American Archive of Public Broadcasting

a collaboration between WGBH and the Library of Congress

An unprecedented and historic collection of American public radio and television content - dating back through the 1950s - will be permanently preserved and made available to the public through a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH Boston as the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

Library of Congress

WGBH Media Library and Archives

Public Broadcasting Act of 1967

1977: Internal PBS Report

1979: WGBH Media Archives

founded

Creates the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) &

mandates it to establish a library and

archives.

After 24 years of noncommercial

television, there is no archive of public TV in

the US

WGBH establishes a records management and archives program staffed by professional

archivists

1979: PBS operates a Public Television Library and Broadcast Archive

1993: PBS & Library of

Congress enter agreement

1997: LOC Report

Operations cease in 1983 in response to a

lowered budget forecast.

PBS agrees to transfer the “best copy” of “all PBS programs...” to the

Library of Congress

Library of Congress issues report on the state of TV & Video

preservation

2004: Move toward preserving born-digital

files

2007: APTS proposes digital

repository

2007: CPB consults with stakeholders

WNET, WGBH, PBS & NYU, funded by the NDIIPP, introduce Preserving Digital Public Television

(PDPTV)

CPB hosts a meeting with stakeholders to

discuss creation of an American Archive

Proposal to develop a digital repository is

sent to Congress

2007: Congressional

Support

2008: CPB study

2009: Pilot Project

Over $10 billion invested in content no longer available to the public; recommends creating a prototype

Archive

Oregon Public Broadcasting leads

effort to identify and digitize 2,500 hours of content at 24 stations

Senate & House Appropriations

Committees support a plan to digitize public TV and radio libraries

2010-2012

Content Inventory Project

PBCore 2.0 Metadata

Project

Digitization Project

WGBH/LOC new home for American Archive

© 2010 WGBH 10

• 40,000 hours of digital material initially from over 100 stations

• 2.5 million inventory records from 120 stations

• Identified over 3 million items kept at stations, archives, producers, university collections across the country

Initial Collection

© 2010 WGBH 12

Goals for Next 2 Years

• Ingest the 40,000 hours of digitized files into the LOC systems

• Develop a website for public access to the 2.5 million records from the inventory project

• Allow public access to proxy files on location at WGBH and LOC

• Rights permitting, allow as much on-line access as possible to the proxy files

PBCore

• Continue the development of PBCore as a standard for media materials

• Re-engage the PBCore community for input in the continued development

• Outreach to new adopters of PBCore

Long-Term Goals

• Grow the collection by adding new inventory records and digitized materials

• Help public media organizations with archiving, digitizing, and access to their collections

• Build a consortium for preservation and access of public media archive content

• Update existing records with richer descriptive data once materials are available in digital format

• Develop on-line curated collections