Preservation and Provision of Access of a national non-broadcast archive: the digitization of the Music collection of the National Library of Israel

The talk will describe the specific challenges and solutions for large scale digitisation of a national non-broadcast archive, faced with many different tape types and lengths, content of variable acoustic quality, documentation ranging from good to inadequate, multiple languages and scripts, large scale logistics issues, and a combination of multiple funding sources from both public and private sectors.
In the last four years, the National Library of Israel has faced and overcome all these challenges in the course of the large scale digitisation of its sound archive of national and ethnic material, recorded over the course of the twentieth century.
The challenges faced by the National Library of Israel are to a greater or lesser extent likely to be shared by most non-broadcast national archives. Gila Flam will report on the near successful completion of the project. She will also introduce the new challenges of providing access to the collection in Israel and in the world.
Brussels-based Memnon Archiving Services performed the large-scale digitisation service on behalf of NLI. Memnon CEO, Michel Merten, will describe how the digitisation was organised to ensure a range of key objectives, including efficiency, respect for IASA standards, compliance with a tight deadline, and value for money. Michel will discuss in particular the post-production challenges posed by such a varied archive.