This paper addresses the BFI National Archive’s transition from analogue archive workflows to digital through initiatives driven largely by pragmatic response to evolving needs. At a time when the BFI now consolidates its digital ambitions through the Film Heritage Unlocked project, the paper looks at the various approaches aimed to deliver mass digital access alongside preservation initiatives and lessons learnt along the way to what we all acknowledge will be a more digitally-oriented future than could ever have been predicted.

1. WORLD CONFERENCE 2013
OCTOBER 25- 282013 DUBAI, UAE
Charles Fairall, Helen Edmunds (2013). Turning a national archive digital, by degrees….
TURNING A NATIONAL ARCHIVE DIGITAL, BY DEGREES…
CharlesFAIRALLIEng MIET *a, HelenEDMUNDS†b
a
b
Head of Conservation, BFI National Archive; Collections Manager, BFI National Archive
This paper addresses the BFI National Archive‟s transition from analogue archive workflows to digital through
initiatives driven largely by pragmatic response to evolving needs. At a time when the BFI now consolidates
its digital ambitions through the Film Heritage Unlocked project, the paper looks at the various approaches
aimed to deliver mass digital access alongside preservation initiatives and lessons learnt along the way to
what we all acknowledge will be a more digitally-oriented future than could ever have been predicted.
Keywords: Digital capability | Digitisation | Analogue to digital transformation
AN EVOLUTION FROM ANALOGUE TO DIGITAL
Two or three decades ago, when the authors of this paper embarked upon their working
lifetime in a national film and television archive, there was little mention of digital. Yes,
engineers and technicians working in the broadcast industry at that time would have
been using and maintaining elements of digital technology within processes such as
timebase correction and some network transmission paths, but on the whole the word
digital was for geeks and simply didn‟t feature in daily vocabulary; not really even in the
emerging world of personal computing. Today however, the story is very different. Just
about everyone on the planet has something to say about digital. Whether its television
or tablets, mp3s or mobiles; consumers and businesses alike are now hard wired for
digital.
For archivists working with moving images in the 80s and 90s, the prospect of
digitisation was almost unthinkable. There was certainly a fascination for the subject, but
every time the calculators came out to start working out the raw data sizes for digitised
film frames, video signals and the like, we smiled and quickly switched them off again.
The technology required most likely could never exist or even if it could, would not be
affordable for archives to store or transport the vast volumes involved.
Of course the rapid evolution of the World Wide Webthrough the 1990s, combined with
the reality of Moore‟s law and an insatiable consumer hunger for technology, virtually
took and tore up the rule books of the previous 50 years - in what felt at the time like just
a few days. Like everyone else determined to progress and succeed in the digital
revolution, BFI archivists had to react quickly to maintain viability, in what had inexorably
metamorphosed into a new world:adigital world. So, with all the right technologies
necessary to overcome the perceived impossibilities of a decade before becoming more
and more available and affordable, what would we as archivists do with them? During the
*
Charles FAIRALL: Collections and Information | British Film Institute
J Paul Getty Jnr Conservation Centre | Berkhamsted HP4 3TP | United Kingdon
e-mail: Charles.fairall@bfi.org.uk
†
Helen EDMUNDS: Collections and Information | British Film Institute
J Paul Getty Jnr Conservation Centre | Berkhamsted HP4 3TP | United Kingdon
e-mail: helen.edmunds@bfi.org.uk
Copyright © of this paper is the property of the author(s). FIAT/IFTA is granted permission to reproduce copies of this work for
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2. Charles Fairall, Helen Edmunds
late 90s and early 00s some highly significant factors were at play which helped form a
cultural-technological strategy.
Responsible for one of the world‟s greatest film and television collections, held in
entirely analogue form and spread among the most diverse range of legacy formats
imaginable, the BFI had its work cut out - not only to make as much of it available to its
audiences as possible but also to secure the physicality of its artefacts, all of which were
unstable one way or another through decay and/or format obsolescence.
One of the very earliest digital initiatives at the BFI National Archive came by virtue of
a project sponsored by the HLF (Heritage Lottery Fund). Titled, Building an Archive for
the 21st Century, this 5 year project set out to address collections management issues
surrounding legacy acquisitions spanning many decades which required further
preparation to meet expectations for the coming years. Television was at the forefront of
this campaign, with some 36,000 titles from the history of the UK‟s major independent
broadcaster ITV, held only in their native format of 2” Quadruplex videotape. When the
green light came on for the project, key personnel were recruited and a bespoke
technical facility was quickly created during 1999 within the BFI Conservation Centre at
Berkhamsted to complement the existing Video Unit which was built in the mid-80s for
the capture and preservation of off-air television.
