Download - Российский комитет Программы ЮНЕСКО ...

carriers into safe digital repositories is only 15 years, if at all. After that even
well preserved originals will be useless, because of unavailability of dedicated
replay equipment.
Feeding analogue and digital single carriers into digital repositories is in
demand of time, modern format-specific and regularly maintained replay
equipment, and specialised experts in fading technologies, to keep operations
running. It is important to understand that autonomous transfer operation can
only viably be performed if critical masses are available, which must amount to
several thousands of items per format.
However, transfer is the first step only. Professional IT repositories must be in
place to take up digitised contents, which have to be migrated into the future
from one technical preservation generation to the next. Long-term preservation
of digital files calls for permanent engagement in terms of logistics, personnel,
and financial means in previously inexperienced dimensions. Critical masses
are again crucial for viable installations. Present costs are in the order 1-2
USD/GB/year for great repositories. Prices are further decreasing, but the
slope will eventually flatten out.
Over the past 15 years we have seen many audiovisual digitisation projects
that had suffered from a bundle of typical insufficiencies or mistakes: Most
concern inadequate equipment for signal extraction from original tapes. Latest
generation of equipment shall be used, because only this would capture the
originally recorded quality. Mediocre or badly maintained equipment would
distort original quality. Typical mistakes made in the production of digital files
are the use of non-precision AD converters (as parts of cheap sound cards), the
choice of streaming instead of file formats as digital target formats (CD audio
instead of Wave), inadequate digital resolution (44.1kHz /16 bit instead of at
least 48kHz /24 bits), the use of data reduced (“compressed”) target formats for
analogue originals – e.g. DVD for analogue video originals or MP3 for audio,
and, finally, the use of optical recordable discs as sole digital preservation media.
Radio and television archives as well as national archives of wealthy countries
will solve preservation problems professionally by - possibly selective - transfer
of holdings within next 15 years and by providing sufficient funds to keep
digital files alive.
But what can be done to safeguard the small and hidden collections, which
are outside custodial care, reflecting the greater part - estimated 80% - of the
documents of linguistic and cultural diversity of human kind
The first and foremost action to be taken is awareness raising. Poor standards of
basic knowledge about audiovisual preservation principles are widespread, even
153