Urgent project safeguards rapidly degrading tapes preserving invaluable parliamentary recordings and cultural heritage for generations to come
The National Archives of Estonia (NAE) has partnered with Memnon, the global content preservation and migration services provider, to digitize up to 1,200 magnetic video tapes containing 4,300 hours of irreplaceable Estonian heritage. The project is NAE’s first large-scale video tape digitization, and the first time the institution outsourced its preservation work to a provider outside of Estonia.
Magnetic tapes were the dominant format for TV and Movie exchange as well as other business and content based uses between 1960 and 2000s, hosting much of the world’s content, from government archives to broadcast media. Unlike other mediums such as film, magnetic video tape degrades faster, making migration essential to prevent permanent loss. As magnetic formats continue to degrade and playback equipment rapidly disappears, content holders face a critical choice: migrate now or, depending on the format, permanently lose up to 70 years’ worth of irreplaceable material.
Under this growing pressure, the EU-funded project sought to tackle the increasingly urgent challenge of digitizing its video tapes before they degraded beyond repair. With tapes dating back to 1999 and containing irreplaceable Estonian cultural heritage – including parliamentary session recordings and materials from the country’s history – Memnon provided its full preservation services to deliver the major project within a strict eight-month schedule.
“Partnering with Memnon was seamless. Their professionalism and the care they showed for our heritage made a real difference,” Eva Näripea, Director of Film Archive, The National Archives of Estonia, said. “They consistently went the extra mile, ensuring flexibility and responsiveness throughout. As Estonia’s central memory institution, we needed a partner we could trust completely for our first major video digitization project. Memnon gave us total confidence that our valuable assets were in the right hands.”
NAE selected Memnon due to its experience with European archives, its highly specialized staff and cutting-edge technology, including climate-controlled transport for sensitive materials.
“We immediately understood the significance and urgency of this project from the start,” Heidi Shakespeare, CEO of Memnon, said. “The National Archives of Estonia trusted us with historically important materials, recordings that provide a window into the country’s rich history. We deployed the right resources and expertise to meet the project deadline while also delivering the quality of care these materials required. Preserving these recordings for future generations was a priority we didn’t take lightly.”
The digitized content is now publicly accessible online, reinforcing NAE’s position as a leading cultural and historical institution in the Nordic and Baltic region.
The successful completion of this project demonstrates the value of specialist digitization expertise for national memory institutions facing the urgent challenge of preserving legacy audiovisual collections before they degrade and are forever lost.