New prospects

Already over recent years, major national tv broadcasting corporations (RAI, ORTF, etc.) state that thousands of hours recorded on tape  housed in the RVM archives (according to later standards and much more  up-to-date compared to the above open reel, such as the ¾ inch U-Matic open reel) cause more and more reading problems as time goes by.

This news aims to focus on the need to ensure continuity between quick-changing technological systems, important in many different sectors regarding media, communications and performances activities., The goal of the workshop project should be to take these issues into account during the development phase, consequently it would be useful to the community to provide expertise for technical personnel to help them with maintenance and rebuild partially obsolete equipments, if and when required.

It is apparent that this project has met with approval from important bodies and Documentary Centres who confirmed its validity and focused on the need to implement it urgently as they have vast audio/visual archives (RAI Audiovideoteche – Rome, ASAC, AAMOD, etc.) in their possession. These associations have been contacted and the first steps have been taken towards future co-operation for protecting this heritage. Recently, many other archives have requested to be involved in these activities.

The intention is to save the video tapes recorded during the sixties and seventies from deterioration, to be more exact, the first documents recorded using studio or portable video recorders, which over a twenty year period have undergone a rapid and unexpected aging process due to obsolescence.