Digital Archiving of Audio Content using WINISIS and Greenstone Software: A Manual for Community Radio Managers

Abstract

This self-instructional handbook is aimed at helping managers of community radio stations, FM radio stations, public service broadcasting agencies and any other organisations that deal with audio files in creating prototype archives of digital audio documents. In line with the needs of the community, the manual guides users in creating their proper archives with stable, free software like WINISIS, GenISIS and Greenstone. The book also mentions the URLs from where these software can be downloaded from. While free and open source software (FOSS) helps digital inclusion of citizens in developing countries by bringing within easy reach the socially useful applications, UNESCO's information processing tools help many grassroots institutions in disseminating information to local communities. Digital archive of a community radio station will be a kind of knowledge repository that contains collective wisdom of indigenous people, communities and institutions in the region. The South Asia 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. Also community radio stations need to reuse and re-broadcast many of their archived contents. This publication has its genesis in the recommendations and proceedings of the UNESCO-supported two national events entitled respectively 'National Consultation on Community Radio for Practising and Potential Community Radio Operators in India' and 'National Consultation to Review Community Radio in Nepal', where community radio station managers felt the importance of archiving digital audio contents. This document can be considered as an authoritative self-instructional manual for digital archiving of multimedia contents and more specifically for community radio contents. The manual users may find it helpful in their daily work.