Digital Preservation Coalition

Tate

Excerpt from DPC Annual Report 2008-2009

Tate’s digital preservation activity has been focused over the past year on the ongoing archiving of core assets. The Tate Photography department’s step-up to using medium format Hasselblad capture systems is creating an invaluable resource of high resolution digital images which are used both by Tate staff in the performance of their daily roles and also commercially by the Picture Library and the Print & Design team. The creation of this resource forms the backbone of Tate’s digital preservation activity.

Tate continues to archive its master images onto DVD in duplicate and stores a further copy on a large capacity server. This practice is due for review, normally carried out by an external consultant; our guess being that we will be advised to migrate to the next generation of optical disks.

A new Digital Asset management steering group has been formed, and the group has begun auditing and quantifying Tate’s assets as the first steps towards forming global preservation policies and strategies.