Collections of moving image and sound materials encompass a complex and varied assortment of formats and technological processes involved in their production. This diversity of materials presents many practical challenges in the stewardship of archives. Media deteriorate; advanced stages of physical deterioration may inhibit play back as well as present health and safety hazards. And for nearly every format and its variant, there is a corresponding device or system required for playback. As new formats and recording or encoding processes are introduced over time, the equipment necessary for older formats is increasingly hard to find. The more diverse the collection is, the more complex its management and care becomes.
For these reasons, moving image and sound archivists must mediate constantly between stability and change in their efforts to preserve materials in their care. Archivists understand that change is inevitable: materials will degrade due to age and exposure to fluctuating environmental conditions, and inevitable technological innovation will result in new recording techniques and formats. Change must therefore be anticipated, accommodated, and, in the case of reformatting, invoked in the management of film, video, and audio collections.
At the same time, archivists work to limit the extent and impact of change by creating storage environments with stable levels of temperature and relative humidity as well as by copying recordings with minimal information loss to newer, carefully-chosen formats considered to be stable because they enjoy a wide base of users in the market and are unlikely to be superseded for the time being.
To be successful in these endeavors, moving image and sound archivists must draw on the broad base of technical knowledge about audio-visual materials -- both new and old, analog and digital -- as well as the ever-growing foundation of professional literature from the fields of library & information science, museum studies, preservation & conservation, information technology, computer science, engineering, materials science, and the history of art, cinema, & media, to name a few. The MIC Preservation Portal serves to assist archivists in their quests for information, so they can make well-informed and reasoned decisions in the face of inevitable change.
Overview of the Preservation Process
Preserving Motion Picture Sound