19AES-AR05: Preserve This Podcast

Presenters:
Sarah Nguyen, Metro
Molly Schwartz

Overview of the founding, funding, and development of Preserve This Podcast, a Mellon grant-funded project to develop a zine, podcast, and series of workshops to teach podcasters how to protect their work.
There is a big problem in the podcast universe: that, like all popular mass mediums, podcasts are at risk of disappearing in the face of rapid shifts in platform, delivery, and recording technology. This issue has been identified by those in the field of archiving and preservation as endemic to mass media technologies to date (such as reel-to-reels, VHS tapes and CDs). It is even more of a worry for digital content that can be easily wiped, corrupted, or replaced with a software update. Preserve This Podcast (PTP) is a 2-year Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant-funded project whose goal is to create a podcast, zine and website, all which provide indie podcasters the tools and know-how to organize, backup and describe their digital files.