Preserving the past and the present
Videotapes, although they have served us well over the years have a limited lifetime. This can be a serious problem when the information stored is of major interest not only to us now, but will be of interest for generations to come. The preservation of such information is vital to prevent us from losing our cultural heritage. Project AMICITIA has resulted in the successful transfer of television and video information from traditional videotapes to digital tapes by creating a digital archiving system. The quality of this digital data of the digital tapes is preserved using automated quality management procedures. In this way, the digital tapes are frequently checked and the data from any tape found to be problematic is transferred to a new tape. In addition to the digital archiving system, and online library has been created. This allows access to the information not only to professional users in the television industry, but also to the public. An extension of this is the rights management database. This controls the level of access different types of users have to the database. Another function provided is a three-language thesaurus, which will benefit users throughout Europe. The system is organised in a user-friendly manner, and provides remote, multilingual access to information to which up till now has not been available. There is also scope to expand the use of this software to the preservation of a wide range of information, from radio to publishing. In this way the images from our past can our present can be preserved in a very real way for future generations.