Figure 1
2” Quadruplex tapes awaiting transfer to digital format by the ‘Quad Squad’
Working 12 hour shifts, 7 days each week, with leadership from the archive‟s Senior
Curator of Television and a Senior Engineer with specific expertise recruited for the
project, a team of 8 operational engineers (fondly known as the “Quad Squad”)
transferred in excess of 30,000 programmes to Digital Betacam - literally saving them
from a tape format that due to diminishing skills and spare parts could simply not be
sustained for the long term in such high volume. The HLF 2” project, which enjoyed
strong support from the ITV companies, was deemed a great success and provided a
timely opportunity to adopt and demonstrate many new methods and working practices.
Through this entirely positive experience many barriers were broken down, with
personnel from right across the archive operation being involved and far more
sophisticated collections and project management in place than had ever been known
before.
The HLF project, which had brought in additional staffing, created new skills and
overall broke new ground, inevitably revealed further challenges. In addition to the tens of
thousands of television programmes transferred during the 5year period, the BFI‟s film
collections were examined in thorough detail to determine cultural value and also
physical condition. In excess of 65 million feet of film were inspected and condition
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3. Turning a national archive digital, by degrees…
documented. At that time a number of disparate legacy databases existed with specific,
categorised information in each. While these were largely fit for purpose in previous
decades, when ambitions for preservation, collections management and access were
perceived very differently, they were not linked or necessarily in a form befitting of an era
driven by the needs of digitisation for preservation and high volume, popular access.
From inspecting such a large quantity of film during the HLF project, the BFI now had
evidence of magnetic film materials at significant risk of loss and began a programme
ofdigitising all preservation status magnetic tracks. This early digitisation for preservation
programme at the conservation centre necessitated developing technologies, equipment
installation and changes to the bespoke database Tecrec,in use at that time to
accommodate documentation of the first digital files to be preserved within the national
collection.
Around the same time the BFI, working with several partners including UK Parliament
and The National Archives, were funded by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)
to deliver 1,000 hours of newly digitised content, which would be curated and
contextualised for further and higher education users. This project came to be known as
InView: British history through the lens. To deliver this project the conservation
technology team at the archive defined the necessary equipment and managed
installation. The BFI National Archive could now create preservation quality SD digital
files and transcode them, within the existing video laboratory at the conservation centre.
The project also provided an opportunity to develop multi-skilling, as technical archivists
worked with a selected title, often from the point of acquisition, through film inspection
and preparation, to quality checking new tape assets and the creation of digital files.
The mid to late 00s at the BFI National Archive were to provide further exciting
challenges and significant progress, with a successful bid to UK government for funding
to build upon the strengths and necessary findings of the HLF project. A further major
project, known as SHUK (Screen Heritage UK) was begun, with archival emphasis being
focused on securing national collections. For the BFI archive, this would impact on three
significant areas by:
Creating a new database CID (collections information database) with an integrated workflow system fit
for the future needs of managing UK national archives and capable of interfacing with the public
domain
Improved collections stabilisation and management, with the creation of a new Master Film Store that
would radically control inherent deterioration due to decomposition and remove the significant and
immediate threats of fire and mould
Developing existing conservation centre technical capabilities through the introduction of new
equipment and tools for film cleaning, photochemical printing, digital scanning, grading and restoration
CULTURAL PROGRAMME
Coincident with these major technical initiatives, ever more ambitious cultural
programmes were evolving at the BFI, with projects being created to collect, preserve
and deliver moving image content and information to audiences and education in a
variety of new and innovative ways.
2003 - BFI Screenonline‡a web based resource for licensed public libraries, schools
and colleges was among the first of its major digital initiatives. Intended as an
educational tool Screenonline presents short -form clips from its film and television
‡
BFI Screenoline can be accessed at http://www.screenonline.org.uk/
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4. Charles Fairall, Helen Edmunds
collections, along with supporting text written by subject and genre experts from the
archive‟s curatorial team.
2004 - BFI Mediatheque§a free digital public access portal, presenting browse-able,
curatorially contextualised, full-length content to attending customers. Initially based
within the BFI Southbank complex, BFI mediatheques and their growing body of digitised
programmes, currently over 2,500, are being opened throughout the UK
2007 – BFI YouTube** channel is launched providing the public free access to film
culture and heritage. 11 million hits and up, viewers can catch up with BFI restoration
programmes such as The Genius of Hitchcock or see Santa Claus as imagined by G. A.
