Preservation and conservation of electronic information resources of television stations in Africa: A case study of selected broadcast libraries of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA)

Abstract

The major holdings of the broadcast libraries of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) are electronic information resources; therefore, providing safe places for general management of these resources have aroused interest in the industry in Nigeria for sometimes. The need to study the preservation and conservation of these information resources becomes very important so as to alleviate and find suitable measures to eliminate the identified possible damaging effects of this malign challenging situation in the broadcast libraries of the NTA. This study attempted to find out the categories of electronic information resources and their level of preservation and conservation as well as the challenges that were faced in the preservation and conservation of the resources identified. The descriptive survey research was adopted for the study. Five broadcast libraries were purposively selected for this study and questionnaire were used to obtain data from the heads of each library. Multimedia files were majorly acquired in tapes of various categories. Lack of policy, human errors, lack of in-depth knowledge and funding were among the major problems highlighted.  Meanwhile, the study recommended the following; procurement of newer resources like disk video server, provision of standard and working policy and holistic study of general managements of electronic information resources among others.

Keywords: Preservation, Conservation, Electronic, Resources, Records, Broadcast,Library, Television, Stations, Nigerian, Authority