March 4, 2010 - - The Preserving Digital Public Television Project has released the report, Strategies for Sustainable Preservation of Born Digital Public Television (external link). The report is a thorough investigation into the technical, operational and economic requirements for sustainable preservation of file-based television production.
The Preserving Digital Public Television Project is lead by Thirteen/WNET.ORG, and is supported by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program.
Making the investment in digital preservation is critical for the survival of public television programming, and the report demonstrates how the development of a preservation repository can benefit the public television community.
The report includes a case study of the costs associated with the PDPTV prototype preservation repository at New York University. It analyzes the costs and potential income sources associated with maintaining a preservation repository, and argues that the operating costs can be self-sustaining. While it does not specifically focus on technologies or infrastructure scenarios that could support long-term preservation, it provides a high level look at all the requirements of sustainable digital preservation of public television, well beyond simply storage.
The project is planning to release several other reports over the next few months, including a detailed analysis of the intellectual property and copyright issues relating to digital access and preservation of public television programs in the U.S., as well as a comprehensive description of the architecture and technical design of the model repository for video files set up by the New York University Digital Library Team.
An overview of the project and its activities can be found in the May 2009 International Preservation News article " Preserving Digital Public Television: Is There Life After Broadcasting? (external link)" (PDF).
