Content Production Technologies

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What is a Large-scale Archive?

Yoichi Ishibashi

An archive is both an old and a new word. The new word's meaning refers to utilization of an archive. Archiving will provide a large amount of video content ready to view or to help produce other content. A library is similar to an archive, but is generally used to store goods as they are. Two different types of archives are introduced here. One is the preservation-oriented archive and the other is the new type-oriented archive.

Archives have become widely available in the age of the broadband network. The reason is because attractive content is in short supply along with rapidly growing numbers of information channels, all wanting digitized audio-visual (AV) data. The importance of an archive will be described here. An archive generally means a place where a large number of records about official documents are stored: that is, a place where historically valuable materials are in storage and can be referenced. The importance of a video archive had long been discussed in Europe, and the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT, or IFTA) (http://www.fiatifta.org/aboutfiat/whatis/) was established in 1977, principally by the BBC (UK), INA (France), and RAI (Italy). The objectives are as follows:

• to provide a forum for exchange of knowledge and experience between its members;
• to promote the study of any topic relevant to the development and use of AV archives;
• to establish international standards on key issues regarding ...