University of Georgia's Peabody Archive selects SAMMA for videotape migration project

Media Matters' automated system to preserve and digitize priceless collection

The University of Georgia’s Peabody Archives has signed with Media Matters to use their System for the Automated Migration of Media Archives, or SAMMA, to migrate over 2,000 recordings submitted by local television stations around the United States for consideration in the annual Peabody Awards competition between 1973 and 1990. The project, funded by the National Park Service’s “Save America’s Treasures” program, will employ SAMMA to make multiple high and low resolution digital files and a tape copy of the recordings simultaneously.

"Many television stations can't or don't keep copies of the recordings submitted for the Peabody Awards. SAMMA will allow us to preserve as many of these recordings as we can," says Abolins. SAMMA is currently completing a project at the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University and will soon begin work at the Library of Congress in preparation for its move to the National Audio-Video Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA in 2007.

View the entire press release here.