Digital Audiovisual Heritage

Abstract

While some of the challenges of digitizing audiovisual are common to other types of digitization, there are a few factors that present unique difficulties: the relatively large file size of audiovisual materials that place greater demands on storage and bandwidth, dealing with proprietary formats, obsolescence of analogue materials and playback equipment, complex copyright and digital rights management, relatively under-developed and evolving standards and, lack of freely-available and reliable resources about audiovisual digitization and preservation. This research investigates the experiences and perspectives of staff working with audiovisual materials in the memory sector. The objective is to gain insights into the challenges and issues they face, particularly in terms of preserving and maintaining long-term digital access to audiovisual heritage. The questions guiding this research are: • What challenges do memory institutions staff encounter with audiovisual preservation? How are these challenges dealt with? • Do memory institutions take part in collaborative activities to preserve audiovisual materials? If so, in what capacity? The sampling aimed to include participants from the three main types of memory institutions (i.e. archives, libraries and museums) and to involve participants from different types of entities who were involved in managing audiovisual heritage material, from large national, government-funded institutions to smaller, council- or community-funded ones. The findings show that while there is active digitization in some institutions, in others, their ambitions and efforts are limited by the lack of funding, dedicated staff with the necessary knowledge, skills and experience, and inadequate equipment. The lack of standards and unrealistic or unachievable best practices were mentioned as potential hinder by a number of participants from smaller institutions which could not afford to invest in specialized equipment and recruitment of specialist staff or in providing training for staff. There was the sense of perceived imbalance between large, well-funded and smaller institutions which are less-endowed, with larger institutions setting benchmarks that were unachievable for their smaller, less well-resourced counterparts. Participants from smaller institutions saw the value in a community-based approach to facilitate collaboration on preservation projects as it was unrealistic for them to acquire the skills and to develop the necessary infrastructure on their own.