Understanding your collection prior to digitisation is the initial and most critical stage in the evaluation, digitisation and mitigation process. Workflows are created to assess the archive library prior to any activity of digitisation commencement. This process is designed to ensure a thorough evaluation of archived content in order to highlight those items that have started degradation. According to Merten, when digitising content, although monetisation is often tied to the most valuable items, it is essential to ensure that these items are handled with care as they are often the most fragile.
Merten further said that in Africa, most archives fail to manage their storage facilities correctly. This can be attributed to various conditions such as limited financial resources and other external factors such as climate conditions which affect the rate at which archives degrade.
The #PreserveAfricaArchives free-to-attend online forum was an initiative by Broadcast Media Africa (BMA), in collaboration with Apricity Consulting, to assist audio-visual archive professionals in unlocking archived content’s commercial and monetary value.
Click/Tap HERE Watch the snippet of Michel Merten’s expansion on ‘How do we effectively carry out effective risk assessments when evaluating, digitising, and mitigating risk during digitisation of collections’.
