Passion of preserving AV & Media Content
Exploring, preserving, and elevating audiovisual heritage through a mobility grant
By Goranka Jednak Maksimovic
After more than two decades working on the production side of media, I embarked on a three‑month mobility that opened a completely new professional chapter for me: the world of audiovisual archives. This journey—spanning Austria, Slovenia, France, and the Netherlands—allowed me to explore how leading institutions structure their archival workflows, preserve heritage, and transform historical content into living material for today’s media. What began as professional curiosity quickly grew into a passion.
Broadcast Archives: Seeing How Content Comes Alive Again
During my visits to the Mediatheks of ORF (Austria) and RTV Slovenija, I encountered two public broadcasters with deeply embedded archiving ecosystems. Both rely on the NOA system for digitisation, yet each presented a unique perspective on making historical content usable again. ORF had recently completed a vast, long-term digitisation effort of IMX material and is now actively developing new ways to integrate archival content into everyday production. RTV Slovenija, meanwhile, has built a Mediatheka that ensures intuitive access to the country’s audiovisual heritage.
Their workflows support archivists and documentarists in managing unfinished cataloguing, caring for vulnerable film tapes, and coordinating incoming materials across TV, radio, music, and multimedia. Broadcasters are moving archives from passive storage to active, searchable, production-ready resources—and this mobility helped me understand how.
My time at INA (France) and The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision offered a deeper look into preservation challenges, strategies, and innovations. At FRAME Access training in Paris, discussions with colleagues from every continent revealed a shared characteristic: passionate commitment to safeguarding audiovisual heritage. Whether discussing technical standards or policy strategies, every conversation affirmed the global importance of preserving memory.
At Sound and Vision, I experienced a model focused not only on protection but also on maximizing accessibility and long-term sustainability—moving beyond outdated safeguarding-only concepts.
I gained a clearer vision of how stable, forward-looking preservation processes keep archival materials accessible, relevant, and connected to society.
Valorisation: Celebrating Archives and Their New Creative Power
The final dimension of my mobility took place at events where archival professionals showcase their most inspiring work. At the FIAT/IFTA World Conference in Rome, held at the iconic Cinecittà studios, the collective power of audiovisual heritage was on full display. Beyond expert sessions, the event offered meaningful opportunities for networking, collaboration, and promoting one’s own collections.
More broadly, I observed how archival audio—messages, calls, listener stories—is increasingly reused in daily programming, far beyond news or documentaries. In March 2026, Riga will host Europe’s largest conference for radio, audio, and podcasts, where several sessions will explore user-generated content as valuable archival material that can enrich storytelling when placed in the right context. Valorisation strategies not only preserve heritage—they inspire new creative uses and help audiences rediscover their collective memory.
This mobility allowed me to see firsthand how archival workflows, preservation methodologies, and valorisation strategies can shape contemporary media. It revealed how archives—once seen merely as storage—are becoming dynamic sources of creativity, innovation, and cultural memory. Most importantly, the experience confirmed that my transition into the media archive field is not only professionally valuable but genuinely inspiring.
As Sara Sheridan, Scottish archivist and novelist has noted “without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.”
Funded by the European Union, the Innovation. Media. Minds Program: Support to Public Service Journalism in the Western Balkans, is managed by the Goethe-Institut on behalf of the European Commission and in collaboration with its implementing partner DW Akademie. The contents of this story are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.