B Explanatory memorandum
by Ms Fiala, rapporteur
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
to the report
1. This report has been prompted
by the fact that public service broadcasters and commercial broadcasters have
accumulated a huge volume of audiovisual material which is not always
systematically archived to ensure its preservation. As digital technologies
now allow audiovisual material to be copied onto new media, there
is a need for States to support this type of preservation, while
at the same time devising policies for public access. The motion
for a recommendation which gave rise to this report
Note calls on member
States to sign and ratify the European Convention for the Protection
of the Audiovisual Heritage (ETS No. 183) and recommends that States
and media companies co-operate in projects by Internet companies
and libraries to make books and print media accessible on the Internet,
in order to effectively protect the audiovisual heritage of Europe.
2. This report aims to review the situation with respect to the
preservation of the audiovisual cultural heritage and how practices
in this area correlate to fundamental values by ensuring equal access
to audiovisual resources, information and freedom of expression
and the observance of legal frameworks. Examples of good practices
in member States are examined with a view to making recommendations
that could be implemented in a wider context.
1.2 Approach
3. This explanatory memorandum
is largely based on a background report by Dr Catherine Saracco (expert,
Strasbourg), which was drawn up according to questions and issues
identified by me. I am very grateful to her for her commitment.
4. The first part contains a description of the challenges facing
the preservation of the audiovisual heritage and an explanation
of the European Commission’s projects on digitisation of the audiovisual
heritage as well as its work on the film heritage. There follow
three examples of good national practices, highlighting the work of
the French National Audiovisual Institute (Institut National de
l’Audiovisuel (Ina)), the Swiss network for the preservation of
audiovisual archives “Memoriav” and the German “Deutsche Kinemathek:
Museum für Film und Fernsehen”. Lastly, I examine the implications
and challenges of the “Internet revolution” and the responses to these
challenges, including the role of public policies in the organisation
of audiovisual knowledge on the Internet. The conclusions provide
some pointers for future national policies and international co-operation
in this field.
2 Challenges for the preservation of the
audiovisual heritage
5. The digitisation of cultural
material is currently a central concern of many institutions traditionally responsible
for preserving audiovisual collections (broadcasters, research institutes,
libraries, museums, archives, etc.). These institutions now face
organisational, technical and legal challenges in taking on the migration
from analogue to digital formats.
6. Digitisation projects are driven by major concerns related
to the practice of democratic culture: preserving whole swathes
of audiovisual history
Note endangered by technical obsolescence
and the physical deterioration of collections, increasing the quantities
preserved and enhancing the value of the audiovisual heritage by
guaranteeing wider public access. In this study we will be looking
at the strategies employed by audiovisual archives in France, Germany
and Switzerland to meet the challenges of digitisation. What does
it mean to switch from a deteriorating analogue memory to a new,
“everlasting” memory, which is more exhaustive and lacks any real
selection criteria? How do these institutions ensure the sustainability
of their archives and rethink access to their resources?
7. Furthermore, since 2006, with the advent of “technological
convergence”
Note digitisation has been accompanied
by an all-out battle of content. With the proliferation of audiovisual
content on the Web, servers and the Internet now find themselves
at the very heart of the archive system. This means a significant
change in the scope of audiovisual archive activities, which hitherto
were confined to the storage, conservation and indexing of resources
and the provision of – often restricted – access to them. Today,
audiovisual archives are moving from a “stocks” system to a “flows”
system. We are therefore seeing the emergence of new activities such
as the putting online of television archives or the targeted production
of educational and cultural content. We will be showing how these
developments meet increasingly specific image-related uses where
dynamic interfaces between users and audiovisual content play a
growing role.
8. Lastly, given the extremely volatile nature of audiovisual
content, it is more than ever essential to institutionalise policies
on memory. The audiovisual memory of the Web now possesses a heritage
value which warrants an extension of legal deposit-type rules. A
knock-on effect of this is the need to establish a cultural organisation
for audiovisual knowledge, something which only public policies
can ensure.
3 Review
of European initiatives to preserve the audiovisual heritage
9. The first moves to create a
legislative framework facilitating access to the audiovisual heritage
were made in the 1970s. The preservation of audiovisual sources
as an integral part of the cultural heritage was established as
a primary objective of international organisations such as UNESCO
or the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA).
