ASRA 2025 Conference
Reflections on “Deadline 2025”
The Past, Present, and Future
Sydney, Gadigal Country and online
30-31 October 2025
Registrations now open
Join us onsite or on-line
ASRA Members:
Onsite A$115
Online A$25
Non- Members:
Onsite A$165
Online A$55
Conference Dinner: A$75
All staff from our Institutional members are entitled to members rates.
For Institutional registrations requiring an invoice please contact Treasurer@asra.asn.au
ASRA membership offers many benefits, including access to the ASRA community and access to ASRA’s journal, the Australasian Sound Archive. You can become a member or renew your membership during the conference registration process to be eligible for the member rate.
In 2015, the National Film & Sound Archive report ‘Deadline 2025: Collections at Risk’ issued an urgent call to action: to digitise and preserve at-risk audio recordings on magnetic tape before deterioration and obsolescence rendered them irretrievable. This was echoed by the UNESCO/IASA ‘Magnetic Tape Alert Project’ report.
Now that 2025 is here, where do we stand? What lessons have been learned? What stories can we share? And most importantly, what comes next?
The Venue
We are most grateful to our conference partner the SAE University College for providing us with access to their amazing Sydney Campus as conference venue.
Conference Dinner
Our conference dinner will be held on Thursday night at The Blackbird Cafe, located in nearby Cockle Bay. Dinner will be a three-course set menu with dietary options available. The conference dinner is not included in the cost of registration. See our web store to purchase your seat at the conference dinner.
2025 ASRA Conference Draft Program
(as at 16 Sep 2025)
Please note, this program will be updated regularly as we confirm details. Please refer back to this page for the latest information.
Day 1 – Thursday, 30 October 2025
8:30 – Registration desk open
9:15 – Conference opening and Presidents welcome
9:30 – Recovering the Unrecoverable – Panel
Dr Sebastian Gliga (PSI, Zurich, Switzerland)
Play it again – Recovering analog audio from degraded tapes using synchrotron X-rays
Peter Alyea (Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA - tbc)
[IRENE: Analyzing Images to Digitize Sound on Historic Audio Recordings - title tbc]Gabriele Franzoso (Swiss National Sound Archives, Bern, Switzerland - tbc)
[Recovering DATs affected by mold, layer adhesion and tapes with advanced vinegar syndrome - title tbc]
Chair: Mick Newnham
Morning Tea
11:00 – Virginia Madsen
[Navigating the ABC Radio National collection - title tbc]
11:30 – Pete Kolomitsev (State Records of South Australia)
Who doesn’t love a deadline?
12:00 – Jeff Brownrigg (Australian Studies Institute, ANU)
‘Stone Tapes’… and the Endurance of Voices, Visions and Spirits
Lunch
13:30 – The State of Sound Archives in State Libraries 2025 – Panel
Andrea Hensing-Matto, SLSA
Damien Cassidy, SLNSW
Farah Kabbani, SLWA
Alexander Laird, Tasmanian Archives and Special Collections, Libraries Tasmania
Swee Chen Wong, SLQ
Katie Flack, SLV
Afternoon Tea
15:00 – Rahnee Alvarez (ABC Archives)
Shaping a Sustainable Path Beyond the Mass Digitisation Push
3:30 – Cynthia Wu & Joshua Ng (National Library of New Zealand)
Utaina: Preserving Voices, Connecting Communities
16:00 – Craig Field (National Archive of Australia)
Technical innovation, development and their future relationship to preservation
Evening – Conference Dinner at Blackbird Cafe, Cockle Bay.
Day 2 – Friday, 31 October 2025
9:15 – Damien Cassidy (ASRA): Welcome + housekeeping
9:30 – Dan Figurelli (Indiana University Library, USA)
Preserving Audio at Indiana University
10:00 – Kailen Sallander (BAVC Media, San Francisco, USA)
Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape
Morning Tea
11:15 – Hamish Sewell (soundtrails.com.au):
To Archive or not Archive? Soundtrails & the largely-unrecognised power of locative audio.
11:45 – Danny Roberts & Joshua Sellick (National Film and Sound Archive of Australia)
Training challenges and successes in Audio Services
12:15 – Janelle Mikkelsen +1 (ABC Archives)
[From Airwaves to Archives - title tbc]
Lunch
13:30 – ABC and SAE Facility Tours
14:15– Keynote Address – Kevin Bradley
Afternoon Tea
15:20 – ASRA Awards Presentations
15:35 – The Alice Moyle Lecture - Gillian Moody, NFSA
16:30 – Conference close
For further information please contact us
Find information on past conferences click here.