Audiovisual heritage preservation

“…. [audiovisual material] is intrinsically fragile and [its] disappearance would mean the loss of a significant portion of our global heritage, along with the memory and identity of the people it depicts”

Mr Koïchiro Matsuura,
Director-General of UNESCO
regarding Audiovisual Heritage 27/10/08

"Every picture, every story, every song, enriches us"


The AIATSIS Audiovisual Archive holds the world's premier collection of audiovisual materials relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, cultures and histories. In many cases these Collections are the last location of a language, an ancestor’s photograph, or stories of how life was before today. They are priceless to the Indigenous communities which they describe and to which they belong. More than 90 per cent of these collections are unpublished, unique materials relating to Indigenous Australia. They are a comprehensive resource of audio, pictorial and moving image material dating back to the late 1800s, acquired since the establishment of the Institute in 1964.

Initially the collections were a by-product of research, with a strong emphasis on anthropology, archaeology and linguistics. These materials were largely recorded and collected as source material for academic publications and deposited at AIATSIS for  safe-keeping, Today, this vast resource has taken on an added importance for Indigenous Australians that goes well beyond stewardship. Indigenous Australians now form the overwhelming majority of people accessing the photographs, film and audio material for purposes as diverse as language maintenance, family history research, the revival of material culture practices, Native Title claims, documentary making and the establishment of keeping places located in remote communities. Moreover, increasing numbers of indigenous Australians are creating audiovisual content and archiving the material with AIATSIS.

Tomorrow is too late

International and local research shows there is a high degree of risk to the longevity of any collection materials recorded on analogue magnetic media. Without immediate and ongoing action, large components of the AIATSIS audiovisual collection are likely to be un-playable in the near future.

AIATSIS has an ethical imperative to appropriately resource the migration of these endangered recordings to digital formats while it is still possible. The AIATSIS Audiovisual Archive has actively been undertaking digitisation, which is world’s best practice for heritage collection preservation.

Magnetic tape can't wait

Studies of the relative lifespan of recorded magnetic media have shown that the older the media get, the more quickly they deteriorate. Once the magnetic oxide recording layer fails to adhere to the carrier, or hydrolysis occurs (absorption of moisture, swelling the oxide layer unevenly), the material becomes unplayable, leading to a total loss of content. This means that these recordings and the heritage they represent could be lost to the world.

The extent of this loss will be clearly evident by 2020, either because the carrier (the tape itself) will have deteriorated too far to retain a signal, or the playback devices are no longer serviceable or restorable.

The vast majority of analogue magnetic media in the AIATSIS Audiovisual Archive is already over 20 years old. While it is widely accepted that appropriate storage and handling can extend the lifespan of these materials, most collection objects were not stored in such ideal conditions prior to their deposit at AIATSIS. Many of these collections already exhibit some degree of deterioration.