Keeping Your History Alive
Workshop and Information Handbook

The Keeping Your History Alive package was developed to address the growing need of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations, communities and individuals for information and advice concerning the care and handling of audiovisual material. This package includes an intensive workshop on how to create, document and store audiovisual material and an accompanying handbook.

Topics covered in the Keeping your History Alive workshop and handbook include:

• Sound and video recording techniques and equipment, both analogue and digital
• Photographic techniques, using both traditional film and digital technologies
• Documenting and cataloguing audiovisual materials
• Storing and handling audiovisual material for long-term preservation
• Copying and disseminating archival materials
• Preparing for disasters

The Keeping your History Alive workshop has been presented at several national conferences including the Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages (FATSIL) National Languages Forum in 2001, and the Australian Linguistics Institute Indigenous Program in 2002. Other tailor-made presentations have been made at AIATSIS to visiting groups from Batchelor College and in 2004, NSW language workers associated with the NSW Aboriginal Language Research and Resource Centre.

The handbook has been disseminated to a wide audience, including participants at the above workshops, clients of the Audiovisual Archive and Indigenous people approaching the Institute for archival advice.

To obtain a copy of the manual, or to enquire about hosting a workshop, please contact us by:

Information for Grantees

The Audiovisual Archive can also advise AIATSIS grantees on the best method of recording and storing the audiovisual material which they produce in the course of their research.

Please download our criteria for depositing material and grantee check list.

For a summary of recommended digital audiovisual formats, please refer to the document Audiovisual Technical Standards for Digital Submissions.