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amongst librarians and (paper) archivists, let alone amongst the specialists in
the contents of the audiovisual carriers. Most efficient, therefore, are tutorials
and workshops organised at the fringe of discipline oriented conferences of
specialists, such as linguistics, musicology or anthropology gatherings.
A typical barrier against safeguarding audiovisual research materials in the
West is that excellence, and therewith budgetary allocations, are measured on
the academic output of institutions and individuals. Optimisation in terms of
publications is in higher esteem than safeguarding primary source material for
systematic restudies and new interpretation by other (schools of) researchers or
by later generations. This frequently leads to sub-optimal archiving standards,
and to a further neglect of audiovisual preservation in case of budgetary
problems of academic institutions.
Typical problems in Russia and post-soviet countries are mainly due to particular
research traditions. Relatively small research units worked in separation of
each other, often (part of) institutes of academies of sciences, and often even
under one roof, generally without sharing archival infrastructures. In this
manner great amounts of audio recording collections have been accumulated,
significantly more than in the respective disciplines in the West. A specific
widespread problem is the use of acetate cellulose tape of East-German origin,
produced in the 1950s and 1960s, which was used all over the region until
Vietnam. These tapes become very brittle with age and their replay is often a
veritable challenge 52 .
As typical small collections of cultural and academic institutions are below
critical masses to allow for economic viable preservation, cooperative solutions
have to be organised and financed to rescue the accumulated holdings.
Cooperative models can be organised at different levels:
Institutional: Universities, academies of sciences, and other institutions holding
several audiovisual collections in their sub-units, join efforts by establishing
a common preservation strategy. Digitisation and long-term preservation of
digital contents is often organised separately. Typically, the strongest unit sets
up a central transfer laboratory, while the digital files are often kept in a digital
repository as part of the computer centre. A recent prominent example is the
central organisation of the preservation of 560.000 audiovisual carriers at the
Indiana University Bloomington, USA 53 . A smaller, but structurally identical
project is under preparation at the University of the Philippines 54 ,
52
See: Wallaszkovits 2012.
53
http://research.iub.edu/communications/media_preservation/.
54
http://www.upethnom.com/index.php.
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