Note One of the key provisions of the
recommendation for the safeguarding and preservation of moving images
adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in 1980 calls for the
institution of mandatory deposit systems for national production
of moving images.
10. Since the 1990s, the European Union and the Council of Europe
have in turn included audiovisual sources in the European cultural
heritage and have jointly established special rules for the application
of a system of legal deposit.
Note In
2001, the Council of Europe adopted the European Convention for
the Protection of the Audiovisual Heritage (ETS No. 183), which
came into force on 1 January 2008. Organised around the principle
of obligatory legal deposit of moving images, the convention stresses
the need to make deposited material available for consultation for
scientific or research purposes while complying with international
and national copyright laws. This convention and its Protocol on
the Protection of Television Productions (ETS No. 184) are the first
binding international instruments to provide for the systematic
archiving of audiovisual works.
3.1 The
European Commission’s projects on digitisation of the audiovisual
heritage
11. Launched on 1 February 2004,
PrestoSpace
Note is an ambitious European project
co-ordinated by the French National Audiovisual Institute. The research
carried out by the 34 partners from nine countries has made it possible
to accelerate large-scale preservation of the world’s audiovisual
heritage based on criteria of quality, speed and cost reduction.
12. The emphasis has been on incorporating economic factors into
the implementation of preservation services. In view of the fact
that both the main archive holders and broadcasters had already
begun to digitise their huge holdings, with very high costs and
the use of complex technology, it was necessary to move towards a
concerted overall “preservation factory” approach: this approach
is around 50% cheaper than the “on demand” approach.
13. The project has made it possible to develop integrated systems
and technical solutions for the preservation in digital format of
audiovisual collections of all kinds, ensuring wider exploitation
and distribution to specialists and the general public.
14. Following in the wake of PrestoSpace, the PrestoPRIME project
Note was recently set up,
focusing on the sustainability of assets once they are digitised.
15. PrestoPRIME develops practical solutions for the long-term
preservation of digital media collections and improved access to
digital content, bearing in mind that the information technology
which contains and distributes this content is constantly evolving
(this applies to both the data and the access technology).
16. Where long-term preservation is concerned, PrestoPRIME relies
on international comparison of strategies for audiovisual preservation,
including multivalent, emulation and migration approaches, and the creation
of a standard data model for audiovisual content preservation. To
ensure long-term access, PrestoPRIME is developing services for
tracking audiovisual content, using fingerprinting techniques and documenting
the provenance of audiovisual content items. Modelling rights associated
with audiovisual content and developing standard-compliant services
for archive rights management are two further priorities. Consideration
is also being given to the possibility of integrating collections
with online digital libraries such as Europeana,
Note the European public digital library
launched in 2008.
17. One outcome of this work was a European networked competence
centre for digital preservation and migration (PrestoCentre) which
delivers advanced digital preservation advice and services in conjunction
with the European Digital Library Foundation.
3.2 The
European Commission’s work on the film heritage
18. Where the film heritage is
concerned, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for the Information
Society and Media published in 2010 a report
Note on digital strategies relating to
the film heritage.
19. This report highlights the danger facing not only this heritage,
since 80% of silent films are estimated to have been lost already,
but also new digital era films, because of media obsolescence. The
European Union therefore recommends wider use of techniques for
migrating content to new formats or media for conserving and consulting
the film heritage. Interoperability of European film databases and
catalogues and greater standardisation of practices regarding access
to this heritage are also strongly encouraged.
20. The “European Film Gateway” (EFG) project should be stressed
in this context. This project is the continuation of the MIDAS (Moving
Image Database for Access and Re-Use of European Film Collections) programme
Note which the European Commission ran
from 2006 to 2009.
21. The main aim of the MIDAS project was to create a single “gateway”
providing access to the databases of 18 film archives while seeking
to standardise the film catalogues and document retrieval systems.
However, with the growth of the Internet, users (programmers, students,
researchers, festival directors, etc.) are no longer content with
access to catalogues: they want access to digitised films or film
excerpts, if possible free of charge and from their own homes. “In
contrast to the MIDAS project, the EFG project aims at giving users worldwide
the possibility to research and view digitised archival material
from their home via the Internet. Also where MIDAS was focused on
film collections, EFG has a wider scope, including not only moving
images but also other materials held by film archives, like text
documents, and images or lower quantity sound files. So other than
MIDAS, EFG aims at building a digital showcase for collections of
European film archives and cinematheques.”