Smith in 1898.
2009 – BFI /JISC funded InView: British history through the lens††online access
across Super Janet networks to over 1,000 hours of curatorially interpreted film and
television works for academic and scholarly use by the UK‟s higher education community
2009 – BFI Digital National Television Archive preservation and access to television
collections through processes for acquisition of current digital off-air broadcasts and
selected production quality programmes along with a programme of mass digitisation for
collections locked within obsolete analogue legacy videotape formats
4K film scanning for restoration
Off air TV preservation
Real time HD film scanning for digital
access
Figure 2
Digital operations at the BFI National Archive’s Conservation Centre
Bridging the analogue-digital divide presented the archive‟s conservation centre
preservation and collections management teams with some considerable challenges.
There was little time to reflect on the outcomes of both HLF and SHUK projects if we
§
Information on the curated collections of moving image available at BFI Mediathques can be found at
http://www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collections/introduction-bfi-collections/bfi-mediatheques
**
The BFI YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/BFIfilms
††
4
Access InView: British history through the lens at http://www.bfi.org.uk/inview/
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5. Turning a national archive digital, by degrees…
were to keep up with demand for digital access to the BFI‟s collections, while maintaining
appropriate levels of preservation and collections care. Joining together more intensely
than ever before to maintain impetus, preservation, collections management and
information teams worked relentlessly to create new workflows and processes to provide
a file based digital approach to access and preservation that would complement the
existing and no less important needs of a predominantly analogue archive.
EVOLUTION OF NEW SKILLS PROFILES AND STAFFING STRUCTURES
In 2010 the BFI National Archive underwent a reorganisation, the Collections and
Information department restructured to form conservation, curatorial, collections
management and documentation teams.
The new Collections Management team focuses on archive procedures and
standards, storage and access. Within it, the Collections Gateway team, dedicated to
facilitating access to collections materials was formed. This team works with all users,
both internal and external, to enable access to the film and TV heritage collection. This
can range, for example, from access requirements to deliver BFI‟s own cultural
programme; to working with donors and rights holders or providing direct access by UK
broadcasters or UK Parliament. Collections Gateway receive requests to access archive
content via CID‟s integrated workflow and with an understanding of the available
resources balanced with the client‟s deadline, determine the most effective workflow at
the conservation centre to deliver the clients requirements. The team have had to
develop knowledge and understanding of digital workflows, file types and digital delivery
mechanisms in response to the changing nature of access requests.
The Collections Gateway team of access officers are also responsible for delivering
the BFI‟s viewing service for researchers. Historically, this function has been about
providing physical access to the moving image viewing collection, by transporting film
prints or videotapes from the Conservation Centre to central London for a viewing
session. More recently this service has evolved, now offering digital access at the BFI
Reuben Library, BFI Southbank. Two dedicated work streams have been established at
the conservation centre to digitise a range of video tape and film viewing copies on
demand.
To address the ever increasing digital access and preservation demands a digital
preservation engineer has been appointed and a small Digital Operations team created,
drawing upon the talents of existing staff and their considerable experience gained
across the archive‟s film and video labs.
Traditional analogue conservation skills and processes have been firmly maintained,
covering all areas of film and video. Through a combination of training programmes and
experience gained on the job within the archive, all film conservation specialists are now
trained in the use of HD film access scanners to meet demands for on demand digital
research. These changes to working practice provide benefits all round and allow
archive staff to engage more fully in projects and interface effectively with the BFI‟s
framework of commercial suppliers.
TOOLS AND STANDARDS
Tremendous benefits were gained from the Securing the National Collection strand of the
SHUK programme, which impacted the national collection in three main ways: radically
improved film storage through the BFI master film store (MFS); a powerful new
collections information database (CID) and the addition of more technologically
advanced laboratory equipment to enhance film conservation processes.
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6. Charles Fairall, Helen Edmunds
In combination with a new organisational structure that included a dedicated
documentation team, with a Head of Information, responsible for BFI collections data, a
significant period of change was underway and the foundations laid for the archive to
function appropriately in the digital age.
FILM STORAGE
The construction of the BFI‟s MFS, an advanced low temperature and low humidity
storage facility for the long-term preservation of master status film materials ensures that
nitrate and safety film remains viable for future use which will inevitably include high
levels of digitisation.‡‡ Over the last two and half years a collection management review
for all holdings was completed, focusing primarily on the preservation status master film
collection. A key component of this programme was to move 330,000 film cans to BFI
MFS, with some 225,000 cans requiring a barcode label to be applied prior to the move.
