Raising the undead

Just when you thought that the issue of extending the copyright period of sound recordings had been impaled on a stake and was by now dead and buried, it has, under the Hungarian presidency of the EU, risen from its grave to haunt and terrorise our AV archives.

The latest instalments of this gripping saga of light against dark, of good against evil, of waking the dead, can be found here, you dare not read, but somehow your eyes are drawn...

With thanks to @dafyddtudur for the "heads up"

Hacking Europeana

Europeana has held a hackathon - getting developers to play with and re-use Europeana content.

Photo of the day

Disused lead mine, Ceredigion, mid Wales.
(copyright Iestyn Hughes)

Wales has seen more than its fair share of mining over the centuries. While people tend to associate the country with coal mining, iron and steel production, a variety of ores have been mined across the country since pre Roman times.

While south Wales is famous for its coal, Anglesey had one of the world's biggest copper mines (Mynydd Parys), north Wales its coal seams, and mid Wales its lead and silver mines.

Littered across mid west Wales are the remains of past mining adventures. Many are in what are now very remote and depopulated landscapes. Aberystwyth even had its own mint in times gone bye.

Not too far from the "industrian archaeology" site depicted here is the Llywernog Silver Lead Mining Museum. If you are ever in the area, please visit, if only for a glimpse of this now largely forgotten industry.

The future of the audiovisual industry

A conference on the future ofthe audiovisual industry will be held in Budapest 19 - 20 April.

A full programme can be downloaded here (.pdf).

Polish radio archive online

Of interest maybe to the Polish diaspora, Polish radio - Radia Wolnosci - including a large amount of archive material - is now available online.

Sarn Gynfelyn

Photo of the day
Sarn Gynfelyn, an outcrop of boulders stretching miles out to sea at Wallog, near Aberystwyth.
(copyright Iestyn Hughes)

The Sarn is associated with the the legend of Cantre'r Gwaelod, a long lost village, drowned by the sea when the keeper of the sluice gates, one Seithennyn, got rather drunk, and failed in his duty. The king, Gwyddno Garan Hir escaped to higher ground via the Sarn...

Paid content - Netherlands

Via CEG (thanks).

Ximon.nl, the new online streaming platform of the Dutch film
and TV heritage institutions, is being launched today April 7th.
Through the platform of Ximon well over 650 hours of high
quality feature films, documentaries and TV-drama is now
available to the public.

The earliest work dates from 1901 and the latest productions
were made in 2010. Prices start from 0.99 eurocents for a video
which can be easily paid online. Ximon’s platform automatically
adjusts the quality of the video stream, even up to full HD (1080p),
depending on the end-users’ bandwidth and local computerpower.
New features of the VOD-platform also include ‘collections’ that may
contain up to 40 video’s sharing a common theme (period, actor, city,
producer etc). Initiators EYE Film Institute Netherlands (Film)
and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (TV) plan to
make their whole digitalized repository available through Ximon
in the next couple of years.

Website: (consumers); (institutions and business).

Read Ximon.nl presentation at the last meeting of the
Cinema Expert Group: