NARA’s audiovisual holdings include 360,000 reels of film, 225,000 sound recordings and more than 110,000 videotapes. And millions more are on the way as the digital revolution takes hold throughout the federal government. Those recorded sources, be they analog or digital, will tell the story of U.S. policy-making and information gathering to the ages in ways that plain text never could. And their preservation needs also present challenges.
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Moreover, the preservation of nontextual records requires extra care, state-of-the art equipment and special storage conditions to ensure that future generations will be able to replay them and experience them the way their original viewers did. Even then, the ever-accelerating digital revolution has promulgated many standards and formats for different types of records, making it exceedingly difficult to settle on standards that will stand the test of time.
“If you give me a handful of digital files now, I can’t guarantee that they’re going to be around tomorrow, let alone a hundred years from now,” said Richard Green of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives.
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