A Fight Against Time

The clock is ticking for preserving historical audiovisual materials. To aid in the fight against the clock, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation granted $500,000 to UNC-Chapel Hill’s University Libraries to support archivists and digitization specialists. The funding enables them to investigate new methods for preserving audio and visual records of the American South at a large scale.

Erica Titkemeyer, associate head of repository services and co-lead on the grant, emphasized the urgency of preserving AV materials. She hopes the process will ultimately improve other digitization operations in the University Libraries.

Lisa Gregory, director of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, said that UNC-Chapel Hill serves as the center of AV preservation and digitization services across the state, with partnerships in all 100 counties in North Carolina.

“Offering audiovisual digitization as a service for our partners has been invaluable in providing access to these endangered formats,” said Gregory. “We look forward to making this a sustainable effort over the next few years with our colleagues in Wilson Special Collections Library.”

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