Australia Day accolade

Congratulations to Kevin Bradley, currently the National Library's Acting Assistant Director General; Collection Management, who received a medal for public service in the recent Australia Day Honours list. The award recognised his work in oral history and digital preservation - read the citation below:

For outstanding public service through the digital preservation of audio visual heritage material. Mr Bradley has been the driving force in the development of innovative approaches to preserving, and providing Australians with access to, the National Library of Australia's significant collection of unique oral history and folklore recordings.

He has developed a fifteen-year plan to digitally preserve the National Library's audio collection, recognising that the imminent obsolescence of play back equipment risked the future loss of unique heritage. No other cultural institution is as far advanced in digital preservation of its audio collections, and the National Library's outcomes have been achieved entirely within existing resources. He is a world expert in the preservation and digitisation of audio visual archival heritage material and was President and Executive member of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) and UNESCO's Memory of the World Subcommittee on Technology and Information for All Programme Technical Committee. As Vice-Chair of the IASA Technical Committee, and with their input and support, Mr Bradley edited and wrote much of the content of the 'Guidelines for the production and preservation of digital audio objects' which has become an international standard.