page_title: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
section_title: Collection management
hierarchical_section_title: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies / Collections / Collection management
caption_attribution_description: English: The Shadow Telecine for motion picture film and the the Sondor Magnetic film dubber, used by the AIATSIS Moving Image Unit to convert film stock to video tape or file.
context_page_description: The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, established as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in 1964, is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, publishing and research institute and is considered to be Australia's premier resource for information about the cultures and societies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The Institute is a leader in ethical research and the handling of culturally sensitive material and holds in its collections many unique and irreplaceable items of cultural, historical and spiritual significance. The collection at AIATSIS has been built through over 50 years of research and engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and is now a source of language and culture revitalisation, native title research and family and community history. AIATSIS is located on Acton Peninsula in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.
context_section_description: Once material has been acquired by AIATSIS, the Institute faces the challenges of maintaining a cultural resource collection. This is achieved through a collection management plan that involves processes of recording and cataloguing, and appropriate storage and handling to extend the life of physical items and preserving their content through format shifting.
  Preservation of physical items in the collection is achieved in two key ways:
  1.	Assessment and monitoring for contaminants, such as insects and mould, as well as any potential deterioration through environmental factors or physical damage.
  2.	Storage of collection items in climate-controlled vaults, to maintain their integrity and to minimise contact with deteriorating agents such as moisture and light. The Institute also follows international archiving guidelines for the storage and preservation of materials.
  
  There are a wide variety of analogue photograph, tape and film formats held in the AIATSIS collection, which pose special preservation and future access risks. The age of some of these formats and materials, combined with the varying conditions in which they were stored prior to their acquisition by AIATSIS, heightens the deterioration of the media. Another preservation issue inherent in these analogue materials is the machines that can play back that particular format, as in some cases the material and the playback device are no longer manufactured. To manage these risks and maintain future access to the collection, preservation of the actual content contained in collection items is also achieved through a program of digitisation.
  Due to the potential issues of long-term archiving and storage of digital items, the opposite process is often employed to ensure access and preservation. In the case of digital publications and manuscripts, the originals will often be printed and incorporated into the print collections as an additional preservation measure.
  The AIATSIS collection holds material that is sensitive and/or secret/sacred to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In accordance with its founding Act, and as part of their collection management plan, AIATSIS adheres to strict protocols when handling and processing these sensitive items. The Institute also supports and adheres to the protocols developed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library, Information and Resource Network (ATSILIRN). Restricted visual media such as photographs and printed items are stored separately to the rest of the collection and audio and moving image items are not played until any cultural requirements are checked. Restricted material must also be carefully handled during digitisation, which means that the work is carried out in secured conditions such as enclosed booths and by staff that can meet the protocols of the item being digitised.
caption: (R-L) The Shadow Telecine for motion picture film and the Sondor Magnetic film dubber, used by the AIATSIS Moving Image Unit to convert film stock to video tape or file
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