The British Film Institute (BFI) is securing the film collections of the BFI National Archive with a new state-ofthe-art, environmentally sustainable and architecturally pioneering film storage facility at Gaydon, Warwickshire. The BFI National Archive's master film collection is precious but fragile and unstable. Without the proper storage conditions it is at risk of deteriorating and being lost forever...

In June of this year, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) marked the official opening of the new Nitrate Film Preservation Centre in the west end of Ottawa. The state-of-the-art facility features a range of technical innovations that meet the current standards for preservation environments and provide the required fire prevention and protection measures...

 The archive was specially developed using a new Open Source Software called Collective Access. Using this software, it is possible to supplement individual titles with detailed textual, photographic, audio and video information - all in a single, virtual space ...

 Three years' work by Europeana (www.europeana.eu) was rewarded in July with the onhne launch of the European Film Gateway. It offers free access to 600,000 digital videos, photos, film posters and text material from 16 film archives. "Previously this remarkable record of 20th century European cinema had been dispersed on different national platforms," says Claudia Dillmann, director of the Detusches Filminstitut, which co-ordinates the project...

 NBC News has launched a new website - NBCUniversalArchives.com - that will allow customers to buy archive material from a number of divisions across NBCUniversal's businesses, including NBC News, NBC Sports, NBC Entertainment, Universal Studios, Universal Pictures, Telemundo, The Weather Channel, NBC Radio, NBC Photo bank and others...

 Footage.net, the stock, archival and news footage search engine, has launched a new subscriber analytics site, providing content partners with instant access to key stats on site activity and user interaction with their data and content. Content partners can use the subscriber analytics site to monitor overall site traffic, track videos played and review Zaps sent, among other things...

 FOCAL International welcomes the announcement of SKILLSBANK the latest project arising from the work of the Strategy Board for the Archive Sector set up with Skillset. SKILLSBANK aims to produce material online that will help to share skills, experience and best practice among current library and digital content professionals, as well as creating the means to pass this knowledge onto future generations working with film, tape and digital content...

 FOCAL International will be marking the UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage on October 28 at BAFTA, Piccadilly, London , with the showing of 'The Great White Silence'...

 The National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) is a nonprofit organisation created by the U.S. Congress to help save America's film heritage. They support activities nationwide that preserve American films and improve film access for study, education, and exhibition. The NFPF started operations in November 1997, thanks to the generous support of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (www.oscars.org) and The Film Foundation (www.film-foundation.org)...

 The story began at Elstree, and continues at Pinewood. Elstree's first studio opened in 1914, but it was in the 1920s under Associated British Pictures' (AB PC) founder John MaJo..'Well that it became a byword for British film production. In 1928, Ludwig Blattner brought sound to the studio, which was first used memorably in Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail in 1929....

 We all got together and lobbied the Houses of Parliament, but they didn't really listen, but then Cannon (in severe financial problems due to over-production and a series of expensive flops) sold to Brent Walker, which was connected to Gold crest at the time...

I was asked for a clip from Scott cif the Antarctic for a pop video, I told the chap that James Robertson Justice would have to be cleared. He went off as far as I was concerned to do the necessary. Then he called again and said he definitely wanted to licence the clip, and I asked him if he'd cleared with Robertson Justice's family yet...

 Many of the things that John had been hoping for and suggesting quietly but persistently for years are at last coming to pass. Beautiful posters, perfect portraits, on set stills to delight archivist and collector will soon be online for private buyers or commercial use (the launch is planned for later this year)...

 For almost 100 years, Elstree and Borehamwood have played a unique role as leading centres for film activity. A community-based project called First Impressions is helping residents and visitors to re-discover the rich film and television history on their doorstep...

lt's time for a global tweet exchange. Microblogging can multiply your sources beyond belief. Twitter is an amazing social networking tool available to Visual Researchers and if used with discernment can be most rewarding. In my view, it is 'the' gateway to our exciting world of digital image archives...

 At 4.45pm on October 311959, Sir Laurence Olivier spoke the first words on Ulster Television (UTV) to launch the station to 100,000 homes in Northern Ireland. The archive started the following day, with UTV Rich and Rare being the first programme stored in the library. The archive now covers every aspect oflife in Northern Ireland...

 Monetising content, maximizing internet benefits and controlling Fair Dealing. Just some of the challenges facing Gordon Craig, Head of Archive Sales at FremantleMedia, as he outlines his archive visions to FOCAL International Chair, Sue Maiden...

 Do you think there will need to be any significant changes happening in the archive world in the face of these issues in the near future?...

Previously unseen footage includes the young Lenin; last days of the Tsar ; Rasputin and Hitler; Stalin's tyranny; the Space race; gems of the Bolshoi and Mariinski theatres; stunning children's cartoons and extinct animals. Anthony Gould is not a man used to taking 'no' for an answer. Following a successful career as Kodak's Director of Central and Eastern Europe, which saw him regularly disappear 'behind the Iron Curtain' he decided to take early retirement...

Over the next few months RTR Worldwide are gradually putting more and more catalogues onto their website and creating powerful showreels to accompany these. Although a vast job, the team aim to provide a bespoke service to the media with the ability to transfer content into all formats and HD...

 FOCAL International apologises unreservedly to Bryony Dixon, Curator- Silent film, BFI National Archive for making a number of errors in the last edition of Archive Zones. At the FOCAL International Awards 2011, Bryony stood up to receive three awards: one on behalf of Serge Bromberg for the Europa Film Treasures (winner Best Use of Footage on Non-television Platforms); one for the Chaplin Keystone Project (winner Best Archive Restoration or Preservation Project) ; and one for The Great White Silence (winner Best Archive Restoration or Preservation Title) on which she was the lead curator. The three photographs published should all have been captioned with the name Bryony Dixon.

 To the rest of the world the countries of the Arabian Gulf appear to have limitless ambition and the funds to match, so it might seem a simple matter to preserve and exploit library footage in the interests of heritage if nothing else. Even more so in a region where historical authenticity is not always easy to find...

 As a member of the Educational Recording Association (ERA), FOCAL International receives a share of the income which ERA collects from educational institutions making off-air recordings. How FOCAL International's share should be paid- in other words, which older members' shares of the total takings should be reduced to pay FOCAL International's share- is still being negotiated...

Audiovisual archives have long since managed long term storage of their assets. With archives significantly increasing their digital businesses, what are the issues and strategies they should consider in the storage of physical and file-based media? Archives running from physical media, such as tapes and reels, have vaults at the heart of their long term storage plans...

Gaumont Pathe Archives (GPA), the subsidiary of French media groups Gaumont and Pathe - created in 2005 to restore and exploit their respective archive collections -is gearing up for the major project of re-mastering its newsreel collections in High Definition (HD); an initiative consistent with the innovative spirits ofLeon Gaumont and Charles Pathe...

David Cleveland, founder and former Director of the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA) continues to spill his immense knowledge of the films he collected which currently form part of the vast collection at the Archive. Where he concentrated on the region at work in Volume 1, Volume 2 sees him placing the regional films into a wider, national context showing how the local was representative of the national and vice versa...