A tale of two archives acquisition, preservation, dissemination, and the digital domain in two audiovisual archives

Abstract

This paper describes large access projects at two archives whose holdings are very different from those of most of the archives and libraries described by the participants in this symposium. Their collections consisted mostly of paper, text, or material culture. Audiovisual archives, and the audiovisual collections held in other kinds of institutions, present very specific problems when it comes to preservation and access. Today, most paper archives have growing collections of audio and video material. In this paper I have tried to provide information of interest to all archives as well specific information for audiovisual archives. In my discussions below I will refer mostly to audio formats, but as video recordings suffer from many of the same problems, my observations can also be extended to them. Since I have directed audiovisual archives since 1982, my experience spans the digital divide and allows me to comment on the continuities as well as the differences between archival practices in the pre-digital era and today.