With 60 miles of shelves full of material, and 4.5 million items to copy, combined with
the technical time-bomb of irreplaceable recording heads wearing-out as fast as they are used,
with no more spares available and
tape degrading as you look at it...

there is a problem.. or two..

The BBC Academy "Digitising The BBC Archive" page here describes their problems and procedures. The page includes a 9 minute video illustrating the tasks facing the archivists at Perivale.