IBC recognizes the International Olympic Committee for the preservation of its archives

The IBC Awards give a special recognition award to the International Olympic Committee for the preservation of thousands of videos, films and audio, museum pieces, images and archival documents.

The International Olympic Committee has been awarded at IBC 2015 for the work of preserving and managing its audiovisual archives through its Asset Management program (AAP). The award recognizes the IOC's positive approach, on the one hand, preserving archival material and, on the other, making archives available to media producers, researchers and other professionals.

The audiovisual archives date back to the first Olympic Games of the modern era, held in 1896, and include 2,000 hours of film reels, 33,000 hours of videos, 8,500 hours of audio and more than 500,000 photographs, as well as 2,000 archival documents and 22,000 images of artifacts from the Olympic Museum.

“The IOC AAP program has made it possible to safeguard the IOC's rich legacy by restoring the body's historical archives and inserting them into the 21st century,” said Christophe de Kepper, the IOC Director General. "It is our duty to perpetuate the cultural heritage of more than a century of Olympic history that our ancestors bequeathed to us. The IOC's heritage can now easily stand the test of time."

Michael Lumley, chair of the IBC Awards panel, added that "this project is very important for two reasons. First, it ensures the preservation of more than a century of Olympic history. But perhaps the most important aspect is that it brings the industry's focus onto an aspect that is very easy to ignore."

“The risk that our archives would become inaccessible, not only due to the deterioration of the physical media, but also because the devices to reproduce them become obsolete and almost impossible to replicate,” said Lumley. "Media, production companies and anyone with an audiovisual archive can look at the IOC Asset Management project to see a model for Conservation and Access. IBC is pleased to draw attention to this issue through its award, as well as recognize the excellent work being carried out by the IOC."

A large project

At the beginning of this project, IOC archivists conducted an in-depth study and found that, within a few years, half of the videos would be unplayable, 20% of the faded photographs would be unusable, and audio players would not be available for much of the collection. In the tapes, the chemical deterioration due to the “vinegar syndrome” advanced, and the risk of total destruction grew.

A conservation program was set up to which teams of experts from around the world with specific skills for the restoration, preservation and digitization of the material joined. A team of 40 specialists was hired: data warehouses, technicians, engineers, a lawyer, a web administrator (webmaster) and project managers.

At the same time, an archival materials management system was implemented, which has functionality tailored to the needs of a truly integrated multimedia archive, from the digitization of physical media to the website and distribution of digital material.

The project took seven years to complete, with a total of 100,000 hours of combined work, including cataloguing, indexing, technical operation and acquisition of IP rights. Between 40 and 125 photos and 15-20 hours of recordings were processed daily; it was scanned, digitally cleaned, repaired and color corrected where necessary.

Today, the IOC archives' business-to-business website, The Olympic Multimedia Library, receives 1,200 monthly visits from professionals as well as internal IOC staff.

A meticulous job

The IOC AAP program was based at the movement's headquarters located in Lausanne, Switzerland. The most valuable tapes, a quarter of the collection, were restored, digitized and inscribed on new films by Protek of the United States, and the rest of the films were cleaned and reconditioned by Reto Kromer of Switzerland.

Where the IOC still had video players, it digitized the recordings at its own expense, with older formats sent to Vision Global of Canada and Sony of France. The audios as well as half of the video collection made up of various old formats were worked on by Memnon, today integrated into Sony, in Sweden and Belgium. Regarding the immense number of photos, those that needed more restoration work were taken by the Swiss Institute for the Conservation of Photography, and the rest were channeled by Onasia from Thailand.

La integración de sistemas de administración de archivos la encabezó RS2i, con sus socios tecnológicos Amberfin, Front Porch Digital y Ninsight. Se aprovechó la oportunidad para autorizar una búsqueda federada en todos los archivos mediante un rastreo que utiliza una base única de conocimiento común y que requirió una ontología que abarcó más de 400.000 términos y conceptos de búsqueda, desarrollada por Mondeca. Asimismo, los archivos de papel se integraron utilizando el sistema ScopeArchiv, y también se extendió la administración de archivos para incluir unas 20.000 piezas de museo mediante una solución provista por Zetcom.

The AAP program may have come to an end, but the IOC's commitment to its heritage largely continues. For example, each version of the Summer Olympics totals about 3,500 hours of video and about 40,000 photos.