Channel 1 Television archivist Billi Segal says the channel's entire collection of broadcasts is in danger of fading and vanishing if it is not transferred to digital media. However, in the NIS 850 million annual Israel Broadcast Authority budget, the NIS 20 million required to begin digitizing the archive could not be found.

Therefore, anyone who wants to see the first thing broadcast on Israeli television - an IDF parade in 1968 - had better rush to the Channel 1 film library in Jerusalem's Romema neighborhood before the recording disappears. A quarter of the tape is already too blurry to watch. Other historical recordings in the library are already almost completely ruined.

A tour of the nine jam-packed halls that house the library illustrates the danger. "Look at the dust," says Segal, running a finger across one of the film boxes. "There is no budget for cleaning, although the new IBA director general has said he will take care of that."

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In one hall, Segal shows boxes in which both video and audio tapes are stored. "That's not good," he explains. "The magnetic tape for the audio damages the image, but I don't have staff to separate them, or the space. I am already fighting for any open space at IBA." The films cannot be stored at over 25 degrees, but few air conditioners in the library work. "We are lucky to be situated on a mountain, Segal says. "At least there's no humidity."

For 25 years, competitor-free Channel 1 was the "tribal campfire." The crowded shelves in Romema document a major slice of Israeli audio-visual history. A random sampling includes an interview with the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, on news show Moked in the 1970s, well-known children's shows, Hebrew song shows, variety and entertainment shows, valuable sports broadcasts like the first time Macabbi Tel Aviv won the European Championship in 1977.

"The library is a fascinating mosaic of Israeli society on many levels," Segal says. During the day, the library sees lively traffic as producers from Israel and abroad rummage through the boxes in search of archive material. "Tensions between the production needs and the preservation needs causes great frustration," Segal says. "We are partners to the joy of creation and the desire to uncover historical pearls. On the other hand, frequent use of the materials simply ruins them."

In-demand materials like the broadcast of the political revolution of 1977 and prime minister Menachem Begin's famous visit to Beaufort at the beginning of the first Lebanon war have been duplicated on a number of tapes. It is unlikely that other material, no less historically significant, will survive.

Another serious problem at the library is wear and tear on the equipment. "We have many movies in old formats, for which projectors or even spare parts are no longer manufactured. The technicians practically live here and they do an amazing job, but their improvisation cannot continue forever," Segal laments.

The ultimate solution to all the film library's problems is digitization, but that is far from inexpensive.

Segal, who visits parallel archives all over the world once a year, says that "only African countries still work like we do. Everywhere else, including Eastern Europe and Turkey, film libraries are in the throes of digitization. Everyone battles the cost of course, but governments have reached the conclusion that in order to maintain a national heritage, it is important to act fast to save audio-visual archives."

IBA started digitizing a few years ago, choosing Ness Technologies to carry out the important project. But the project was poorly run by the IBA and eventually stopped, after spending NIS 5 million and not transferring a single movie to digital format.

IBA makes a fair amount of money selling rights to the film library, but none of that money is channeled into resurrecting the digitization project. "The film library doesn't have its own budget," Segal says, "and the profits from the sales go into production, debt repayment and the rest of the IBA needs. But even our revenue wouldn't cover the digitization. It needs a separate budget."

IBA chair Moshe Gavish is also worried by the situation of the library. This week he told a Knesset Education and Culture Committee meeting: "This archive is the soul and the history of the people of Israel, but it is in danger of disintegrating."

Gavish also hopes for help from outside. "The project should cost about NIS 20 million, but IBA doesn't have a penny to spend on it." He explains that there are more pressing problems like damp in the recording studios and maintenance at Israel Radio offices. "We are looking at getting this moving and if there is no choice, we may appeal to private entities. People donate here to all sorts of weird goals, so I would be happy to find a donor for this project. Maybe we would even name the library after him."

The minister in charge of IBA, Eitan Cabel, says he is aware of the film library's straits and plans to address them soon: "This is one of the first things I have asked the Finance Ministry to allocate a special budget to."

In Britain and France, the national film libraries have closed their doors until all the material is transferred to digital format. If it were up to Segal, she would adopt that policy here too, but she says it is hard to do something like that in Israel. "But she remains optimistic I have a vision, to modernize the film library, and I will not give up until it comes true. There will be no choice eventually, this place is for the generations to come."