Additional preparatory work in advance of the move programme included identifying and
segregating film with magnetic components which are considered unsuited to low
temperature storage and replacing in excess of 125,000 film cans which were below the
necessary standard.
Figure 3
BFI Master Film Store, Gaydon, Warwickshire
Photo credit: Edmund Sumner (c) BFI
COLLECTIONS INFORMATION DATABASE WITH INTEGRATED WORKFLOW SYSTEM
The BFI Collection Policy, reviewed in November 2011, stated that: documentation
enables accountability for moving image works and physical objects in the collections by
recording provenance, ownership and rights. It supports collection management by
tracking location, recording technical data and conservation activity. Documentation
underpins access by describing the collections and providing associated information,
interpretation and meaning. The BFI aims to adhere to existing standards and best
practice in the film archive sector or those communities of practice relevant to a particular
part of the collection.”(BFI Collection Policy, 2011: section 5, p.17)
In parallel with the design and construction of the Master Film Store, the BFI worked
closely with Adlib Information Systems§§, the company behind the BFI‟s Collection
Information Database (CID), to develop a new collections management system, this
included the important initial work of integrating 35 diverse datasets and varied discrete
‡‡
§§
6
BFI Collection Policy on conservation, section 6.4, http://www.bfi.org.uk/about-bfi/policy-strategy/bfi-national-archivecollections-policy
Adlib Information Systems, http://www.adlibsoft.com/
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7. Turning a national archive digital, by degrees…
legacy databases. The development of CID was informed by the BFI‟s new policy for
documentation*** ensuring that data now had a common standard and taxonomy controls.
The plan when developing CID was to ensure duplication in data entry no longer
occurred; that outdated management processes were revised and improved; accurate
reporting to inform collection management policies was achievable; interoperability for
data sharing was possible and that the ambition to unify all collections data was fulfilled.
CID now enables users to search across all film and television information and the
BFI‟s collections affording the opportunity for the national collection to be interpreted
flexibly and with significantly greater functionality.
The CID development also included an integrated workflow solution. Our aim when
developing this system with Adlib, was to achieve efficiency across a wide range of
activities, tasks and workflows; to standardise collection management procedures with
wider museum and archive community; integrate barcode and tracking for improved
collection security, enhanced location, inventory and movement control; achieve accurate
reporting and remove reliance of paper trails; know what resources are available,
effectively manage deadlines and employ an efficient ordering process for accessing
items from the collection.
A comprehensive review of conservation centre activities was undertaken, resulting in
a defined list of activity tasks which were then built into the workflow system. These
activity tasks are used to construct workflow jobs to deliver clients requests.
Vaults
operations
Dry lab
operations
Digital
operations
Pick items
Inspection
SD scanning
Video copy
Film cleaning
Analogue
image
grading
Technical
acceptance Theatre
Return items
Technical
selection
HD scanning
Audio copy
Film printing
Digital image
grading
Video quality
control
Transport
out
Preparation
for printing
2K/4K
scanning
Film
processing
Digital image
restoration
Audio quality
control
Transport in
Preparaion
for scanning
Audio
encoding
Silent
intertitle
restoration
Digital
quality
control
Loan in
Preparation
for
projection
Video
encoding
New title
creation
Loan out
Other
preparation
Transcoding
Service on
return
Ingest data
Dubbing
Wet lab
operations
Film image
quality
Quality
control
Data
migration
Data
migration to
LTO
Figure 4
***
Activity tasks defined within CID’s integrated workflow system
The BFI‟s approach to the principles and standards of documentation are referred to in section 5.1 and 5.2 of the BFI
Collection Policy
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8. Charles Fairall, Helen Edmunds
At the time of developing CID‟s integrated workflow, activity tasks were future proofed
for digital workflows, such as 2K/4K scanning and data migration to LTO.
Figure 5 is an example from CID‟s integrated workflow system, where a workflow job
has been constructed to undertake digital quality control of a newly acquired DCP, at the
request of a fiction curator.
Figure 5
Example of a job in CID’s integrated workflow system, illustrating the use of activity
tasks
Figure 6 is an example where a request from a researcher has resulted in a workflow
job being constructed and implemented to enable digital access. In this example three
VHS tapes were encoded, with proxy files to be viewed by the client at the BFI Reuben
Library via CID.
