Jimi Jones (MSLIS '07, PhD '19), manager of gifts documentation at the University of Illinois Foundation and iSchool adjunct lecturer, and Marek Jancovic, assistant professor of media studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, are the recipients of the 2026 Preservation Publication Award from the Society of American Archivists (SAA) for their book, The Future of Memory: A History of Lossless Format Standards in the Moving Image Archive (University of Illinois Press, 2025). This award recognizes the author(s) or editor(s) of an outstanding published work related to archives preservation.
The Future of Memory examines the history and development of digital preservation. Jones and Jancovic examine selected moving-image file format standards, how those standards were adopted, differences in implementation across institutions, and the impact those formats have had on long-term preservation. The book moves beyond technical specifications into a historical look at the turbulent dimensions of the “format war.” It examines the long and gradual development and international adoption of two sets of lossless digital video technologies: the formal standards, originating from the American broadcast industry, and the “rogue” formats of European pirate and open-source community. By recontextualizing these formats as political objects, the authors make visible the changing character of present-day archival work and the larger struggles for social legitimacy in the profession.
One of the work’s most transformative aspects is how it paints audiovisual archiving against a background of cultural and economic networks. Jones and Jancovic introduce readers to this complex field by first presenting it as one of dichotomies: Europe vs. the United States, commercial media vs. cultural heritage, stuffy standardization consortia vs. nimble but informal programmers. As the chapters progress, the authors gradually dismantle this simple schema. Through interviews with archivists, standards developers, and preservation experts, this book offers an enlightening read to anyone working in the field of digital preservation or with archival collections that include moving image content.