A Discussion of Audiovisual Archival Methods: Conversations with Institutions, Content Creators, Archival System Designers and Integrators

Abstract

[Excerpt:] My survey of local, national, and international audiovisual archival methods highlighted the underlying cause of why archiving media for video has yet to be refined to an easily-compartmentalized process. Companies who acknowledge that archiving their media properly is a concern still see it as unglamorous and perhaps even unworthy of committing a significant-enough portion of their budgets toward a sufficient solution. Finding “a solution” begins to look like the life’s work of an artist rather than a “Point A to Point B” procedure. In my discussions with various representatives of content creators, archival system integrators, and institutional archivists, I hoped to discover success stories. In the end, I was shown just how complex the archiving process is, and how this inscrutability makes it virtually impossible to answer the question, “How much does a proper archive cost?