This in-progress section will bring together hard to find or out-of-print scholarly articles and essays that address the collection of single-channel video. The texts have been made available with the permission of their authors and publishers.

Besser, Howard; Longevity of Electronic Art. Submitted to International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meeting, 2001 View essay

Besser investigates the challenges of maintaining electronic works of art. Describing the differences between electronic works and those in traditional media, he points out that regarding the former, it is not always even clear what should be preserved, and that due to obsolescence of storage formats, they are not always viewable even if their physical casing is intact. Refreshing—moving the work onto new storage media—is one solution, but doesn't account for changing file formats. Migration and emulation are discussed as solutions to this problem. He discusses boundary issues as regards conservation: what really is the work? Besser proposes an approach involving: determining the essential characteristics of the work; trying to preserve those over time; and saving ancillary materials.

Wijers, Gaby and Netherlands Media Art Institute; Control and Preservation of Videotapes. An Introduction to the Handling, Storage and Conservation of Analog and Digital Videotapes, 2003. View article

Wijers details some of the problems with the care of videotapes, for example the fragility and complexity of their physical casing and the quick obsolescence of their required playback equipment. She makes specific recommendations for their handling and storage, regarding temperature, humidity, and working environment for tapes.

Wijers, Gaby; Coelho, Ramon & Rodrigo, Evert, eds. The Sustainability of Video Art. Amsterdam: Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art, 2003 View report

Beginning in 2000, the Netherlands Media Art Institute's Project Preservation Video Art developed, implemented, and evaluated a methodology for the preservation of video art, including a model acquisition contract and registration model; the project included preservation work on about 1,700 analog video works from public collections throughout Holland. The procedure included documentation, consultation with the artist, and conversion to digital media. Origins and procedure of the project are discussed.