The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images, in Swedish ''Statens ljud- och bildarkiv'', SLBA, was founded in 1979 (originally having the name ''Arkivet för ljud och bild,'' ALB) with the aim of collecting and preserving all film and recorded sound produced in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

, including radio and television programs. The archive was an independent institution under the Ministry of Education, Research and Culture (utbildnings - och kulturdepartementet). It was located in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

and employed 65 people. The last director general was Sven Allerstrand. A national deposit law requires publishers to submit a copy of all new titles to the archive. The older collections are gradually built from donations and acquisitions, but suffer from the institution's youth. Other major sound and film archives in Sweden exist among private collectors and the

public service A public service is any service intended to address specific needs pertaining to the aggregate members of a community. Public services are available to people within a government jurisdiction as provided directly through public sector agencies ...

broadcasting companies,

Sveriges Radio Sveriges Radio AB (, "Sweden's Radio") is Sweden's national publicly funded radio broadcaster. Sveriges Radio is a public limited company, owned by an independent foundation, previously funded through a licensing fee, the level of which is d ...

Sveriges Television Sveriges Television AB ("Sweden's Television Stock Company"), shortened to SVT (), is the Sweden, Swedish national public broadcasting, public television broadcaster, funded by a public service tax on personal income set by the Riksdag (national ...

and

Utbildningsradion Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company ( sv, Sveriges Utbildningsradio or ''Utbildningsradion'', UR) is a public-service corporation dedicated to serving the needs of the Swedish general public by providing educational programming on radio and ...

. In April 2008, the

Government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...

directed the

National Library of Sweden The National Library of Sweden ( sv, Kungliga biblioteket, ''KB'', meaning "the Royal Library") is Sweden's national library. It collects and preserves all domestic printed and audio-visual materials in Swedish, as well as content with Swedish ...

to investigate and prepare for a merger between SLBA and the library by January 1, 2009.

Migration

SLBA performed a mass-digitizing on parts of its collections, primarily focusing on public service material. Over a three-year period, an initial selection of 1.5 million hours of material were to be digitized and made available to researchers. Most of the digitization process was automated. At full speed, 200 tapes per day, or 2,800 hours, were digitized by a staff of just five people. A number of relatively unconventional methods were being used, including the high-speed transfer of open-reel audiotapes, robotic automation of cassette-based audio and video transfer, and a suite of custom scripts that process the digitized files automatically. The infrastructure includes a migration asset management system developed inhouse that handles such things as communication with production systems, logistics (of both original carriers and resultant files), and metadata input and transfer. Once the digitization process is completed, automatic functions create new carrier database records, insert metadata, direct the new archive and browsing files to their final mass storage locations, and link files to the MARC based database for direct access. Archives in Sweden Film archives in Europe Television archives Arts organizations established in 1979 {{film-org-stub