Figure 6
Example of a job in CID’s integrated workflow system, illustrating part of the structure for BFI
conservation centre workflows for the digitisation on demand of videotape source materials
CID‟s integrated workflow system provides the BFI Archive with the tools to move
collections items through various laboratory processes reducing a previous reliance on a
plethora of paperwork for coordinating workflow in combination with MS Excel or MS
Access databases; it provides real time information on the location of materials as they
move through conservation centre film, video and digital laboratories; documents metrics
and information on the reason for access by virtue of a series of activity codes.
CONSERVATION TECHNOLOGY
Conservation technology is a critical aspect of operations at the BFI National Archive‟s
conservation centre. Ensuring film, video and digital technologies remain operational
requires skilled engineers, robust maintenance schedules and a commitment to
documenting knowledge of obsolete machinery, formats and processes. A determined
„hunter, gatherer‟ approach to acquiring obsolete technology over the years allows us the
continued ability to access and thereby preserve a range of obsolete video formats.
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9. Turning a national archive digital, by degrees…
SHUK funding supported the development of existing conservation centre technical
capabilities through the introduction of new equipment and tools for film cleaning,
photochemical printing, digital scanning, grading and restoration, thereby ensuring the
archive is equipped to digitise film for preservation, access and restoration purposes.
The purchase of four HD film access scanners in 2011 heralded the startoffile based
digital access to the moving image collection for research purposes.
BFI FILM FOREVER 2012-2017
Alongside major plans for film production funding and education, Film Heritage Unlocked
is the archive strand of the three key strategic priorities of the BFI‟s 2012-2017 Film
Forever plan†††, which advances the UK‟s film and television archive‟s ambitions for
digital access and preservation by several orders of magnitude.
To that end, over the 5 year project, funded primarily by Lottery funds, 10,000 film
titles from across the UK‟s archives and rights holders will be digitised with the primary
intention of providing public access. To achieve this, the BFI National archive has to
further build upon its capabilities, providing digital access and preservation to some 5,000
of the titles from its own vaults.
Digital Capability: to complement film cleaning, scanning, restoration and grading
functions developed through the SHUK project, UK archives‟ capacity for digitising film
must grow to meet the ambitions of Film Heritage Unlocked. In particular, faster scanning
will be sought, which combined with new skills and efficient workflows will create digital
packages suitable for a range of digital channels, ranging from digital cinema through to
the online BFI Player.
Digital Infrastructure: requirements for long-term data preservation and digital asset
management were gathered through a BFI led working group to provide the basis for a
competitive dialogue procurement procedure. At the time of writing, 6 bidders have been
selected to present scalable archive data storage and management solutions with cost
and management plans detailed for a projected 20 year period.
Film Digitisation: as digital capability increases and working within a framework of 6
chosen commercial facilities, regular batches of selected film elements are being are
being prepared by conservation specialists and processed through workflows that are
specific to both physical type and appropriate digital deliverables. Raw, preservation
quality scans are to be maintained for future use within the long-term data preservation
function of Digital Infrastructure.
Stills digitisation: the collections management team having relocated the BFI‟s
photographic collection from central London office storage to conservation centre
conditioned vault storage in 2012, followed immediately on with a procurement process
to identify a digitisation partner. Save Photo are working with the BFI to digitise the
collection of 1.2 million still images and 156,000 transparencies. The collection of images
represent more than 150,000 film and television programmes, comprised of portraits,
capturing events on and off screen, images of studios, cinema and events from 1896 to
the present day. This exciting project commenced in 2013, to complete in 2016.
Throughout the 3 year programme newly digitised images will be regularly added to CID.
Public access to these images is available on BFI premises in the BFI Reuben Library,
Southbank, London.
While we are by no means at the end of the digital revolution, it is clear that the major
advances made in the area of digital archiving now make the analogue-only past virtually
unrecognisable: maybe even unthinkable.
†††
Details of the BFI plan Film Forever can be found at http://www.bfi.org.uk/about-bfi/policy-strategy/film-forever
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10. Charles Fairall, Helen Edmunds
The Film Forever plan states that: …making our rich screen heritage available is
integral to the BFI‟s broader cultural ambitions to support British film and British talent,
and to provide a varied programme of British and international film which can attract a
wide range of new audience – public and professional – to a deeper and richer range of
film.The plan clearly indicates that the “ultimate goal is to digitise and make accessible to
the public all of the UK‟s screen heritage” and proposes a “new programme driven by
both public demand and curatorial expertise which will use digital delivery across a range
of platforms to bring collections to the public with an ease of access that was previously
impossible.” (Film Forever Supporting UK Film, BFI Plan 2012-2017, October 2012, p.27)
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