The Universal Preservation Format - A Dream or a Realistic Option?

Users are showing an increasing awareness of archiving related problems. There is first the limited life time of any physical storage medium and necessary reproduction equipment that is posing insurmountable tasks to the archivists again and again. On the other hand the realization is growing that the real asset of all broadcast companies is the content of their archives. Multiple re-use of audio-visual program material is gaining a steadily increasing economic significance. The first broadcast of a program is currently covering approximately 60% of the production costs only. That is of huge financial consequences for all broadcasters. Efficient archiving is becoming an economical force. — The idea of an Universal Preservation Format is pushed forward by the archivists community. They are not very excited about the “Wonderful Digital Age” due to the fact that digital technology has resulted in a veritable explosion of formats. They complain about thirteen different digital tape formats already on the market. For the archivists this is a nightmare. On one side of the room you have to store the tapes, on the other side the tape machines and spare parts. There will always be a storage format that media has to be stored on and this format will always become obsolete at some time. The archivists are therefore not looking for just another recording mechanism, but for an Universal Preservation Format which basically is a file format.

Published

1999-07

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M001194

ISBN

978-1-61482-948-5