An Experts Roundtable Discussion
COMMISSIONS
VALUE, USE & COPYRIGHT COMMISSION
WHAT DO WE DO?
The Value, Use and Copyright Commission provides a forum for members and experts in the field working together to support valorization, exploitation and opening up of audiovisual collections focused on the end user.
Some of the Value, Use and Copyright Commission activities:
Latest News
Generative AI and Audiovisual Archives
The rise of Generative AI is reshaping how we create and interact with audiovisual content. But what does this mean for archives? In this section, you’ll find curated online resources, practical tools, and blog posts from the VUC shared under the tag #AiPicks, alongside other useful materials designed to help navigate this evolving landscape.
#AiPicks
Overview of Online Resources and Tools
Experts Roundtable Discussion
On April 28, 2025, eight experts engaged in an open dialogue about key considerations for professionals working in or with audiovisual collections, focusing on the implications of the use of archives for GenAI training and the handling of GenAI-generated content.
Archives & Ethics
Archives preserve the past, but the contexts in which they are accessed, interpreted, and shared continue to evolve. As audiovisual collections become increasingly visible online, questions arise about how historical material should be presented today—especially when it contains language, descriptions, or perspectives that may now be considered harmful or inappropriate.
Financial Value of Archives
Archives are complex strategic assets whose worth cannot be captured by a single financial metric. They generate income, certainly, but they also save money, enable innovation, reinforce institutional identity, and serve a broader public and cultural mission.
The difficulty lies in explaining this richness in terms that resonate with managers, funders, and policy makers—without losing sight of what makes archives fundamentally different from ordinary commercial products.
Experts Roundtable Discussion
On October 7, 2025, eight experts joined for a 90-minute online roundtable titled Money’s Too Tight: Commercial Value of Archives. The session brought together leading audiovisual archive professionals from around the world to explore how broadcast and audiovisual archives can demonstrate and strengthen their commercial value while balancing heritage and cultural roles.
#ArchivalReads
The #ArchivalReads are a series of publications collected by the FIAT/IFTA Value, Use and Copyright Commission. The #ArchivalReads can be in-house produced articles or articles or recommended reading: high-quality publications by other organisations or individuals active in the audiovisual and media archiving domain.
Additional reading recommendations from VUC members
- VIEW, the Journal of European Television History and Culture: the latest issue of VIEW reexamines public service broadcasting (PSB) in the light of the most recent technological, political and economic developments. Traditional public service broadcasters, ideally designed to serve citizens rather than consumers to inform the national conversations in well-informed democracies, face the double challenge of commercialization (since the 1980s) and digitization (since the 1990s). The question of their survival in this context has been posed repeatedly. The need for a redefinition seems inevitable.
- Typology Guide of the Lacquer Disks Collection of Radio Lausanne and Radio Genève: an outcome of a large-scale lacquer disk digitisation project (2014 – 2018) at RTS in Switzerland, this publication provides deep insight into the history of lacquer disk production and use. Furthermore, it explores various types of disks and discusses particular preservation issues and remedies for each. A study of rare scientific quality in this domain.
- The FIAF Journal of Film Preservation nr. 102, April 2020: in reaction to the coronavirus outbreak, our colleagues at the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) have made the April 2020 edition of the Journal of Film Preservation freely accessible to all online. This issue features an article by Jörg Houpert, a member of the FIAT/IFTA Preservation and Migration Commission (PMC), on the new German standard for film digitisation DIN SPEC 15587.
- The results of UNESCO’s Magnetic Tape Alert Project: organised in collaboration with IASA, the survey provides interesting insights into the global preservation situation of obsolete magnetic tape carriers. The survey received 411 submissions from 355 archives from 76 countries.
- The results of INA’s survey on obsolete video formats: this study analyses the preservation means and training needs for quadruplex videotapes and/or other video collections. The survey results will be the basis for a training programme focused on a specific video format.
- The Olympic World Feed Project: Searching, acquiring and preserving the international television signal of the Olympic Games from 1956 to 1988. This article discusses the efforts of the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage to track down lost tapes and recover missing television footage from several editions of the Olympics, with a focus on the XIV Olympic Winter Games in Sarajevo. The project, in which intensive use was made of the FIAT/IFTA network, yielded excellent results in enhancing the IOC’s own audiovisual collections and several participating broadcast archives.
- MediaNumeric State of the Art report on Data Journalism. “Though misinformation and disinformation have existed since the dawn of time, the social media era is enabling information (and misinformation) to spread at split-second speeds, creating real-world harm as people turn to unqualified sources to seek answers to their questions.”
Overview of Online Resources and Tools
COMMISSION MEMBERS
Billy Segal Gezelius
IPBC-kan
Head of Archive
Johan Oomen
Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Manager Research & Heritage Services
Michael Liensberger
ORF
Journalist
