The essence of a mass storage system is that the data for each asset is submitted into a central electronic system, and is accessed and retrieved via reference to its metadata, or content, but not by the media it is stored on. Users who want a piece of content are requesting a digital file, and neither know nor care what tape, disc or system the file is held on.
Both the media and the services are quite different from those associated with the normal broadcast and film archive world, and are far more widely supported in the IT industry. Archive managers need to consider whether they should change the skills and technology base of their operation, or outsource those elements of the operation that are not core to their activities, concentrating instead on the activities that are continued in the new storage system- cataloguing, curation and metadata maintenance.
Select either the in house option, to explore what this entails, or look at the outsourcing route to see how this can be approached.
