Heritage Preservation

Safeguarding the record of who we are

As reported in The New York Times, Iron Mountain partners with clients to protect and preserve their audiovisual assets, ensuring that generations of future fans will be able to hear the music that has defined our cultural landscape. Unfortunately, most media wasn’t built for permanent preservation, including hard drives, magnetic tape, film, and other legacy formats that simply weren’t manufactured with the long-term future in mind. For creators, cultural institutions, archivists, and rights holders, protecting these assets isn’t just about preservation. It’s about ensuring that artists’ stories stay accessible, discoverable, and able to be shared with the world.

Iron Mountain partners with organizations across the Entertainment and cultural sectors to safeguard collections with museum-grade storage, expert digitization, and secure digital access that makes discovery simple and intuitive. This approach has helped institutions like The GRAMMY Museum® expand access to decades of performances, interviews, and cultural history through a modern, AI-ready archive.

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Our Archival and Preservation Solutions

At Iron Mountain, we act as stewards to protect and maintain a continuous connection to history.

At Iron Mountain, we act as stewards to protect and maintain a continuous connection to history. Our shared global heritage consists of both tangible and intangible inheritance from cultural and historical traditions, languages, community bonds, and events. We understand that preservation alone is not enough, so we expertly digitize fragile, physical assets - from film and photographs to tapes and documents - transforming them into accessible, high-quality digital formats. This process not only safeguards the originals, but it also unlocks the asset’s future potential for accessibility and purpose.

Iron Mountain works tirelessly to honor the history of our humanity.

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Unlocking the value of your archive.

Preserving global and cultural heritage is essential for fostering understanding, education, and inspiration across generations and communities. When our clients commit to protecting and activating their organizational legacies, they can:

Reinforce brand purpose
Drive product innovation
Strengthen employee engagement
Create new revenue streams

—all by unlocking the potential of their past to drive their present and future.

Unfortunately, archival assets are fragile and need expert care. Tape-based media degrades over time due to mold and poor storage. Hard drives from the 1990s are failing at rates over 20%, and digital formats face constant risk from obsolete file types and software decay. Across industries, institutional memory is slipping through the cracks—lost to the false comfort of thinking, “it’s safe somewhere.”

Iron Mountain’s experts are internationally recognized for secure storage, digitization, restoration, and long-term access. We help protect priceless cultural content from deterioration, loss, and obscurity.

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Cultural Heritage Preservation in action:

When the pandemic shuttered its doors in 2021, the GRAMMY Museum® fast-tracked the launch of Collection:LIVE, a streaming service featuring thousands of hours of rare interviews and performances. To support this effort, the Museum turned to Iron Mountain Media & Archival Services for a secure, scalable digital storage solution. Using a secure media archival platform and content localisation services, Iron Mountain made it easy for the Museum to archive, manage, and deliver its digitized content—making these cultural treasures more accessible than ever before to audiences around the world.

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Since our company's founding 75 years ago, Iron Mountain has helped organizations around the world safeguard and manage their valuable information. Our 75th anniversary presents a unique occasion to explore our past through our archived records and artifacts, using the same capabilities and care we provide to our customers.

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In July 2022, the majority of Appalshop’s archive was submerged in a 1,000-year flood. The Appalshop archive is one of the largest audio-visual repositories of central Appalachian history in the world. Iron Mountain, through our Living Legacy Initiative, is providing secure, climate-controlled storage of the majority of Appalshop's magnetic media archive in Iron Mountain’s cold storage facility as it is cleaned and digitized.

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People's Palace Projects (PPP) has been working with the Wauja people in the Xingu territory of the Amazon rainforest since 2018 when it was discovered that the Sacred Cave of Kamukuwaká had been destroyed. Through the use of 3D technology, art, and in-depth consultation of the Wauja peoples’ ancestral knowledge, PPP and its partners worked with the Wauja to create a replica of the cave. Once the cave replica was ready for transport, Crozier Fine Arts, an Iron Mountain business, facilitated the transportation from Madrid, Spain to the interior of the Amazon rainforest.

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In the United Kingdom, Iron Mountain is helping preserve the cultural heritage of Rolls-Royce by managing a rich archive dating back to the early 20th century. These machines, films, and records represent a spirit of determination from key moments in history. At Rolls-Royce, the past is also the present and the future. As the organization moves forward, Iron Mountain is by their side, helping to protect, unlock, and extend the value of what matters most.

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Iron Mountain Media and Archival Services partnered with a major studio to safeguard a one-of-a-kind collection of bound film scripts, from one of cinema's most influential figures. Recognizing that some of these fragile volumes, which included images and text, were the only surviving artifacts of their respective productions, our team provided a meticulous, white-glove service - from secure transport to specialized digital capture with our DT-V cradle. Our expert digitization process transformed these vulnerable, historically significant items into a lasting digital film legacy. Together, we're extending the cultural and scholarly impact of these cinematic treasures for future generations of filmmakers, historians and fans.

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For 75 years, Iron Mountain has helped our clients preserve expressions of our global heritage.

This includes taking care of paper records, works of art, rare books, photographs, tapes, CDs and DVDs, sports memorabilia, rare film and musical recordings, digital content, and more. Organizations that archive their heritage as a living, dynamic function, not just a technical task, preserve more than content: they preserve meaning.

Our company offers a comprehensive suite of services, serving as a trusted partner to organizations dedicated to safeguarding their history. We work closely with our customers and partners to securely store, digitize, and protect valuable artifacts, documents, and digital assets. Our climate-controlled storage facilities, digital studios and data centers ensure both physical and digital materials are preserved to the highest standards.

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Related solutions

Media and entertainment services

Preserve, access, and monetize content with Iron Mountain Media & Archival Services.

Library and archival services

Manage your collection through its next evolution, guided by our library experts

InSight DXP

Govern, streamline, and unlock information in a secure, AI-powered data platform

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Iron Mountain’s Living Legacy Initiative

Our Living Legacy Initiative is our commitment to preserve and make accessible cultural and historical information and artifacts. Every day, we protect our customers’ most vital assets and information. The Living Legacy Initiative extends that same care and expertise to our communities through partnerships with nonprofit organizations.

Preserving cultural heritage information and artifacts and ensuring they are accessible to current and future generations can help foster inclusion, understanding, and a sense of belonging across our global communities. Similar to our approach with customers, we invest time in understanding each partner's distinct challenges and objectives. This insight allows us to utilize our extensive experience in safeguarding and managing physical and digital assets and our global reach to maximize our impact.

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British Film Institute

With funding from the Living Legacy Initiative, the British Film Institute restored 45 episodes and 2 feature films of Stoll Pictures' Sherlock Holmes collection that have not been publicly accessible since just after they were first produced in 1923. In October 2024, the British Film Institute selected 3 restored episodes to be showcased at the London Film Festival in 2024 with musical scores composed by Neil Brand and Joanna MacGregor, and they were joined on the project by Joseph Havlat, Professor of Contemporary Piano at the Royal Academy of Music.

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Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Funding from the Living Legacy Initiative has helped restore the 18th Century Louis XV Salon - also known as the Cabinet du Roi. Housing exceptional furniture and decor, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, the Louis XV Salon was open to visitors since its creation until closing for the restoration work to take place. Open again in all its former glory, the room is a stunning focal point in this magnificent library.

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Couple looking at historically preserved items

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Let's protect your legacy

Whether enabling global access to digital archives, safeguarding fragile collections, or advising on long-term preservation strategies, Iron Mountain is proud to act as a steward to protect and maintain a continuous connection to our shared global heritage.

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Heritage Preservation