As Ireland’s national public service media organisation, RTÉ holds a vast, irreplaceable repository of the state’s audiovisual heritage. However, the transition from physical carriers to a resilient digital future presents a challenge. This presentation examines RTÉ’s large-scale migration and digital preservation odyssey - a programme that balances the weight of historical stewardship with the realities of modern fiscal and technological constraints. We analyse the answers to key questions for this programme of projects, such as:
- How did we migrate different archive collections? i.e., how were resourcing challenges tackled and how did we decide on in-house versus outsourced aspects of migration?
- How did we restructure the archive department to accommodate the resourcing of the large-scale projects running in parallel to business as usual?
- How did RTÉ Technology approach this challenge, and what was the modern, resilient, and most cost-effective technology solution deployed to accommodate this mass migration and provide long-term digital access to audiovisual archive content?
- How did we introduce digital preservation principles, and what remains to be done in this area?
