Cultural leaders call for support to meet digitisation deadline

The directors of the National Library of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and the National Archives of Australia have called for greater support to save 850,000 hours of undigitised audio and visual material, reports Australian film industry publication Filmink.

Speaking ahead of a Digital Directions conference in Canberra on 19 October, the directors said technological obsolescence and the deterioration of fragile tapes has created a pressing challenge to digitise the material.

A number of cultural institutions are currently working together to digitise their material by 2025, but say they lack the resources to meet this deadline.

National Archives of Australia director general David Fricker said that the institution’s collection of ‘iconic radio and television broadcasts, Indigenous customs and language, ASIO surveillance, and secret military operations’ was at risk. ‘With Deadline 2025 looming large, it is difficult to overstate the urgency to act now to preserve and keep accessible these records that belong to future generations of Australians,’ he said.

Category: Library news