Published on: 2026-10-25
Source: United Nations – United Nations –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Evgeniya Kleshcheva
October 25, 2026 Culture and Education
“I tell my children that I work in a time machine,” says Roni Dostal. In a basement beneath Lincoln Center, an audiovisual preservation engineer retrieves moments from the past. “I go back in time, take fragments from there, and make them accessible to people today,” he says.
Dostal and his colleagues from the New York Public Library are racing against time, trying to save the contents of film reels, magnetic tapes, discs, and wax cylinders that hold audiovisual heritage spanning over a century. The media are deteriorating, and the equipment capable of playing them is disappearing.
Lessons of the Past
For Dostal, his work is not only about technique and formats. Through archival recordings, he observes the unfolding lives of some of the most important historical figures. Harry Belafonte – the legendary American singer, actor, civil rights activist, and UNICEF goodwill ambassador – filmed his family for decades: from moments when he taught his son to ride a bike in Central Park to trips abroad. “I saw his children grow up – from infancy to adulthood,” says Dostal.
© UNICEF/M. Furrer UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Harry Belafonte in Nairobi (archival photo).
He was most moved by the footage of the travels of the leader of the African American civil rights movement, Malcolm X, including shots in Mecca. “I am the one who will make sure everyone can see this,” he recalls thinking at that moment.
Watching such footage, young people, Dostál hopes, will “realize the importance of the events that happened before they appeared on Earth.”
Cultural heritage
In the adjacent room, Casey McNamara leaned over a reel of film with a magnifying glass, frame by frame checking it for tears, splices, and shrinkage. On the protective part of the film, she wrote with a marker “BHARATA NATYAM.” Bharatanatyam is one of the oldest classical dances of India.
The films may come “in a rusty tin can, on an old projection reel, in a box, in plastic bags,” says the coordinator for audiovisual preservation. Without her work, some collections “would have remained virtually unseen by anyone.”
UN News Service / E. Kleshcheva Roni Dostal is working on digitizing archival materials.
The laboratory is part of the library’s digital collections department. After digitization, most materials will become available to everyone who has a library card.
“Tapes and equipment for their playback are no longer produced, but the history must be preserved,” explains the laboratory head, Shahed Dovlatshahi.
It is to this kind of work that the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, celebrated on October 27, is dedicated.
History of the UN
In the sound studio, Jeff Willens takes out a 16-inch record from a brown paper envelope labeled “A Year To Remember.”
UN News Service/E. Kleshcheva A UN radio record from the late 1940s.
The UN Broadcasting Department prepared this program for the New Year – January 1, 1949, when the Organization’s headquarters was still located in Lake Success on Long Island. Copies were probably sent to radio stations and UN offices around the world. Willens places the disc on the player with a microscope mounted above it, and the room fills with the voices of actor Fredric March and sports commentator Ted Husing.
At the end of the corridor, engineers are digitizing the archive of William Greaves – an African-American documentary filmmaker, one of the pioneers of the genre. His 2001 film “Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey” tells the story of a diplomat who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for mediating armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab states. Bunche became the first Black Nobel laureate. Later, he was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.
UN News Service/E. Kleshcheva The microscope allows engineers to study the grooves of the plate and look for scratches.
According to Dostál, Graves decided to make the film when he found that few passersby in Ralph Bunche Park across from the UN headquarters knew who Bunche was. The library houses all the film materials, including what did not make it into the final versions. “You can even edit your own version,” Dostál notes. “Say: I would have used this.”
Surgical precision
Time works against all these materials. Acetate film is susceptible to the so-called “vinegar syndrome” – a chemical decomposition that causes it to become brittle, deform, and smell of vinegar. “Once the process has started, it cannot be stopped,” says McNamara. “Cold storage can slow it down, but it cannot be reversed.”
Magnetic tape often arrives crumpled or stuck together, and it has to be restored manually. “Repairing the tape, then playing it back and successfully digitizing it is almost like a surgical operation,” shares audiovisual preservation engineer Victoria Fahardo. “For me, it is a great honor to be one of those who listen to many of these recordings for the first time since their creation,” she adds.
UN News Service / E. Klescheva Victoria Farhado, audio preservation engineer.
Even Digital Betacam tapes, once considered reliable, have started to “crumble.” Francis Doherty, a specialist who once created a video lab for the library, is now forced to clean the equipment after every tape. “Every year this task becomes more difficult,” he admits. “Every year the physical media deteriorate more and more.”
Latest masters
“Equipment is becoming increasingly rare,” Dogerty continues. “And the old folks who know how to fix it are even rarer.”
When asked how urgent this work is, he answers without hesitation: “This should have been done 20 years ago.”
UN News Service/E. Kleshcheva Francis Doherty created a video lab for the library.
Universities train young specialists, but the technology they will have to work with is becoming increasingly scarce.
“Without the people who maintain and repair the equipment, we simply can’t do this,” emphasizes Dovlatshahi. According to him, there are currently very few such specialists.
Inventions in Action
Some devices are handmade. The player that played the UN disc was constructed by Nick Berg, a Californian engineer who, according to Willens, assembles playback equipment “more as a hobby.” The library has one of the first such players in the world.
It is not even fully completed yet. For now, the microscope allows engineers to study the grooves of the disc and look for scratches. In the future, a second tonearm will be added, which will read the discs optically without touching them.
UN News Service / E. Kleshcheva Jeff Willens holds an Edison phonograph cylinder.
Berg’s previous invention uses lasers with micron-level accuracy to align deformed cylinders and read damaged ones without physical contact. With its help, the library re-digitized the so-called Mapleson cylinders, recorded at the Metropolitan Opera in the early 1900s. These preserve “unique performances of singers who were never recorded by anyone else.”
The paradox, according to Willens, is that reproduction technologies are improving, while the original recordings continue to deteriorate. Every year of delay means that less can be preserved.
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