Video Art / Media Art Preservation:  Studies and Suggestions                      THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK

Basic Priority Planning

 If you have a large collection of video tapes it might be too expensive – and too much work – to preserve all the tapes you might have to evaluate the tapes and decide on priorities. To this use The Experimental TV Center in New York has made a list of 12 questions (4).

 Here are some of the questions:

-          What is the value of the tapes? Why are they important to save? Who will use them?

-          Do you have the legal rights to the tapes?

-          Are some more valuable, unique, endangered?

-          What stage in the production process do the tapes represent? Are they masters, sub-masters, camera or audio originals, viewing copies?

-          What are the overall conditions of the tapes? Which tapes are on obsolete or endangered formats? Which are the oldest?

 Jim Lindner has in the essay “Videotape Restoration – Where Do I start?” made up a similar “Check List for Prioritizing  Candidates for Video Tape Restoration” (5). You add points for every time you have to answer yes when evaluating a tape – and tapes with the highest numerical values should be restored first:

• Does the tape exhibit any symptoms of "sticky shed syndrome" (squealing during playback, frequent head clogging, flaking or sticky surfaces)? If yes add 5 points
• Is the tape a single copy and exhibit any symptoms of "sticky shed syndrome" (squealing during playback, frequent head clogging, flaking or sticky surfaces)? If yes add 5 points
• Is the tape a single copy? If yes add 5 points
• Is the tape an obsolete format? If yes add 5 points
• Is the tape physically damaged? If yes add 4 points
• Is the tape the highest quality element in the production? If yes add 3 points
• Is the tape an early example in a format popular format ? If yes add 3 points
• Is the tape 10 years old or younger? If yes add 2 points
• Is the tape between 10 and 15 years old? If yes add 3 points
• Is the tape between 15 and 20 years old? If yes add 4 points
• Is the tape 20 years or older? If yes add 5 points (older than 25 years add one point per year over 25 (example 30 years old add 10 points)
• Has the tape been in a stable environment with proper temperature and humidity control If yes deduct 4 points

Jim Lindner assumes that all the candidate tapes you check are of equal value to you and/or your organisation/agency/archive.

Note:

(1)You can find the questionnaires on http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history/preservation/pres_start.html