with broadcasting) gradually grew through the century and began to accumulate
in what were later called 'audiovisual archives', concerning not only radio and
television, but also any domain producing audiovisual recordings (scientific,
military, museums, musical, etc.). Therefore, a new family of 'librarians'
appeared when collections grew big enough, who began to organise, document
and classify these new objects, often in relation to other existing objects such as
books, scripts, or even art objects. This is how audiovisual records began to
accumulate in locations as different as libraries, museums and mainly in
archives, wherever there existed an intention to keep complete records of the
activity of an institution. Broadcast archives represent a large majority of the
existing holdings.
The value of an audiovisual archive
Audiovisual objects present images and sounds through time in a way that can
make sense to our perception. They can be artistic works as in cinema or
television fiction, they can represent everyday life and activities as in newsreel,
documentary or television, or they can be records of an activity as in research. In
a more general approach, audiovisual productions reflect the thoughts, the facts
and the history of our society in its multiple facets; they are the testimony which
future generations can rely upon to understand our past and present, they can
reflect everyday life from its subtlest details to the great events of our world.
Audiovisual archives are thus objects of study and objects of continuous reuse.
As a reflection of our past, they constitute a unique source of information for
historians, sociologists, philosophers and the public that wishes to understand
or review what once was. As our society opens slowly but progressively contents
to general access, the demand for audiovisual archives grows at a considerable
speed.3 Since the beginning of audiovisual recordings, reuse of material has been
widespread mainly in broadcast companies. Not only is there a very large
demand for images and sounds for news, but also complete programmes are
often broadcast several times, or sections of programmes are used in new
productions. The demand grows constantly with the development of cable and
satellite channels, large consumers of image archives, and with audiovisual
publishing on cassettes and now on DVDs.
How are these records kept? Initially they were kept as objects since they came in
boxes and were stored on shelves. The concept was that if the objects were kept in
good conditions - not too hot and not too cold, not too dry or humid -, the
contents would be preserved for a very long period. In fact no real knowledge
existed, due to lack of experience on long periods of time, on how long a given
medium would last. After several decades of continuous accumulation4
deterioration symptoms began to appear: loss of information, media self-
destruction, and difficulties in maintaining reading machines. The first
conservation actions were started during the analog era (which runs from the
beginnings of recording until the eighties, with often long overlapping periods
with digital media) transferring contents from one media to another either to
facilitate access (film to video, for example) or to preserve contents (wax-
cylinders to disks or audio-tape).
An archive has to keep its holdings in good physical conditions, and to provide
a good description and organisation of them, in order to make them easily
accessible. It is important to know that the two aspects of archives, object of
study and object of use for production, rely on different economical premises.
Study access tends to be free since it engages no commercial transaction.
Production use, which is the basis of broadcasting, implies commercial trans
actions and complex rights management.
The migration from analog to digital: a complicated challenge
for archives
Digital recording systems started in the sixties and were known to all
technicians as a future encoding system that would successfully replace analog
systems, improving quality and permitting unlimited copies without content
degradation. Digital systems came slowly to the market, first in the audio
domain (at the beginning of the eighties) and then in the video domain (at the
end of the eighties). Archive owners adopted two strategies: to choose digital
media as a preservation option and initiate transfer programmes; to wait and see
what other archives were doing and how technology would evolve. There was an
awareness of the short (or uncertain) life expectancy of the first digital media
and it seemed, for audiovisual archive owners who took the long view, that it was
necessary to wait for new long-lasting media.
Technology advanced quite quickly. First it was possible to record information on
digital media like CD, DAT, Digital Beta (which looked more like analog media
since it consisted of boxes or cassettes containing one or several programmes
recorded on a digital encoding basis). Then, with the evolution of hard disk
drives and large robotic storage systems, it was possible to consider audiovisual
contents not only as programmes but also as files, opening the possibility of
almost immediate access to huge amounts of information. Fast access, easy
distribution and easy search of information were some of the new facilities that
digitisation permitted. But digital systems were (and are) permanently evolving,
improving access-times and storage capacities and no clear digital media or
system seemed to emerge capable of lasting for a long period of time.5 The
situation was even worse for those who had chosen to adopt the early digital
encoding systems (mainly small archives), since very quickly these systems were
obsolescent and their life span was even shorter than traditional analog media.
While these technical evolutions were happening, audiovisual archive owners
were trying to find some answers to very simple questions:
1) How long will digital audiovisual media last?
2) What digital format should be used?
3) How much would it cost?
BEHOUD
3 In France the Inathèque de France, which is situated in the new building of the Bibliothèque Nationale,
makes accessible, for research purposes only, the French audiovisual production, public and private, since
1992. See atwww.ina.fr/inatheque/.
4 Archives began to grow steadily after the 1950s, when magnetic recording was developed, first for audio
and then for images.
56
DANIEL TERUGGI DO WE NEED A PROJECT LIKE PRESTOSPACE?
5 Even if archiving is in essence an activity projecting on long periods of time; due to the quick evolution of
media, a period of ten years may be considered quite a long one.
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