Mediearkiv

Mediearkiv is an organized collection of media assets—such as photographs, audio recordings, videos, graphics, and related documents—collected by an organization for long‑term preservation, management, and access. The archive serves both as a repository for heritage material and as a working resource for publishing, research, and public engagement.

A mediearkiv typically contains the digital objects themselves, their file formats, and metadata describing content, creation date, rights, provenance, and technical details needed for preservation and retrieval. Metadata may follow standards such as Dublin Core for basic descriptions, PREMIS for preservation metadata, and METS or XML-based schemas for packaging and interchange. For audiovisual materials, specialized metadata schemes may be used to capture technical and rights information.

Management and workflows cover intake and digitization of material, descriptive cataloging, rights clearance, and ongoing preservation activities. Storage is designed with redundancy and disaster recovery in mind, and processes include versioning, format migration planning, and regular integrity checks. Access control and user policies determine who may view or reuse items, while search interfaces and collection highlights facilitate discovery.

Access and use vary by institution and rights status. Researchers, journalists, students, or staff may retrieve items for study, reporting, or publication, subject to licensing, copyright, and privacy considerations. Some mediearkiv provide public portals with selected items, while others restrict access to internal personnel.

Preservation a mediearkiv aligns with digital preservation principles and may reference the OAIS model. It emphasizes data integrity, format sustainability, and long‑term accessibility, ensuring that media assets remain usable as technologies evolve. In practice, mediearkiv are commonly found in media organizations, libraries, universities, and cultural institutions, often integrated with digital asset management systems.