information for archivists

Some of the most important audiovisual archives of the 20th and 21st centuries are stored on magnetic tape.

Often the content of collections remains inaccessible because institutions do not have the appropriate machines to play tapes back on. Older tape can also be extremely vulnerable, making it susceptible to damage in the playback process.

Digitisation helps unlock the potential of magnetic tape collections by offering the double benefits of preservation and accessibility.

There are plenty of other reasons why you should consider re-formatting your magnetic tape collections to digital files:

• According to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), 'it is estimated that we have no more than 10 to 15 years to transfer audiovisual records to digital to prevent their loss.' See also the British Library's Save our Sounds campaign, launched in 2015, which aims to raise awareness of this issue.
• Key parts in many tape machines are no longer manufactured, especially in video. Many formats are now high risk as machines become difficult to service and repair. The Museum of Obsolete Media Obsolescence Ratings offer a guide to prioritising the migration or preservation of media.
• Magnetic tape can and does degrade - making playback difficult, risky and sometimes impossible. See the Museum of Obsolete Media Stability Ratings for a useful guide.
• Magnetic tape can easily become damaged in less-than-adequate storage conditions, leading to mould infestation or binder hydrolysis aka sticky shed syndrome.
• Digital storage space in hard drives, solid state drives or in the cloud has become much larger and cheaper, making it viable for all types of collection large or small.

How can Greatbear help archives digitise their audio and video magnetic tape collections?

• We support archives, memory institutions and museums who need to migrate, digitise, preserve and manage their audio and video tape based collections to the highest standards within the International Association of Sound & Audiovisual Archives Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects or the International Association of Sound & Audiovisual Archives Guidelines for the Preservation of Video Recordings respectively.
• We offer consultation for institutions on technical issues that arise from planning and delivering a large-scale digitisation project.
• We can adapt our service according to your project's digitisation requirements, including generating and storing metadata.
• At the Greatbear studio we maintain and care for one of the UK's largest collections of fully-working professional audio and video tape machines.
• Please contact us so our knowledge and experience can inform your project design.

Metadata

Metadata helps us to describe digital resources in a structured way so they can be shared with other people, organisations and between operating systems.

For archives, libraries, museums and learning institutions, creating accurate and project-specific metadata is a crucial part of establishing a successful digital preservation repository. Metadata is becoming increasingly important for those working in professional media production too.

• We are able to fully support and advise organisations who need to create metadata as part of their digitisation project.
• We can generate technical metadata appropriate to the source format that can become part of larger metadata schemas for digital collections.
• We are able to digitise to, use and edit metadata-rich digital files such as Broadcast WAV (BWAV) and the open source MKV container widely recommended for use with the FFV1 lossless video codec.