other forms of access for cultural or educational purposes.32 Sound Vision, while
positioning itself as a heritage institution also, functions largely in the manner of a
television network archive, although operating independently rather than as part of
such a network.33 It has a government mandate to carry out the combined tasks of
production archive for the national public broadcasters and keeper of a Dutch
historical audiovisual collection (that includes also materials that do not originate
in said production archive).34
As mentioned, it is commonly assumed that moving image archives, in terms of
their selection criteria, deviate in certain respects from other kinds of archives,
especially the kind that focus on "official" records emerging from some kind of an
administrative process. The records they keep, Kula argues, are seldom appreciated
for their functional or evidentiary value and more often considered in informational
terms.35 In the most conventional sense, moving images derive informational value
from the fact that they document historic people, places or phenomena, socio-
cultural or political developments, or historically-specific attitudes or opinions.
These factors are relevant in particular to AV departments of government-mandated
archives and broadcast archives; to the latter, among others, because of the likely
reuse value of such material.36 Another kind of informational value, this one
specific to AV archives, derives from the records' status as attestant to the history of
an industry and its production technology, or to the development of narrative or
stylistic conventions.37 Here, aesthetic principles, inevitably highly elusive, are often
adhered to. Common also are productional frameworks for appraisal and selection.
Sometimes, this entails that the work of particular companies, directors or other
contributors is subject to universal retention (possibly along with working
materials, i.e. items that document the various stages of production).38
The aforementioned criteria in turn intersect with notions of what is nationally -
or, in the case of archives with a narrower scope: regionally - significant.39 Where
aesthetic criteria apply, the influence of academy-endorsed canons is often visible.40
Also scarcity and, due to the fragility of much AV material, age, are important
factors: the rarer or older media are, the more valuable they become.41 Another key
factor is cost of retention. Keeping an object or collection, indeed, makes sense only
if the archive is prepared to safeguard it from loss due to decay or obsolescence;
doing so however has severe financial implications. Therefore, the cost factor, often
along with technical considerations (what is the state of an item today, and what
does this mean for its future preservation?) has traditionally contributed to the
perceived value of moving images as well.42
In moving image archives, criteria for appraisal and selection - whether on record as
such, or not - tend to closely tie in with institutional mission statements.43 This is
true also for EYE and Sound Vision, whose collection policies exemplify the above
tendencies but place their own emphases as well.44 In the introduction, I mentioned
that both institutions see themselves as repositories for collections of national
interest. Sound Vision specifies this, stating that it does for moving images what
the national museums, the National Archive and the National Library do for
heritage objects, monuments, documents and books.45 The institutions share a
responsibility for the audiovisual portion of what one of them calls the
"Netherlands Collection" ("Collectie Nederland"), however with Sound Vision
nieuwe trends en ontwikkelingen
32 I use these categories as they are interpreted by Edmondson, in Audiovisual Archives, 37-38. EYE is a non
profit foundation, subsidised by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the city of Amsterdam, the
province of North-Holland and various private and public funds. It was established in 2010 as the result of a
merger between what was then known as Nederlands Filmmuseum, Holland Film (previously responsible for
the international marketing and promotion of Dutch films), Filmbank (which did distribution of Dutch
experimental films) and the Netherlands Institute for Film Education.
33 For evidence of the former, see for instance Lauwers, Collection Policy Sound and Vision, 11-12. A. de Jong,
Digital Preservation Sound and Vision: PolicyStandards and Procedures (Hilversum 2016) calls it a "corporate
audio-visual programme archive" for the Dutch public broadcasters (13, or 15 in the online version,
available at http://publications.beeldengeluid.nl/pub/388).
