The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is taking steps to protect against the effects of aging.
Canada’s public broadcaster announced in a media release that it plans to undertake an extensive effort to digitize its entire collection of physical media assets.
The CBC will be digitally archiving approximately 720,000 audio/video assets, while Radio-Canada will be digitally archiving approximately 650,000 audio, video, and film assets.
“We are incredibly proud to be investing in the digitization of our archives so that this treasure trove of Canadian content may be preserved for future generations,” said Emma Bédard, senior manager of public affairs at the CBC, via email.
Additionally, the CBC announced that “approximately 20 positions will be created” at Radio-Canada, in order to carry out the digitization.
Archive digitization is a necessary step to combat the natural deterioration that affects outdated physical media like tape and film.
“The project is also necessary to address…the increasing cost to production staff and media librarians of maintaining playback devices,” read an excerpt from the release.
The project is slated to take at least five years, and will begin in winter 2018.
“As we begin this work, we have not yet determined how much of this content will be publicly available,” said Bédard.
“That being said, we will continue to make some of our archival content available online…in collaboration with librarians, archivists, and educational writers across Canada.”
Source: CBC
