Preservation and Archiving of Digital Media

This paper provides a brief history of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, established in 1968 with the goal of recording and preserving national news programming on the three major networks at the time (ABC, NBC, and CBS). The archive has faced several challenges as it evolved—it now covers representative news from the Fox and CNN cable networks—most notably financial and legal issues: who really ‘owns’ the news? Even today archiving digital news remains financially and legally challenged as the number of news networks increases and privacy laws emerge, resulting in the creation of ‘piracy archives.’ The paper also touches on the many ongoing issues that need to be addressed, including the number of copies to be created, the importance of metadata, the technical requirements, what qualifies for preservation, and the ever-present issue of sustainability.

Information Services & Use 40, no. 3