NoteNote
22. As a web portal for the digital content of European film archives,
the EFG project is also a content aggregator for Europeana.
23. It should be noted, however, that one stumbling block to the
viability of the EFG project is still the issue of the waiver of
rights, because most European film archives at present hold the
rights to only a minute proportion of their holdings. In 80% to
90% of cases, only agreements with the rights-holders will allow
access to films for cultural purposes. In most European countries,
the director, the director of photography and the scriptwriter are
considered as creators of a cinematographic work and accordingly
hold the rights to the film. In addition to this, in Europe
NoteNote copyright
generally lapses seventy years after the death of the last surviving author,
which considerably restricts access to cinematographic works. Furthermore,
proper documentation of rights, often a long and costly process
owing to the multitude of holders of the rights to a cinematographic
work, is not a practice shared by all European archives or film
libraries.
24. European recommendations on copyright are therefore essential:
legal arrangements allowing the producer of a film to grant rights
of use for non-commercial purposes to a public institution
Note responsible
for the film heritage are under consideration.
4 The
multidimensionality of audiovisual archives: putting practices and
ideas into perspective
4.1 The
French National Audiovisual Institute (Ina)
4.1.1 Consequences
of digitisation projects
25. Starting from the late 1990s,
a number of changes took place within Ina. The most significant
of these was the colossal project to transfer one and a half million
hours of radio and television from analogue to digital format, thus
preserving and ensuring access to these unique assets. Over 50%
of the holdings have now been digitised.
26. This huge digitisation project first of all raised technical
issues: given that digital media offer poor long- term storage prospects,
Note Ina
switched its priorities from preservation and restoration of the
media to safeguarding of the content. Because, in the digital era,
survival of content no longer depends on sustainability of the medium,
Note Ina set its sights on technological
migration. Because data can be transferred and duplicated at will
without suffering any damage, it is sufficient to migrate them from
one medium to another to ensure their survival. However, even if
data migration is still the most commonly adopted solution to the
long-term conservation of digital data, “it is advisable only to
resort to migration when a large technological leap is involved,
to conserve the hardware and data for one or two technological generations
and to ensure tight management of systems and formats”.
Note
27. The logical outcome of this digitisation project was the putting
online of Ina’s archives in 2006 on the website
www.ina.fr. These archives, which had previously been restricted
to professionals and researchers (under the legal deposit arrangements
for audiovisual media enacted in 1992), are now accessible to the general
public. Ina
Note is
now the world’s leading digitised image and sound bank. Over 100 000
broadcasts (or a total of 10 000 hours
Note of
programmes) selected from among the great moments in the history
of radio and television can now be downloaded and viewed free of
charge on the Internet.
28. Since 2006, over 20 million Internet users have visited this
site, which offers referenced and catalogued resources that can
be looked up by keyword and a personal and shared work space: the
success of this site shows that this digitised heritage meets a
desire among the general public to preserve these memories.
29. It should be noted that 80% of the content can be viewed free
of charge. The remainder can be viewed on a rental basis or permanently
downloaded, with charges ranging from €1 for short programmes to
€12 for the longer programmes or series. Of the revenue generated
in this way, 46% will be paid on to the rights-holders and 32% reinvested
by Ina in digitisation and enhancement of the audiovisual heritage,
and the remaining 22% will be used to cover various costs (VAT and
other taxes).
30. Regarding copyright protection on the Internet, Ina uses digital
tattooing together with a digital rights management (DRM) system
to secure content. When a file is purchased, a special code containing
the user’s order number is inserted in the images. This tracing
system prevents distribution of content on peer-to-peer networks.
31. Thanks to its research and development programme, Ina has
accompanied its digitisation policy with very advanced research
into audiovisual standardisation: the development of the MPEG-7
standard enabling the automatic indexing of audiovisual documents
guarantees greater coherence in access to documents. The same concern
for document quality is found in the development of software for
extracting information from large quantities of data, structuring
and browsing in audiovisual documents and shared annotation of documents. This
is a whole series of lines of work in which the digital medium represents
a gateway to new image-based uses.
