IASA 2017 Annual Conference

The Radio Archives of the Bavarian Broadcast holds about 450.000 quarter-inch tapes. The oldest of these tapes were recorded in 1952. The tape archive is located in a large space on the two upper floors of the radio building. The initial tape digitization process started around the year 1990 as part of the standard re-recording process within the Bavarian Broadcast operations. This process involved one-to-one operator's listening control. Twenty years later about a third of the tapes had been digitized. In 2010 the decision was made to re-use this space for other purposes in the long run and to accelerate the digitization process so that it would be completed within a time period of 5 years. To speed up the digitization an in-house factory migration process was designed, with a strong focus on maximizing quality-control and minimizing labor requirements.
The talk will give insight into the project from different perspectives and illustrate how this large-scale digitization project could be finished within the targeted time frame and calculated budget. Various aspects of the project will be discussed, starting with the decision to use technical observation methods to enable parallel ingest, continuing with descriptions of how the workflow requirements were defined and how the new elements were integrated into the existing system environment. Information about the training process will be presented along with indications of how the important factor of user acceptance was dealt with.
The presentation will be held jointly by the Bavarian Broadcast Head of Collection Management and Digitization, describing the task from the user's point of view, and by the supplier of the system, explaining the technical layout of the selected solution.