The document summarizes the collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH Boston to create the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. This unprecedented collection will permanently preserve American public radio and television content dating back to the 1950s and make it available to the public. Key events that led to this collaboration include the establishment of the WGBH Media Archives in 1979, agreements between PBS and the Library of Congress in the 1990s to transfer public television content, and efforts beginning in the 2000s to preserve born-digital public media files and develop proposals for a digital public media repository.

1. a collaboration between
WGBH and the Library of Congress

2. An unprecedented and historic collection of
American public radio and television
content - dating back through the 1950s will be permanently preserved and made
available to the public through a
collaboration between the Library of
Congress and WGBH Boston as the
American Archive of Public
Broadcasting.

3. Library of Congress

4. WGBH Media Library and Archives

5. Public Broadcasting Act
of 1967
Creates the
Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB) &
mandates it to
establish a library and
archives.
1977: Internal
PBS Report
After 24 years of
noncommercial
television, there is no
archive of public TV in
the US
1979: WGBH
Media Archives
founded
WGBH establishes a
records management
and archives program
staffed by professional
archivists

6. 1979: PBS operates a
Public Television Library
and Broadcast Archive
Operations cease in
1983 in response to a
lowered budget
forecast.
1993: PBS &
Library of
Congress enter
agreement
PBS agrees to transfer
the “best copy” of “all
PBS programs...” to the
Library of Congress
1997:
LOC Report
Library of Congress
issues report on the
state of TV & Video
preservation

7. 2004: Move toward
preserving born-digital
files
WNET, WGBH, PBS &
NYU, funded by the
NDIIPP, introduce
Preserving Digital
Public Television
(PDPTV)
2007: APTS
proposes digital
repository
Proposal to develop a
digital repository is
sent to Congress
2007: CPB
consults with
stakeholders
CPB hosts a meeting
with stakeholders to
discuss creation of an
American Archive

8. 2007:
Congressional
Support
Senate & House
Appropriations
Committees support a
plan to digitize public
TV and radio libraries
2008: CPB
study
Over $10 billion
invested in content no
longer available to the
public; recommends
creating a prototype
Archive
2009: Pilot
Project
Oregon Public
Broadcasting leads
effort to identify and
digitize 2,500 hours of
content at 24 stations

9. 2010-2012
Content Inventory
Project
PBCore 2.0
Metadata
Project
Digitization
Project
WGBH/LOC new
home for
American
Archive

10. © 2010 WGBH
10

11. Initial Collection
• 40,000 hours of digital material
initially from over 100 stations
• 2.5 million inventory records from
120 stations
• Identified over 3 million items
kept at stations, archives,
producers, university collections
across the country

12. © 2010 WGBH
12

15. Goals for Next 2 Years
• Ingest the 40,000 hours of digitized files into the LOC
systems
• Develop a website for public access to the 2.5 million
records from the inventory project
• Allow public access to proxy files on
location at WGBH and LOC
• Rights permitting, allow as much on-line access as
possible to the proxy files

16. PBCore
• Continue the
development of PBCore
as a standard for media
materials
• Re-engage the PBCore
community for input in
the continued
development
• Outreach to new
adopters of PBCore

17. Long-Term Goals
• Grow the collection by adding new inventory records
and digitized materials
• Help public media organizations with archiving,
digitizing, and access to their collections
• Build a consortium for preservation and access
of public media archive content
• Update existing records with richer descriptive data
once materials are available in digital format
• Develop on-line curated collections