Urgent need to preserve country’s audio-visual history – Gobind

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Gobind Singh Deo. — Bernama file photo

PETALING JAYA: Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo has spoken of the possible need to formulate a national framework for the digitisation of the country’s film and audio-visual collections.

This, he said, could be undertaken through a collaborative approach involving all stakeholders such as the federal and state governments, national organisations, non-governmental and non-profit bodies, research and learning institutions as well as the private sector.

“There is definitely an urgent need to preserve our audio-visual history in order to create value and benefit for all Malaysians and our future generations,” he said when officiating at the launch of DAMsmart Asia Centre of Excellence here today.

Gobind also witnesssed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between collaborative partners involving DAMsmart of Australia, TransMedia Dynamics of the United Kingdom & Silvertrak of Australia.

The minister said he is pleased to see this collaborative effort take off as it will enable and ease the processes involving digital preservation, long-term access, digital archiving, digital curation, institutional repositories and digital records management for the country.

“This also means that the government and its agencies as well as private sector businesses don’t need to send valuable national, private or corporate archives overseas for processing, as all these can be done right here in Malaysia,” Gobind said.

In fact, he said, Malaysia should aim to become the one-stop centre for digital transfomation for the region as the digitisation of mass volumes of physical assets and other related services can now be done in a short period of time using AI-based engines.

“I was also informed that these three companies are aggregating media services work back into Malaysia from other Southeast Asian countries, thus creating additional jobs in the media sector,” Gobind said.

The minister said this will help create a local workforce with skills in digitisation and restoration of valuable national archives and other important archives, as well as skills in content management, quality control and provision of content for new delivery platforms.

“This certainly bodes well for our local economy as we take on and tackle the challenges of the digital era and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0),” Gobind said.

Congratulating the consortium for bringing world-class expertise and technology to Malaysia, he thanked them for having confidence in and making Kuala Lumpur the hub for their Asian media services as part of their global strategy and vision, in a collaboration that is expected to create up to 200 technology jobs.

At a press conference later, Gobind again underscored the urgency to preserve the vast number of audio-visual content in the possession of agencies such as Filem Negara Malaysia, RTM, Bernama and Finas as well as the private sector.

“To me, these are national treasures, they’re historic and of course something that we need to preserve,” the minister said, adding that a system or a directory needs to be devised for easy access to such items for people in this advanced era.

He had also mentioned in his speech earlier that the digitisation of magnetic tapes and other tape-based formats is of paramount importance, particularly if the audio-visual recordings are of national value.

The minister said he was told that the deadline for the digitisation is 2025, with items not digitised by then may be lost forever. – Bernama