4.1.2 Diversification
of activities to develop the audiovisual heritage
32. The rapid expansion of networks
prompted Ina to shift its focus from preserving its archives to
the provision of services. In general, this reflects a repositioning
of heritage institutions, which no longer focus on storage, but
increasingly on making their holdings available to users.
33. Ina is therefore an institution that is involved in the whole
digital chain: from the conservation of its archives – its principal
mission – to the enhancement and dissemination of its heritage.
34. With regard to enhancement, Ina has increased its vocational
training and research activities. Thanks to Ina SUP,
Note the European centre for research,
training and education on digital media, Ina plays a key role in the
transmission of audiovisual knowledge.
35. As part of the expansion of its research role, in 2010 Ina
launched a web review InaGlobal,
whose aim is to focus on the media and creative industries from
a long-term and in-depth perspective. With a team of more than 400
specialists from 30 countries, this review seeks to analyse developments
in the content industries in the broad sense, from cinema to manga,
covering the Internet, television, video games, publishing and the press.
36. Moreover, Ina has developed a number of projects, and has
made available 440 programmes of the cult
Apostrophes television
show on
www.babelio.com, a collaborative website for literature enthusiasts. Ina
has also entered into a partnership with the LCP-AN television channel
for two new programme concepts:
Ça va, ça
vient, dealing with how a subject has evolved over the
years, and
Filigranes on the
relationship between culture and politics as seen by personalities
from the world of the arts. Ina is also involved in production activities,
participating in some 60 films a year, primarily documentaries.
37. Lastly, it should be noted that Ina has made the most of technological
convergence by signing a partnership agreement with Dailymotion,
enabling Internet users to access over 50 000 videos from their archives,
in particular all the French television news broadcasts from 1971
to 2008, along with extracts from other programmes (fiction, comedy,
game shows, current affairs programmes, etc.). By enabling the host
to showcase videos, Ina is clearly seeking to diversify its audiovisual
services and products, given that, as a result of this agreement,
these Ina videos are now attracting a younger audience. These video
holdings are accessible on the dedicated Ina section of the Dailymotion
site, and on its version for mobile telephones.
4.2 Memoriav:
a national network for the preservation of the Swiss audiovisual
heritage
4.2.1 State
of play regarding digitisation plans
38. Unlike Ina, Memoriav
Note is a national network for the preservation
of the Swiss audiovisual heritage, set up as an association in 1995
by the largest production and archive institutions in the country.
The seven founding member organisations are the Federal Archives,
the National Library, the National Sound Archives and the Swiss
Film Archives, the Federal Office of Communications, the Swiss National
Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR) and the Swiss Institute for the
Conservation of Photography. These initial founding members were
subsequently joined by a further 160 institutional members such
as archives, libraries and museums from the 26 cantons of the Swiss
Confederation.
39. Memoriav was given the role of preserving and enhancing the
Swiss audiovisual heritage by the confederation by means of a service
contract from the Federal Office of Culture.
40. Funding is governed by the Federal Memoriav Funding Act of
2006. The association’s task is to initiate projects to preserve,
restore, index, digitise (in certain cases) and enhance audiovisual
holdings with its partners (public and private institutions with
audiovisual holdings). Memoriav describes itself above all as a skills
and co-ordination network for heritage institutions and specialists
in the restoration and preservation of audiovisual documents.
41. Regarding the compilation of and accessibility to the Swiss
audiovisual collections, the legal bases are at this stage still
rather undeveloped: Switzerland as a whole has no legal deposit
requirement and only three cantons in French-speaking Switzerland
have such a legal deposit, of which only one expressly includes audiovisual
material. In order to promote the preservation of television archives,
Memoriav has, since its foundation, been working in close co-operation
with the three public television archives (French, German and Italian)
in order to preserve the main Swiss television news programme (the Téléjournal) archived on 16 mm and
U-matic tape.
42. It was not until 1990 that the news broadcasts were recorded
and archived in their entirety. Until 1980 a single television news
programme was produced in three languages; from 1981, the Swiss
Romande television channel produced its own news programme, followed
in 1987 by the Italian-language channel. Two copies of the 16 mm
films and U-matic tapes were copied onto Digibeta cassettes, one
of which was kept in the television archives and the other in the
Federal Archives
Note in
Bern, together with a metadata file.