34 Lauwers, Collection Policy Sound and Vision, 8, 18; Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid, 'Jaarverslag
2014' (unpublished report, n.d.), 12 (online at https://www.beeldengeluid.nl/jaarverslagen); De Jong,
Digital Preservation Sound and Vision, 15 (13 in online version). The institute's official mandate as a
corporate/production archive is laid down in the Dutch Media Law (Mediawet); its task as keeper of a
national historical collection is recognised as part of other agreements, but here the situation is more
complex (see J.M. Breemen, V.E. Breemen and P.B. Hugenholz, Digitalisering van audiovisueel erfgoed:
Naar een wettelijke publieke taak (Amsterdam 2012) 6-26, available online at http://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/
download/1043, a text that also outlines how this combination of tasks came about; many thanks to
Mieke Lauwers for alerting me to it. Beth Delaney and Annemieke de Jong, in a piece on digital preservation
in archives that hold television materials, call Sound Vision a "hybrid" archive. (In doing so, they
distinguish it from broadcast archives "proper", i.e. the kind that function exclusively as production archives
for (public) broadcasters, and national libraries, that are much more focused on preservation but tend to
adhere to lower quality standards, as they have a reference-only mission.) See Delaney and De Jong, 'Media
Archives and Digital Preservation: Overcoming Cultural Barriers', New Review of Information Networking 20:
1-2 (2015) 75-79.
35 Kula, Appraising Moving Images, 23-24, 34-35. The author here loosely borrows terminology from archival
science (Schellenberg and others).
36 Evidence of this is the fact that they figure prominently in the 1996 FIAT Recommended Standards (as quoted
ibidem, 67); similar formulations are also used in more recent articles on appraisal and selection in tele
vision archives, as referenced in earlier notes. For claims as to the importance of reuse value to television
192
eef masson appraisal and selection in moving image archives: legacy and transformations
archives, see Kula, 'Archival Appraisal of Moving Images', or Kula, Appraising Moving Images, 68. Ide and
Weisse, again, argue that this is true in particular for production archives (i.e. the kind that are part of
active broadcasting companies; see 'Recommended Appraisal Guidelines', 3). Karen Gracy in turn observes
that reuse value is crucial also to many smaller AV archives, which even prioritise the preservation of
materials that are likely to generate licensing revenue (see Gracy, 'Editor's Foreword', The Moving Image 7:2
(2007) vi).
37 See for instance Kula, Appraising Moving Images, 44, 59-84 (the latter pages referencing a variety of guide
lines and institution-specific policies dating from before 2003). Reception may also be relevant here; Sound
Vision, for instance, particularly values popular and prize-winning works (see Lauwers, Collection Policy
Sound and Vision, 26; Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid, 'Werkproces Acquisitie Beeld en Geluid',
version 2.0 (unpublished document, 2015) 10 (online at http://publications.beeldengeluid.nl/pub/409)).
38 Kula, Appraising Moving Images, 44. Universal retention is common practice especially for feature films
(ibidem, 45) while sampling is done more often in broadcast archives (Harrison, 'Archival appraisal') -
although not for all categories of materials.
39 Edmondson, Audiovisual Archives, 64-65.
40 E.g. Kula, Appraising Moving Images, 59; elsewhere in the book (32, 43-44) the author also discusses some
of the issues this raises.
41 Harrison, 'Selection and audiovisual collections'; Kula, Appraising Moving Images, 41; M. Ide, 'Appaising
Moving Images: Assessing the Archival and Monetary Value of Film and Video Records' [book review],
The American Archivist 66: 1 (2003) 200.
42 S. Kula, 'Selection policy and selection standards for television archives', in: H. Harrison (ed.), Audiovisual
Archives: A Practical Reader (Paris: 1997), http://www.unesco.org/webworld/ramp/html/r9704e/r9704e0p.
htm (accessed 13 May 2016) [see also http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001096/109612eo.pdf
(accessed 20 March 2018) - ed.] This factor is highlighted also in many of the articles written since the early
2000s that propose selection guidelines for television archives (as mentioned in earlier notes).
43 Ide and Weisse, 'Recommended Appraisal Guidelines', 3.
44 All of the abovementioned criteria are either covered explicitly or alluded to in the institutions' collection
policy documents: Lauwers, Collection Policy Sound and Vision, passim, and EYE Filmmuseum,
'Collectieplan', passim.
45 Lauwers, Collection Policy Sound and Vision, 5.
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