When Digital Remembers Analogue – Conservation Metadata for Analogue Film as Preservation Description Information in a Digital Archive

While "Digitization is not Digital Preservation", the two processes are often closely connected. This is especially true for audiovisual (AV), where the analogue materials, much like their digital counterparts, come in a variety of formats and are only accessible via rendering equipment such as projectors. This indirect accessibility of analogue audiovisual makes autopsy a resourceintensive
process. Nevertheless, it’s a necessary process prior to digitization, as the digital objects’ quality depends on the quality of its analogue source material. But is analogue conservation data helpful in the preservation process of the digital object as well? Can it be used as Preservation Description Information in the OAIS sense? TIB, the German National Library of Science and Technology, has authored a Cconservation Metadata Schema for Analogue Film as part of the large digitization and digital preservation
project DELFT. The schema includes metadata which TIB considers important knowledge for the contextualization
and interpretation of the digital AV object. This paper outlines motivation and background for this development, discusses the connection of analogue and digital in an overarching analogue conservation and digital preservation
workflow and gives a detailed insight into the TIB Conservation Metadata Schema.
Keywords – audiovisual preservation, conservation
metadata, preservation description information
Conference Topics – Scanning the New Development;
Exploring New Horizons