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Why worryÌýabout survival of broadcast archives?Ìý Ten years ago the ´óÏó´«Ã½ led a European-wide project called that looked at how much audiovisual content was in archives or other formal collections, and its status.Ìý Presto found ten million hours of content, 75% of which was at immediate risk from technical obsolescence (2" videotape players are hard to find), deterioration (magnetic and acetate-based materials degrade over time -- and are old after 20 years) and physical damage (just playing film will quickly introduce scratches and other damage).

Further surveys by and found 30 million hours of audiovisual content in Europe, and estimated the total amount of content -- archivedÌýcontent, not just any old audio and video -- as 100 million hours in Europe and 200 million worldwide.Ìý We also estimated the mortality -- because at current rates of loss, and current rates of preservation activity, it was soon evident that more was going to be lost than would ever be saved: 70% of that 100 million hours of European content would be gone in 30 years.Ìý It would have deteriorated and been lost before before anyone had come up with the money, equipment and time to save it.

Presto and PrestoSpace and TAPE (and other EC-supported projects) did make a difference: efficiency has improved, costs have come down and there has generally been more attention to the situation.Ìý Now the estimate is that the amount of loss of audioÌýand video content sitting on archive shelves will be reduced from 70% to 40%.ÌýÌý So instead of losing most of it, we're faced with 'only' losing nearly half of it.

Meanwhile, new threats emerge: we know what to do with content on shelves, even if we don't know where to get the money, equipment, trained staff -- and time --Ìýto do the needed work.Ìý But we don't know all the threats to file-based content sitting on mass storage devices.Ìý There is very little experience of keeping petabytes for decades.Ìý After all, most of us never heard of a petabyte even a few years ago -- and almost nothing in IT technology stays stable and usableÌýfor even one decade, much less many decades.

´óÏó´«Ã½ R&D is a partner in which is addressing the new problems faced by file-based audiovisual collections.Ìý But PrestoPRIME is doing more: it's trying to also solve the problem of preserving support, not just preserving content.Ìý

Research projects come and go, and the attention and effort and information sheds some light on a problem for a fixed amount of time -- and then everybody packs up, the website is dormant, the workshops stop, the people move on to other things -- so where do audiovisual archivesÌýgo for support?

PrestoPRIME's answer is an audiovisual competence centre -- a formal organisation set up by the five major archives that work together to make PrestoPRIME.Ìý They will now be able to continue this work into the future as PrestoCentre -- a new organisation that will NOT stop when PrestoPRIME stops.Ìý

The PrestoCentre is meant to run and run -- for as long as there is need, and as itÌýhas members and backing.Ìý The need is for knowledge and how-to and who-to-go-to information on audiovisual preservation, analogue AND digital.Ìý The backing is a commitment by audiovisual archives to work together to collect and maintain that knowledge, and provide a platform -- and staffing -- to make the information available.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not a charity.Ìý Why should the ´óÏó´«Ã½ help other audiovisual archives?Ìý One reason is self-interest.Ìý We don't know everything ourselves.ÌýÌý We've worked collaboratively in professional audiovisual archive organisations forÌýmany decades just because audiovisual archiving is a speciality, and so we need to work together to get strengh-in-numbers, leverage, standardisation (for exchange of archive content) and much more knowledge collectively than we would acquire in isolation.

Another reason to support the PrestoCentre is public value.ÌýÌýThe ´óÏó´«Ã½ hasÌýmuch more technical expertise than can be found in cultural heritage or academic institutions or small audiovisual archives -- butÌýcollectively these smallÌýcollections hold even more content thanÌýis held in the huge broadcast archives.ÌýÌýJust one example: ethnology and linguistics: recordings of endangered languages or entire endangered societies.Ìý Human beings are also an endangered species, and such recordings may well be all that we'll everÌýsee and hear from societies that made it into the 20th century, but didn't make it into the 21st.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ releases its technical expertise (and creates public value)Ìýin two ways -- solving problems for the ´óÏó´«Ã½, and solving problems for heritage in general.Ìý We increase our public value byÌýlooking outside as well as inside.Ìý After all, who should represent UKÌýcompetence in handlingÌýaudiovisual content, if not the ´óÏó´«Ã½?Ìý

The PrestoCentre is being launched on 14-15 March in the Netherlands, with a workshop .Ìý It will be held in the wonderful audiovisual archive building of the Netherlands Instititute of Sound and Vision.

Book now if you have a professional interest in the preservation of broadcasting and other audiovisual content.

The conference will connect small and large archives, service providers, vendors, funders, policymakers and educators developing solutions to the most urgent questions facing audiovisual archiving. AV stakeholders in Europe and beyond are invited to attend the conference and to join the celebration of the launch of PrestoCentre.

PrestoCentre is an initiative of:

• British Broadcasting Corporation (´óÏó´«Ã½, UK);

• l'Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA, France);

• Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Beeld en Geluid);

• Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF, Austria);

• Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI, Italy).