IASA-TC 07 Guidelines for the Preservation of Born-Digital Video – Progress Update

This blog post is authored by Somaya Langley of IASA

Every 27^th October, those who are tasked with stewarding the worlds audiovisual archives and collections celebrate the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) is one of the eight members of the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA). Under the umbrella of IASA, members of the international audiovisual and digital preservation community have been gradually working towards guidelines for the preservation of born-digital video.

Digital Video

Digital (or born-digital) video is one of the most common types of digital content collecting institutions have been grappling with for the past two decades. The increasing proliferation of video - new platforms for distribution and dissemination, and an array of codecs – is an ongoing challenge for audiovisual and digital preservation practitioners.

Guidance on preservation standards for digital video is greatly needed. Unlike some other file formats, the file extension for video only tells you about the ‘wrapper’ (the package the file is in). Preserving video requires knowing about the contents: the video stream and the audio stream (and the codecs used), plus all the other good stuff like subtitles.

IASA-TC 07

Work towards the IASA-TC 07 Guidelines for the Preservation of Born-Digital Video began with a conversation with Carl Fleischhauer in 2017 at the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) conference in Berlin. This was formalised as IASA-TC 07 at the IASA 50^th conference (held with the Joint Technical Symposium) in the Netherlands in 2019.

Figure 1: 2019 IASA/JTS conference: discussing IASA-TC 07 with presenters Kate Murray, Somaya Langley, Peter Bubestinger-Steindl,
Jérôme Martinez, Lars Gaustad, Andy Martin, George Blood, and Carl Fleischhauer.

Much like other standards development, IASA-TC 07 is an endurance exercise.

The IASA-TC 07 draft is available at: https://bit.ly/borndigitalvideo

IASA Technical Guidelines

For several decades, IASA has been producing publications, including technical guidelines – considered de facto international standards – for preservation and management of audiovisual collections. These guidelines have typically been led by IASA’s Technical Committee (which has operated for the past fifty years). IASA-TC 07 is the first guideline being openly developed and drafted with the international audiovisual preservation community.

Volunteer Effort

While IASA technical publications have always been a labour of love, IASA-TC 07 activity is particularly so. Progress so far has relied on committed practitioners from around the world, contributing outside of work hours. Those working in the audiovisual and preservation sector already face significant demands on their knowledge, skills and time.

Individual capacity of those involved in IASA-TC 07 waxes and wanes. For the past 18 months, individuals involved are: 

Members of the IASA Executive Board

• Andrew Martin, National Museum of Australia, Australia

Members of the IASA Technical Committee

• Julia Miller, PARADISEC, Australia

Members of the IASA Technical Committee: Lars Gaustad Award Recipients

• Somaya Langley, Science Museum Group, UK

• Joshua Ng, Archives New Zealand, NZ

Other audiovisual preservation practitioners

• Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution, USA

• Laura Drake-Davis, Library of Congress, USA

Literature Review

Since 2025, a literature review has been underway to identify what digital video resources, relevant to IASA-TC 07, are already available. Critically, this literature review will help to identify the gaps that IASA-TC 07 needs to fill.

How can you help?

As an immediate next step, IASA-TC 07 is looking for individuals to get involved with:

• Reviewing resources as part of the Literature Review.
• Identifying relevant conference presentations and publications from:
  • IASA conference
  • IASA journal
  • iPres international Digital Preservation conference
  • Joint Technical Symposium (JTS)
  • No Time To Wait (NTTW)

Get in touch by Tuesday 1^st December 2026 via borndigitalvideo@gmail.com