43. Memoriav provides access to the archives via the Memobase
database,
Note which
offers viewers a thematic search engine for the collections and
also gives access to the descriptions of more than 200 000 audiovisual
documents. However, so far the documents themselves can only be
consulted in the viewing room of the Federal Archives.
44. The news programmes produced on BetaSP and Digibeta after
1989 are currently being digitised under the “Beta-Suisse” mass
digitisation project, organised and financed by the three television
corporations without any Memoriav involvement.
45. Memoriav’s project with the television channels is focused
primarily on regional news and current affairs programmes such as Temps Présent and Carrefour, two of the most well-known
programmes on the French-language channel.
46. At present, Memoriav is continuing its collaboration with
the three Swiss television corporations, with the priority placed
on the digitisation of the historical holdings on 16 mm, focusing
on news and culture. Having abandoned copies on cassette, the MPEG
files are stored on the television corporations’ servers and only
the metadata are transferred to Memobase. These metadata include
a link to the server enabling user access in a protected environment,
in specially arranged work spaces in public institutions.
4.2.2 Presentation
of heritage dissemination projects
47. In line with its remit to disseminate
and promote the Swiss audiovisual heritage for cultural purposes, Memoriav
runs commented screenings of non-fiction films from the past and
representatives regularly attend specialist events.
48. It was also behind the major project (“Political information”)
to digitise the daily news programmes and political affairs programmes
of Swiss television’s three language channels. The aim of the project
is to digitise all these programmes from 1950 until the present.
They can be seen in a viewing room in the Federal Archives. In addition
the metadata have been reviewed, supplemented and made freely available.
49. Furthermore, Memoriav uses its site to document its activities
and make its services available. It sets great store on organising
public events to make its work better known among policy makers.
One of its best- known activities is undoubtedly the events entitled
“Swiss realities” in which each year Memoriav shows, in different
Swiss towns and cities, audiovisual documents on a topical political/cultural
issue with experts and witnesses on hand to comment on the historical
documents.
4.3 The
wealth and complexities of the audiovisual heritage in Germany
4.3.1 Revisiting
the question of digitisation and access to archives
50. Unlike France, Germany has
no legal deposit system. Given that the audiovisual sector is independent of
the State, the permanent preservation of audiovisual archives is
the direct responsibility of the public and private channels. The
audiovisual heritage is divided between the two German broadcasting
archives (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (DRA)), one in Frankfurt (primarily
sound recordings) and the other in Potsdam Babelsberg, which holds
the television archives of the former GDR.
51. However, the public television archives dating from 1949 have
been kept by the public broadcasting corporations of the ARD. ZDF
manages its own channels, as do the private channels (RTL, Pro Sieben).
52. Some features of the German audiovisual heritage follow:
Creating a national German audiovisual
archive is a challenging task
53. This is because the German
cultural model makes it very difficult, not to say impractical,
to set up centralised cultural institutions. Consequently, Germany
promotes a more horizontal and decentralised archiving approach.
The fact that, for historical reasons, the audiovisual field is
separate from the political field is also an obstacle to the creation
of a national archive.
Legislation difficulties concerning
access to archives for cultural purposes
54. The public broadcasting corporations’
claims of independence have acted as a brake to access to the television
archives: the channels see their primary role as one of keeping
production archives (Produktionsarchive)
to be used to contribute to their own programmes rather than one
of a service provider.
55. Although the German television channels have accepted the
obligations of the Council of Europe European Convention on the
Protection of the Audiovisual Heritage and guarantee access to their
collections for cultural and academic purposes, the convention has
not, thus far, been ratified by the German Parliament.
56. This is how Edgar Lersch, Director of the SWR television archives,
describes the situation from a copyright point of view:
“The
present conditions of access to German TV archives are characterised
by the fact that it is not yet possible to watch historical TV programmes
via the Internet. Even the German copyright law forbids Internet
distribution of programmes without the permission of each copyright
owner. Until contracts between authors, producers and others and
the broadcasting institutions grant a licence for it, each copyright
owner has to be asked. The new copyright law that came into force
in January 2008 allows distribution without permission. That means
that the copyright owner may object to Internet distribution for
a number of months, then it becomes free. In any case there is a
charge for Internet distribution.”Note
57. At present, new approaches to distribution via the Internet
are being looked at, but only for current programmes and not programmes
with historical value.
