The document discusses the Save Your Archive program and its efforts to preserve the Live Romanian Revolution collection held by the Romanian Television Archive. The collection contains footage of the 1989 Romanian revolution broadcast live on television. Due to the age and degradation of the footage, the collection was prioritized for digitization under the Save Your Archive program. The project's goals were to digitize and preserve the collection, index it with metadata, and make some footage publicly accessible online. To date, the project has finished pre-digitization work, started indexing and labeling footage, assessed the technical status of materials, and begun digitization and restoration efforts, though some footage could not be restored due to poor source quality.

1. SAVE YOUR ARCHIVE
PROGRAM
S.O.S The Live Romanian Revolution

2.  Romanian Television Archive
 The Live Romanian Revolution Collection, the
Save Your Archive Program and “The Policy
Of Small Steps"
 The achievements of the project "SOS The
Live Romanian Revolution“
 Video “The Live Romanian Revolution”

3. Romanian Television Archive
 The television history in Romania starts with TVR in December 31st 1956. TVR
Archive includes, today, around 240.000 hours of images, a patrimony that is
increasing every year with 10 000 hours. The archive catalogue counts today
135.000 of titles and there are still many unknown materials.
 The main collections of the Romanian Television Archives are: “Communist Romania
and Nicolae Ceausescu” (5207 items), “The Live Romanian Revolution” (300 items),
“News” (3350 items), “Golden Stag Festival” (350 items), “Fore Front” (500 items),
“Folklore and traditions” (3350 items),
 The audiovisual patrimony of the Romanian Television Archives can be found in a
variety of formats: 16 and 35 mm film, VPR and MGS (tapes of 1 and 2 inch), U-matic
tapes, BETA tapes (SP, DIGITAL, IMX), DVCAM tapes, Optical Disks, audio tapes,
CDs and DVDs. An important part of our patrimony, around 40% is still on 16 mm film.
This support is not in use anymore and copying it is difficult due to the lack of the
technical equipment. TVR has also problems with the degradation state of the tapes
that is advanced because at the moment the production inside TVR still uses the
master tapes from the archive. Unfortunately a full digitisation plan is not possible for
TVR at the moment.
 Trying to avoid a permanent lost of our patrimony we’ve implemented a new strategy:
“The Policy Of Small Steps"

4. “The Policy Of Small Steps“ - The Live Romanian
Revolution Collection and the Save Your Archive
Program
 “The Policy Of Small Steps“ – consists in saving the endangered collections piece by
piece. So, in the first place we've identified the most endangered collections and
we've started looking for funding for the preservation and digitization. We've
conceived a list of collections that are in desperately need for digitisation and in the
first position of this list was the collection "The Live Romanian Revolution“.
 “The Live Romanian Revolution” collection contains 400 hours of footage. This
collection is unique in many ways. It contains 120 hours of footage that was broadcast
live during the first ever revolution broadcasted live on television. TVR Centre was
one of the battlefields of the revolution, with Studio 4 – where most of the live
broadcasting was taking place – having been under severe attacks. The collection
also contains material that was filmed, but never broadcast, not shown to the public,
which makes it an unique historical document.
 Fortunately, the "Save Your Archive" program was designed for helping audiovisual
archives that are in danger and "The Live Romanian Revolution" collection had the
exact circumstances for being part of this program.
 The main reasons for launching the “S.O.S The Live Romanian Revolution” project
were:
1) the vulnerability of the collection (given the state of degradation of this collection,
digitization is imperative);
2) the inestimable value of this collection known in the entire world;

5. The achievements of the project "SOS The Live
Romanian Revolution“
 "SOS The Live Romanian Revolution" project had 3 simple objectives:
1) To digitize and preserve the audiovisual collection “The Live Romanian Revolution”;
2) To index and create metadata for the entire collection;
3) To make part of this collection accessible online for the general public;
 The working progress:
1. We have finished all the pre-digitisation activities ;
2. We have started the supports indexation at the beginning of April and we’ve implemented a
digital labeling system with bar code (including labels) using an in house application.
3. We have checked the technical status of each support and we have divided them into 3
risk categories: 1- major risk; 2 - medium risk; 3 - low risk. Each support has a temporary
label mentioning its risk category;
4. Using the application for the labeling system we have added primary information about
each support, such as: unique identification code, title, duration, color, support type,
broadcasting date, sound type, aspect ratio, etc.
5. We have started the ingest activities and the digital restoration on September -
unfortunately there are items that we couldn't restore. The master tapes had a bad quality
from the beginning (were recorded on VHS tapes and TVR never received master VHS
tape);
6. We have settled the metadata schema (part of the informations we already have);

6. the supports indexation
All the supports of the collection were gathered together.

7. the supports indexation
The labeling system with barcode - applying labels.

8. the supports indexation
The technical status check.

9. The digitization
The ingest activities and the digital restoration

10. Video “The Live Romanian Revolution”
Thank you!