MN Media Arts conducted a feasibility study addressing Minnesota’s media legacy. 

We strongly believe that we are in crisis mode regarding magnetic media and it’s associated playback technology. In communicating a sense of urgency and awareness of this “Magnetic Media Crisis”, we are hoping to ascertain the volume and status of our target audience’s media storage archive stability or the there lack of. Please click the link to start the 20 question survey.

We directed this survey to Media Producers, Media Artists and Arts organizations who may have media assets or collections facing a storage or archival crisis. While we were primarily focusing on video magnetic media in this initial needs assessment survey, will will also be investigating film, photo and audio archival issues and whether they also need to be addressed. 

Our privacy policy is listed on this website, while the tabulated results will be published in our feasibility study, no personal contact information will be published or shared.

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Preliminary Results - August 2016

Our recent survey results show that there are 327,110 magnetic media items in regional collections. 27,561 of those were identified as critical for preservation. 18,374 of those critical for preservation have production values rated as exceptional or excellent. 58.82% of respondents rated their interests in preservation as high. The regional magnetic media collections are stable with:

88.24% stored in dry conditions
94.12% stored in cool conditions
88.27% stored in dust free conditions

The most commonly needed preservation services or resources are: access to functioning playback and encoding equipment; labor and financial assistance; distribution of and/or access to digitally archived items.

The size of the regional collections that are critical to preserve as surveyed by age is:

30,715 from the 1960's and 1970's
92,728 from the 1980's and 1990's
152,617 from the 2000's and 2010's

78.47% of respondents were interested in making their programs available to the public on a shared website. The most common comments regarding distribution were:

- Already sharing on YouTube or other public streaming service
- Depends on use, commercial, research, private viewing, downloading, copyright clearance
- Owners of the production have copyright restrictions preventing public distribution