From broadcasting to archiving: the Southern African public service broadcast archives

Abstract

Public Service Broadcasters have an obligation to manage their records as public organisations. This is often legislated and public broadcasters therefore have to protect collections from physical deterioration and damage to minimise the loss of information. Public Service Broadcasters should thus be informed and up to date with preservation strategies to ensure the safeguarding of their collections. This study investigated the current status of the Southern African Broadcasting Association member Public Service Broadcasting archives collections and their digitisation strategies to ensure long-term preservation of collections. While many aspects of preservation status were investigated, this article focuses on the formats held within each collection, playback equipment available in archives, cataloguing practices to provide access to the collections and the digitisation initiatives undertaken by the broadcaster. Findings showed that decisive action for long-term preservation is needed to mitigate the risk of large portions of the study sample collections being lost for ever.

Keywords:

• audiovisual archives
• Public Service Broadcasters
• Southern African Broadcasting Association
• preservation strategies
• digitisation initiatives

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by UNESCO.

Notes

^1.ICCROM, “Conservation of Sound and Image Collections Course.”

^2.UNESCO 2010, “World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, 27 October.“

^3. ICCROM The UNESCO secretariat drew up this document as the presentation of the results of the consultation and the potential outcomes of the celebrations of the 27 October proclamation for a World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.

^4.Häfner, “The Present Upheaval in Audiovisual Archiving,” 8. This was a keynote address delivered at the South African Society of Archivists national conference in Johannesburg, South Africa on 11 September 2000.

^5.Teruggi, “Can we Save our Audiovisual Heritage?”

^6.FIAT/IFTA, “Archives@Risk”.

^7. Assmann, “From Broadcasting to Archiving: Preserving Public Broadcast Audiovisual Archives.”

^8.Reitz, “Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science.” This is an online dictionary of Library and Information Science terminology copyrighted by Joan M. Reitz.

^9.Media Matters, Digital Video Preservation Reformatting Project, 21. This report written by Media Matters is a technical consultancy advising on the archival of audio and video material for the Dance Heritage Coalition.

^10. Ibid.

^11.Akande, “Knowledge, Perception, and Attitudes of Library Personnel Towards Preservation”, 1. Akande targeted 361 professionals and 380 para-professional staff at all 24 federal university libraries in Nigeria.

^12.Ngulube, “Environmental Monitoring and Control at National Archives and Libraries”, 163. Even though environmental control and monitoring are known to be key in preventative preservation strategies in the management of audiovisual collections, Ngulube found that little attention was being paid to this is the Eastern and Southern African regions.

^13. Ibid., 164.

^14. Ibid., 155.

^15.Ward, A Manual of Sound Archive Administration, 109.

^16.IFLA, Guidelines for Audiovisual and Multimedia Materials, 7

^17.Wylie, “Streaming History Increasing Access to Audiovisual Archives”, 247. Wylie evaluates in this paper how the RTE Libraries and Archives (Ireland’s National Public Broadcaster) provides access to items through the Archive’s website.

^18.Seeger and Chaudhuri, Archives for the Future, 246. This book, edited by Seeger and Chaudhuri, resulted from a workshop organised by the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (AIIS) held from 6 to 12 December 1999, made possible with a grant from the Form Foundation, New York.

^19.Mnjama, “Preservation and Management of Audiovisual Archives in Botswana”, 142. Mnjama reviewed the state of audiovisual collections held by various government institutions in Botswana and highlighted the challenges faced in this country.

^20.Schüller, “Socio-technical and Socio-cultural Challenges of Audio and Video”.

^21.Andile, “The Management of Audio Visual Materials at the Swaziland Television Authority”.

^22.Matangira, “Audiovisual Archiving In The Third World”, 1–7.

^23.Mnjama, “Preservation and Management of Audiovisual Archives in Botswana”, 139–148.

^24.Abankwah, “The Management of Audiovisual Materials”. The study focussed on 14 national archives in the East and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA) and found continued dissipation of materials due to poor climatic and environmental control, shortage or lack of skilled staff and the lack of a standard legal framework for preservation.

^25.Bryman and Bell, Business Research Methods, 22.

^26.Farquhar, Case Study Research for Business, 42.

^27. Assmann, “From Broadcasting to Archiving: Preserving Public Broadcast Audiovisual Archives.”

^28.Sterkowicz, “Namibia plans June DTT launch.”

^29. See http://www.dalet.com [accessed January 2015].

^30. See http://www.avid.com/US/resources/blue-order [accessed January 2015].

^31. See http://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal/processing/forms/cds-isis/download.php [accessed January 2015].

^32. VRS is a professional, digital audio-recording application which can be downloaded from http://www.nch.com.au/vrs/index.html [accessed January 2015].

^33. See http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=2071&URL_DO=DO_TOPI&URL_SECTION=201.html [accessed January 2015].

^34. AIME is a joint digital data archiving project developed by CIRTEF and Belgium companies to archive digital files permanently. See http://talkvietnam.com/2008/08/cirtef-places-its-trust-in-vietnam/#.UienIL8aI0M/http://mediamapproject.org/overview_description.html [accessed January 2015].

^35. See http://www.enps.com/ [accessed January 2015].

^36.Wright, “Preservation of Broadcast Archives”, 47.

^37. Ibid.

^38. Ibid.

^39.Preservation of Archival Sound Recordings, 6.

^40.Nelson-Strauss et al., National Recording Preservation Plan Task Force, 25.

^41.Hans and De Koster, “A Pragmatic Strategy to Digitizing Production Archives”, 4.

^42.Wright, Preservation of Broadcast Archives, 47

^43. ‘Lost’ Nelson Mandela court recordings were retrieved by the British Library. See http://the-puzzle-palace.com/08.html [accessed January 2015].

^44. See http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/flagship-project-activities/memory-of-the-world/register/full-list-of-registered-heritage/registered-heritage-page-2/criminal-court-case-no-2531963-state-versus-n-mandela-and-others// [accessed April 2015] for a record of the court rulings included in the 2007 Memory of the World register.