priority throughout her time at SLSA. Prior to joining the library sector, Andrea spent 10 years as a broadcast engineer and content maker for ABC’s national radio networks in Adelaide, bringing a deep understanding of audio production and technical standards to her current role.

  • Katie Flack is a passionate advocate for improving access to vulnerable library collections. At State Library Victoria, she currently manages the description of the Manuscript and Picture Collections, with a strong focus on preservation and discoverability. From 2018 to 2019, Katie led the Library’s Legacy Data Project, which addressed access barriers to uncatalogued materials through streamlined metadata workflows. Her work has spanned collection research, acquisition, and public engagement, and she has overseen the digitisation of more than 1,800 unique audio-visual recordings from the Library's Manuscripts Collection. Katie brings deep insight into the challenges and opportunities of digitising legacy audio-visual formats. As a practising historian, Katie recognises the deep value of preserving original sources for the future.

  • Damien Cassidy is Digital Media Technical Analyst at the State Library of NSW supporting audiovisual collections. With a career spanning back to the early '90s, he has held roles at the National Archives of Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive, and remembers when digitisation was still just a curious concept. Damien is also a musician, recording and performing for both adults and children and he is the current President of ASRA.

  • Farah Kabbani is the Digitisation Project Manager for the State Library of Western Australia’s At-Risk Audio-Visual Digitisation Project. In 2022, the State Library received $5.385 million from the State Government’s Digital Capability Fund for a multi-year project to digitise and preserve its significant at-risk audio-visual collections, enhance online discovery and access, and unlock thousands of items that depict people, places and events unique to Western Australia.

  • Swee Cheng Wong is with the State Library of Queensland. She has worked with the motion picture film, video; audio and born digital audiovisual collections in State Library for over a decade. Prior to the State Library, she was working with government film collections at the Queensland State Archives.

  • Alexander Laird is the Digital Preservation and Digitisation Lead at Libraries Tasmania

Jason Crowe, National Archives of Australia

2:30

[Reflections on the NAA’s mass digitisation projects - tbc]

Rahnee Alvarez, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

3:30

As Deadline 2025 approached, mass digitisation swept through collecting institutions—ABC included. Over four years, ABC completed three major projects, digitising over 210,000 audio, film, and video items, prioritising at-risk formats to preserve diverse Australian voices and histories.
Digitisation not only preserved content but transformed access, enabling ABC creators to discover, reuse, and self-serve archival material like never before.

With 2025 now here, funding is limited, and parts of the collection remain undigitised. To guide next steps, ABC conducted a detailed analysis of its video holdings, aligning item-level records with selection policies and shifting from broad format-based approaches to a targeted, data-driven strategy.
While developed for video, this approach is applicable across other formats and offers a scalable model for post-deadline digitisation—where resources are tight, and strategic decision-making is critical.

Shaping a Sustainable Path Beyond the Mass Digitisation Push

  • Rahnee Alvarez is the Digitisation and Preservation Manager at ABC Archives. She has worked in the archiving sector for 30 years, including roles at the NAA and the NFSA. Rahnee has spearheaded significant projects focused on digitising and safeguarding fragile audiovisual materials. A passionate advocate for clear metadata, thoughtful selection policies, and the indispensable role of archivists, she champions these as essential to the long-term preservation and integrity of collections.

Cynthia Wu & Joshua Ng, Archives New Zealand and National Library of New Zealand

4:00

Delve into the challenges and impacts of Utaina, a multi-year collaborative digitisation project with the goal of preserving Aotearoa’s at-risk audiovisual taonga. The project has digitised over 70,000 audiovisual materials and made them virtually accessible by the National Library and Archives New Zealand. Many items that have been digitised are culturally significant and were previously inaccessible to researchers elsewhere. For example, most of the music research requests through Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa’s Virtual Reading Room (VRR) have been Pasifika music distributed on small labels in the 1970-90s such as Samoa Daystar Records, Polynesian Records, and Vision Recording Studio. These requests primarily come from researchers and families reconnecting with the music of their parents or grandparents. In most cases, the VRR provides the only copy these researchers can find on the internet. Our presentation will share how digitisation has preserved the content stored on at-risk items and reduced barriers to accessing them.

Utaina: Preserving Voices, Connecting Communities

  • Cynthia Wu was the Audiovisual Digitisation Leader at the National Library of New Zealand, where she led a team of subject matter experts across National Library and Archives to digitise and preserve their audiovisual collections and holdings under the Utaina project. She is now the Team Leader Digital Preservation Operations, leading a team of specialists responsible for preservation systems, workflows, and infrastructure, and overseeing the operational delivery of digital preservation services across the National Library and Archives New Zealand.

  • Joshua Ng is a Digital Preservation Analyst at the Archives New Zealand and National Library of New Zealand. He specialises in audiovisual preservation workflows, infrastructure, and metadata. In Utaina, he informed procurement, designed digitisation, quality control (QC), validation processes, and the preservation of 70,000 at-risk audiovisual magnetic media.

Craig Field, National Archive of Australia

4:30

Technical innovation, development and their future relationship to preservation