Vitt brus : om långtidsbevarande av ljud och rörlig bild

Sammanfattning: The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine the preservation of audiovisual objects and how methods surrounding this may affect the material as well as the archival profession. Physical recording formats – such as cassette tapes or compact discs – deteriorate quickly and are becoming progressively obsolete, which in turn makes it problematic to safeguard the information they contain. It is therefore becoming increasingly important to take preservational action or else risk losing the recordings altogether. This area of research is largely unexplored within the archival field, which is something the authors hope to rectify with the help of this study. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews conducted in conjunction with three public institutions: the Swedish National Archives, the National Library of Sweden and the Folklore Archive in Lund. The results concerned which methods were used in achieving long-term preservation of audiovisual documentation within an archival context. This was then analysed with the use of postmodern archival theory as well as with the ideas of media archaeologist Wolfgang Ernst. The study shows that migration – meaning the transfer of information from one format to another – is the prevalent method for securing sound and video content for future audiences. The material aspect of the physical carrier, along with its context, is consequently lost; metadata makes up for this loss of context whilst also working as a marker of authenticity. At times, the quality of the content is compromised, yet it is not recommended practice that archivists take it upon themselves to improve the content. Currently, it is becoming all the rarer that archivists have the proficiency required to handle older technologies as well as newer digital formats, resulting in a necessity to reformulate the role of the archivist to efficiently preserve our audiovisual legacies.