Journal of Film Preservation N° 60/61 - FIAF

and cataloguing and customer services. The prolonged period of
occupation, when archive staff was unable to communicate with the
rest of Europe, has inevitably led to arrears in technical issues,
intellectual control and management aspects that the archive services
now have to redeem.
Summary of audio-visual archiving in the three countries
In many ways the three national audio-visual archives are comparable
in size and collections, as the following scheme suggests.
Estonia Latvia Lithuania
Total of Staff 33 ** 57 *** 86 ****
Budget * DFL 620,000 525,000 800,000
Film Collection 4 million meter 13 million 6.5 million
Video Collection 230 cassettes 60 500
Sound Recordings
Collection 22,000 documents 20,000 11,500
Photograph
Collection 250,000 documents 500,000 185,000
Notes: The above data are indicative only. The budget has been calculated exclusive of
special projects and covers personnel, energy, overhead and building, but not always
preservation; for this activity some institutions have to submit an annual budget proposal. It
has been calculated from the local currencies (kroon, lat and litas) to guilders; for US$ divide
by 2.13. There are considerable arrears in preservation, upgrading of working and storage
areas, replacement of specialised equipment, computer software and staff training.
** Eesti Filmiarhiiv; *** Latvijas Valts Kinofotofonodokumentu Arhuvs; **** Lietuvos
Vaizdo ir Garso Archyvas
The national audio-visual archives are part of the national archives
system, which in the case of Estonia comes under the Riigikantselei
(State Chancellery), in Latvia under Saeima (Parliament) and in
Lithuania under the Office of the Prime Minister, and operate
following the national Archive Acts that usually mention audio-visual
documents implicitly, stating that the archive is to care for certain
classes of documents regardless of their physical form. In all cases there
is also a Legal Deposit Act – not always effectively applied to audiovisual
media – but it is interesting to observe that the care for audiovisual
documents under this Act is not the responsibility of the
national archive, but of the national libraries. Not all of these are as
well equipped for this duty as the Martynas Mauvydas National
Library in Vilnius.
In addition the Baltic countries have separate archives in their
television and radio broadcasting organisations. These are basically
not archives (i.e. permanent collections), but libraries primarily
designed to serve the programming needs; yet some of the
organisations consider that they do have a duty in preserving
programme materials as a national collection. For photographs the
main national institution is the national news agency, whose
11 Journal of Film Preservation / 60/61 / 2000