MUMBAI: UNESCO Office in New Delhi has published Digital archiving of audio content using WINISIS and Greenstone software: a manual for community radio managers. This self-instructional handbook is aimed at helping managers of community and FM radio stations, public service broadcasting agencies and any other organizations that deal with audio files create prototype archives of digital audio documents.
Free and open source software (FOSS) helps digital inclusion of citizens in developing countries through easy-to-get and socially useful applications. UNESCO’s information processing tools assist many grassroots institutions in disseminating information to local communities. Digital archive of a community radio station can be a knowledge repository containing collective wisdom of indigenous people, as well as of regional communities and institutions.
The South Asian sub-region is now at the nascent stage of community radio development, with the introduction of policy frameworks in India, Nepal and other countries. Community radio has a great development potential across the sub-region with ever increasing number of community radio stations. To maintain an archive of broadcasted contents is a legal obligation as a self-regulatory mechanism, however many stations are not equipped for doing this. Moreover, community radio stations often need to re-use and re-broadcast many of their archived contents.
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This new publication is a reliable manual for digital archiving of multimedia contents, with special focus on community radio contents. Its users will find it helpful in their every-day work. The publication has its genesis in the recommendations and proceedings of two events, supported by UNESCO: National Consultation on Community Radio for Practising and Potential Community Radio Operators in India and National Consultation to Review Community Radio in Nepal, during which community radio station managers stressed the importance of archiving digital audio contents.
In line with the needs of the community, the manual guides users in creating their own archives with stable, free software like WINISIS, GenISIS and Greenstone. The book also provides the URL addresses from where this software can be downloaded.
