ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 44 | April 2000
Sound and image archivists racing the clock
Kevin Bradley, from Digital and Audio Preservation Resources, NLA, at the Pantheon while in Paris for the Joint Technical Sessions 2000
Every four years an event occurs that draws the best trained in their field from many countries all over the world. There are, however, few spectators in this event: practically all are participants in one way or another. Nor did they converge on Sydney in 2000, but rather on Paris, for the Joint Technical Sessions (JTS)the Olympics of sound and image archivists.
The JTS is made up of the technical members of a number of international archiving associations, and while SOCOG and the IOC were not present, there were still more acronyms than even Dean Lukin could have shouldered. At the initiative and with the support of UNESCO, the JTS Paris 2000 gathered the international organisations involved with the preservation and restoration of original image and sound materials: Fédération Internationale des Archives de Film (FIAF), International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTVA), International Association of Sound Archives (IASA), and the audiovisual subcommittees of ICA (International Council of Archives) and of IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and institutions), as well as institutions such as the ARCHIMEDIA network, the GAMMA group, AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists), BKSTS (British Kinematograph, Sound and Television Society), and ARSAG (Association pour la Recherche Scientifique sur les Arts Graphiques).
The words let the games begin were not actually spoken in the opening address of the fifth JTS, held at the striking Institut du Monde Arabe (World Arab Centre) in January, yet the sense that this was a timely and important event was inescapable. The world of archiving sound and still and moving images is poised at a critical juncture. On the one hand there is the allure of digital archiving, with all its promise of eternal storage without degradation, yet incorporating the risk of catastrophic failure and loss. On the other hand, the traditional media that have carried sound and image throughout the twentieth century are showing signs of decay, and even while this is occurring, manufacturing support for the equipment essential to replay many of the last centurys historical records is waning. The need to copy this material is imminent. Before all the questions about digital storage are answered, before all the facts are known, archivists, curators and librarians throughout the world need to make decisions about timing and technology that will permanently affect the life of their collections.
The first sessions at JTS 2000 dealt with risk assessment in the preservation of image and sound materials. Topics discussed included acetate carriers and de-acidification (vinegar syndrome), hydrolytic breakdown and the lifespan of polyester tapes, and optical carriers (especially CD-R), real end of life and compatibility. All media carry within themselves the seeds of their own destruction, and discussion at the conference concurred with the view of many of the speakers that the best method of staving off the inevitable decay of the carriers is a carefully controlled storage environment, appropriate to the type of material stored. However, the case studies discussed show that even the largest and best storage environments possible, while necessary to protect the collections in the medium term, still require the technical archivist to deal with the issues of format transfer.
Storage is only an interim measure, a heat before the main event when the inevitable issue of transfer has to be faced. The second session of JTS 2000 discussed issues associated with the transfer and restoration of original image and sound. Surveys by the various organisations at the conference conservatively estimate the quantity of sound and moving image in archives and collections around the world at 40 million hours of audio and 10 million hours of video alone. The only doubts raised about these figures were that they might be too low. It will be difficult, on a worldwide scale, to find the resources to transfer all of these film, video and sound recordings to a new digital carrier, let alone make interim copies while we wait for digital standards to emerge. Speakers emphasised the need for accurate, repeatable and cost-effective transfer approaches to ensure that the archives of the future hold a true representation of todays material. There were some astonishing examples of high-volume copying of sound and images, including the BBCs staggering transfer of 1.5 million video recordings and 750 000 magnetic sound recordings. Equally, some of the methodologies for dealing with priorities were both interesting and unusual; for example, Denis Frambourts criteria for the preservation and survey of formats requiring transfer.
Discussion of these issues led inexorably to the final session, a presentation of, and debate on, data management systems and migration strategies. By and large the image and sound archival community are moving, or considering moving, to mass storage, and many of the European audio archives have already installed such systems. The rest of the community were keen to learn from their experiences.
The inevitable move towards mass storage systems has taken the physical carrier from the shelf, be it tape or disc, and stored its content in a database without physical form. Collection managers, no longer able to look at the item, must deal with the long-term management and special requirements of audio and image data by carefully documenting those items through metadata. A feature of this JTS was the presence of librarians and other documentalists. The concerns of technical archivists have traditionally remained separate from those of documentalists and librarians; however, the age of mass digital storage has brought the two areas of specialisation together. The technical information required to use, store and preserve an object and the standards and rules for accessing and storing that data can only be achieved by cooperation between the two specialties. The exchange of information was so successful that many of the technicians wondered whether we had been too insular in the past.
With the race to save the new media now running, the need for interchange of knowledge and ideas has become essential in the complex world of technical archiving. There were certainly some medal-winning results for sharing ideas at the Paris Joint Technical Sessions 2000.
The tessellaated facade of the Institut du Monde Arabe, site of the Joint Technical Sessions 2000
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