2012 survey of the preservation, management, and use of audiovisual media in European higher education institutions

The author conducted a survey with regard to the situation of audiovisual media in European higher education, with regard to quantities, storage conditions, digitisation, and digital preservation of audiovisual media, and attitudes towards these topics. This paper aims to document the findings.

In total, 226 of around 800 addressed institutions in 33 European states filled in an online questionnaire.

The picture that presents itself is a very diverse one with a variety of content lifecycle stages, types of content and data carriers, and attitudes. Information regarding collections is often fragmentary: there were even contradictory statements from the same organisations, and only 50 percent of the responding institutions had detailed information on their collections. A correlation between lack of information and state of collections could be found: institutions that had thoroughly surveyed their collections often had repositories and dedicated considerable effort to digitisation and preservation.

A definite need for digitisation and preservation could be confirmed. Extrapolating from the figures that were the outcome of the present survey, the hours of content existing in European higher education institutions can be expected to run well into the millions. In general, the field of digitisation and digital preservation of multimedia content in higher education could be found to be one that is still in a state of flux and more than superficial awareness of it is lower than could be expected in the information age.

This is the first study on such a large scale to have been conducted on the subject of the preservation, management, and use of audiovisual media in European higher education.