Digitisation plans focusing on
key collections
58. The preservation/digitisation
policy of the public broadcasting corporations is guided by the
technological needs relating to the preservation of content threatened
by the obsolescence of playback equipment and of the mediums on
which the content is stored. In addition, the public channels place
a greater emphasis on digitising iconic radio and television collections.
Decisions on digitisation are taken more on the basis of production format
than type, given the financial cost of any digitisation procedure.
As a result, programmes made up of short sequences, such as news
and current affairs programmes, are given priority.
59. Lastly, digitisation plans concentrate on programmes which
are often reused either in new digital productions or in response
to new means of distribution such as video podcasts and video on
demand.
4.4 Optimising
the audiovisual archives in the Television Museum (Berlin)
60. Inaugurated in 2006, the Television
Museum in Berlin supplements the Deutsche Kinemathek and is the first
“house of moving images” in Europe. Inspired by the Museum of Television
and Radio in New York, the museum has a permanent exhibition on
the history of German television, thematic exhibitions, seminars
and a viewing room with audiovisual equipment. The “programme gallery”
offer visitors a choice between some 3 400 programmes.
61. In order to compile the collection, the Television Museum
signed an agreement with the public and private channels (ARD, ZDF,
RTL, Pro Sieben) enabling it to copy programmes in line with criteria
defined jointly with them. These are programmes which have had the
highest viewer ratings or have received awards (such as the Adolf
Grimme Award). In addition, there are political and current affairs
programmes, iconic programmes in the field of culture and the arts,
and the complete run of well-known series such as Tatort, given their value as a reflection
of German sociocultural history.
62. There are two projects which are worthy of particular mention
among the key initiatives taken by the museum, whose role is to
transmit the audiovisual heritage for cultural purposes:
- “Moments in Time 1989/1990”
(Wir waren so frei) – This project is a centralised archive accessible
on the InternetNote which
is devoted to the 1989 revolution. The museum was able to obtain,
free of charge, films by private authors and witnesses from this
historic period for non-commercial use. There are plans to expand
the archive with programmes from public and private television channels
from the same period, if the museum can obtain licences for use
for non-commercial purposes.
- “First we take Berlin/Archivierung ‘24h – Berlin’” – Since
2010, the museum has been archiving all the rushes resulting from
the twenty-four hour footage from 11 teams scattered throughout
Berlin. The museum has also obtained the rights to use the accompanying
sound recordings for non-commercial purposes. In partnership with
various national and international cultural institutions, the museum
is seeking to constitute a living archive of the reality of social
and cultural life in Berlin. For the time being, this project is
still being developed and the images collected have yet to be indexed
in the relevant search engines.
5 The
Internet revolution and putting audiovisual archives online
5.1 Internet
legal deposit at Ina: challenges and prospects
63. Further to the audiovisual
legal deposit of 1992, the French Parliament has given Ina and the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France responsibility for implementing an Internet
legal deposit. This task, provided for in the Law of 1 August 2006,
helps expand the holdings of radio and television material. For
its part, Ina trawls, indexes and provides access to the relevant
French audiovisual media sites, while the Bibliothèque Nationale
de France has responsibility for archiving the other areas of the
Internet. To date, from the whole Web media sector, over 7 000 sites
have been inventoried, predominantly those published by broadcasters and
media groups and the sites which document them (blogs, fan sites,
etc.). The first experimental trawls in Ina’s area of responsibility
began in early 2009.
Technical implementation of the
collection
64. The sites are captured using
the WebCollecte crawler at varying frequencies and depths depending
on their profile, which is determined in relation to how often they
are seen to be updated and their size. For example, the homepages
of the most active sites (TF1, France 2, etc.) are captured several
times a day, whereas the deepest pages of the least active sites
(Skyblog, etc.) are captured only once a year.
65. The difficulty lies in the fact that the Web is built on the
concept of interaction, since consultation of a website involves
an ongoing series of questions/responses and each page sent by the
site is a response to a user’s request. The complete collection
of a website at a given moment therefore corresponds to all the responses
received to each of the possible interactions.
