Standards and New Technology Strategies to Preserve Content on Magnetic and Disc Media

On October 21, 1999 the U.S. Association of Imaging Technology and Sound held a Legislative Action Day at which 13 of its members petitioned 22 members of Congress for technology related tax relief. Unfortunately, no archivists were reported to have participated in these meetings! It is important for archivists around the world to develop digital asset management policies that can serve to direct standards efforts that bring some order to this chaos. Today, SMPTE/ANSI Standards cover a very limited scope, pertaining largely to signal structures and product interchange between devices and media manufacturers. At the same time, in the absence of much needed standards covering content exchange, the post-production and archival communities are left to seek taxpayer relief to cope with the rapid changes in technology. This situation deserves serious industry consideration.