Mass digitization of Canadian public broadcaster’s audiovisual archive

CBC/Radio-Canada have announced the mass digitization of the public broadcaster’s audiovisual archive collection.

CBC will digitise 720,000 physical media assets (audio and video) while Radio-Canada will digitise more than 650,000 assets that include audio, video and film.

The project is necessary to address the deterioration of physical recording media, equipment obsolescence and the increasing cost to production staff and media librarians of maintaining playback devices. The need to make content accessible in a tapeless environment, in Toronto, Montreal and regionally, was another factor in CBC/Radio-Canada’s decision to undertake the project.

For CBC, a number of new positions will be created internally to support this project, with details to be confirmed in the coming weeks. At Radio-Canada, approximately 20 positions will be created. Preparatory work is already under way and mass digitization, which will take at least five years, is slated to begin in winter 2018.

Source: http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/media-centre/2017/05/11/