The Trouble With Digitizing History

Dominique Daniel Discussion

The Netherlands spent seven years and $202 million to digitize huge swaths of audiovisual archives that most people will never see. Was it worth it?

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision has "finished digitizing the bulk of the Netherlands’ audiovisual archives last year, for a cost of $202 million over seven years. The project ran smoothly and transparently, digitizing 138,932 hours of film and video, 310,566 hours of audio, and 2,418,872 photos... For all of Sound and Vision’s efforts, though, only 2.3% of its digitized archive is publicly available online. Schools and researchers are allowed to access 15% of the archive on Sound and Vision’s website. For the rest, Sound and Vision’s administrators have to ask the copyright holders’ permission to release their clips outside of the building..."

Source: Tina Amirtha, "The Trouble With Digitizing History," Fast Company, http://www.fastcompany.com/3048283/the-trouble-with-digitizing-history