Multi-crawler approach
66. In order to adapt to content
involving a large amount of interaction, WebCollecte uses in parallel
various types of robots that have different capacities. This makes
it possible to increase the overall quality of the archive by playing
on the strengths of each robot used.
Consultation
67. Consultation of the Web is
now fully integrated into the audiovisual reading station of the
consultation facility in the Inathèque and will be deployed to the
French regions in the context of a move to decentralise consultation
opportunities.
68. Creating the Internet legal deposit represents a real challenge
since Web content has no stable documentary unity, whereas archiving
is based on a fixed concept of content and documentary definition: content
is archived in a reference version within a given parameter. The
difficulty then lies in basing this documentary base on the type
of content and the use to be made of it. Over and above the technical
difficulties, this project is a response to the desire to “civilise”
the Internet and digital culture by mapping it out, since the Internet
is now a key player in our lives.
5.2 Web
memory: status and new uses
69. Even though the Internet is
an extraordinary tool for promoting knowledge, the primary feature
of the Web is its ephemeral nature: new software, applications,
writing formats and constant technological developments give vitality
to the network but they also make the preservation of digital archives
much more vulnerable. Without further processing, or migration,
current e-content will be unreadable in ten years’ time.
70. Given that this “digital amnesia” represents a social threat,
it is essential the public interest be strengthened, as for example
with the projects for legal deposit applied to the Internet. The
American foundation “Internet Archive” which trawls content from
the Web undertaking random captures is an example of the dysfunctioning
of the privatisation of the collective memory. There should be co-operation
between e-players to counterbalance the growth of private initiatives
which are often synonymous with a search for financial gain.
Note
71. Furthermore, with the emergence of a generation of “user-generated
contents” represented by YouTube and Dailymotion, the audiovisual
culture that has been legitimised (by the public heritage institutions)
is counterbalanced by consumers of images who have themselves become
powerful memory producers. Although interesting, this should not
lead us to forget that what differentiates this approach to Web
content (which is often merely fragments) from those offered by
archives and libraries is the quality of the documents and the levels
of indexing.
5.3 The
role of public policies in the organisation of audiovisual knowledge
72. Heritage institutions are today
increasingly defined in terms of activities and no longer storage.
73. The example of Ina is instructive because, since 2005, this
institution has ceased to be a repository of archives and has become
an organisation that has substantially altered its image among all
audiences.
74. In general, the emergence of networks has led heritage institutions
to now focus more on users and their practices. This means that
these networks have become the gateway to cultural content thanks
to their development of dynamic interfaces between users and knowledge
by means of collaborative tools and mediation possibilities.
75. The Research and Innovation Institute at the Pompidou Centre
has developed “Lignes de temps” (Time Lines), a software that enables
users to annotate a film and share those annotations while accessing
what others have written on the same film. It is extremely likely
that these mediation possibilities will be central to the way audiovisual
archives will operate in the years to come.
76. Since history is now screen based rather than text based,
it is essential to organise knowledge in order for it to be meaningful,
and to combat the poor quality of certain content, especially in
the moving image field (amateur videos, etc.), which is a feature
of digital culture. This must lie at the heart of public policies: audiovisual
archives must come up with new strategies for flagging up this audiovisual
heritage as a key to understanding, and organise pathways to help
people navigate through this heritage in order for them to acquire
audiovisual knowledge. These new reference points must be cultural,
organised and well thought out, and cannot be entrusted to search
engines which classify knowledge in an often random way.
5.4 The
way ahead
77. Even though the Internet is
an extraordinary tool for promoting knowledge, the primary feature
of the Web is its ephemeral nature: new software, applications,
writing formats and constant technological developments give vitality
to the network but they also make the preservation of digital archives
much more vulnerable. Without further processing, or migration,
current e-content will be unreadable in 10 years’ time.
78. The emergence of networks has led heritage institutions to
now focus more on users and their practices. This means that they
are the gateway to cultural content by developing dynamic interfaces
between users and knowledge, by means of collaborative tools and
mediation possibilities.
79. European “memory centres” could be set up in order to validate
the state-of-the-art technologies and concepts resulting from research.
These centres of excellence should be able to harness the knowledge
of specialists from businesses, libraries, archives and universities.
Efforts in the field of the long-term preservation of digital content
require reinforcement: this preservation should be an integral part
of any digitisation policy in order to be sustainable and economically
viable.
