Week 6

As discussed in my previous entry, my supervisor asked for me include in my recommendations some discussion and guidelines for the elements to be produced as part of the duplication process. I looked at some of the materials on standards for duplication and their recommendations were pretty consistent with one another. As I expected all of the articles stressed that a film-to-film duplication of the materials is the only recognized duplication method. Digital Beta can be used as an access copy, but is not really appropriate as a preservation master due to the potential for obsolescence and the relative instability of digital beta as compared to film.

However, the archive's grant is to make a digital access copy. They plan on going ahead with this as they need digital access copies for a future exhibit. My supervisor would like to make a film preservation copy in the future, but that will require another grant, and the digital duplication needs to move forward before any future grants can be expected to be awarded.

This leads me to believe that for the time being, the digital beta-cam access tapes can be used as preservation copies until the film preservation masters can be created from the originals. In that case I wonder whether it would be prudent to create additional digital beta copies or DVD/VHS surrogates as temporary access copies. Doing so would protect the "temporary preservation masters" until real duplication could take place, yet still allow for access to the content in some form...