Conference Sessions & Workshops: Thursday
Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday
Workshops | Vendor Cafe | Poster Sessions | DAS
Schedule at a Glance
THURSDAY. November 19, 2015
7:00am – 8:00am | Forum
Meeting: Conference Committee
7:00am – 8:00am | Directors
Meeting: Education Committee
8:00am – 9:00pm | Parlor A
Hack Day Lounge
8:30am – 10:30am | Grand Ballroom II | Breakfast available 8:15am – 8:45am
AMIA 2015 Welcome & Awards: Celebrating 25 Years
Welcome to AMIA 2015! At their 1990 conference in Portland, a group of F/TAAC (Film and Television Archives Advisory Committee) members proposed the creation of AMIA in a room at the Oregon Historical Society. And in June of 1991 the new AMIA held its first election. This year AMIA celebrates its first 25 years. As we celebrate 25 years, we’ll look at where AMIA – and the field – have been, and where we are headed. Also, join us in celebrating the 2015 AMIA Award Honorees and scholars.
9:30am – 5:30pm | Galleria North | Registration required
DAS Portland: Case Studies and Speakers
10:30am – 6:45pm | Grand Ballroom I
The Vendor Café
Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the vendor exhibits! The vendor exhibits are a great way to learn what is new, what is working and what is on the horizon. Whether or not you are a buyer, the Café is an opportunity to meet colleagues who provide the products and services we all rely on.
11:00am – 12:00pm | Broadway I & II
Ensuring Trustworthy Audiovisual Human Rights Documentation Through Effective Lifecycle Management
Chair
Seth Anderson, AVPreserve
Speakers
Stephen Naron, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University
Grace Lile, WITNESS
The proposed panel features two organizations addressing the creation of human rights media and metadata, and associated management and access challenges. Stephen Naron, incoming Director of the Fortunoff Archive, will discuss logistical, legal, and ethical issues manifest in the planning, design, and implementation of security protocols and technology decisions related to provide controlled remote access to Holocaust witness testimonies. Seth Anderson will address how AVPreserve and Fortunoff determined an appropriate mechanism for providing restricted access to testimonies. Grace Lile will discuss WITNESS’s ongoing initiative to empower video activists and citizen journalists to establish their own effective archival workflows. The panel will explore the relationship between the needs of creators and users of media related to human rights and the requirements of archivists, preservationists, and specialists in generating and managing it.
11:00am – 12:00pm | Galleria South
Opportunities and Challenges in Northwest TV News Collections
Chair
Elizabeth Peterson, University of Oregon
Speakers
Hannah Palin, University of Washington
Matthew Cowan, Oregon Historical Society
Pete Schreiner, Lewis and Clark College
Regional archives often count local television news among the largest percentage of their holdings, yet these collections often remain difficult to access due to limited staff, insufficient technology and murky copyright issues. Like many institutions, Northwest archives struggle with issues of access, copyright, and promotion when it comes to these diverse collections. This session will present various perspectives from three archives in Oregon and Washington with TV news materials. Attendees to this session will be introduced to the variety of local news programming in the Pacific Northwest, as well as strategies for managing similar collections at their own institutions.
11:00am – 12:00pm | Broadway III&IV
An Amusement Fit for Half-wits: Partial Histories of Film Archives
Chair
Rachael Stoeltje, Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive
Speakers
Christophe Dupin, International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)
David Walsh, Imperial War Museum
The notion of preserving for the future such a low form of entertainment as film (‘an amusement fit for children and half-wits’) was once dismissed as pointless and unrealistic. In this panel Christophe Dupin looks at the beginnings of the archive movement with the founding of FIAF. He will address the four founding FIAF film archives and their early beginnings. Following that, Rachael Stoeltje considers the phenomenon of accidental archives with the recent growth of the newly established almost unintentional archives. And, then David Walsh examines how and why many film archives get things wrong….starting historically in the early days from duplicating and throwing out nitrate to more recent actions and choices that compromise collections and preservation. The three panelists together form a historical timeline of oldest and newest archives, their histories and mistakes made along the way.
12:00pm – 1:00pm | Broadway III&IV
Diversity Committee Open Session: A Diversity Statement for AMIA
Chair
Moriah Ulinskas
A “diversity statement” serves to establish and steer an organization’s strategic response to diversity as an organizational priority. At this point AMIA has no such statement, though it does have a Code of Ethics and a Diversity Committee as a part of its organizational structure. In 2014 the Society for American Archivists and the New England Archivists both published important statements addressing diversity and inclusion for those two organizations. At last year’s AMIA conference the Board of Directors stated that they would like to have a similar statement on diversity and charged the Diversity Committee with the responsibility of researching and drafting a diversity statement for the organization. In this session members of the Diversity Committee will present a draft of the proposed diversity statement for feedback and input from the wider AMIA community. The goal of this presentation is to encourage a dialogue among all AMIA members, regarding the organization’s strategic response to diversity as an organizational priority, and to collect feedback and ideas that will move the establishment of this statement forward.
This Open Session is hosted by the Diversity Committee in order to form a recommendation to the AMIA Board. Your input is critical.
12:00pm – 1:00pm | Galleria South
Nitrate Commitee Open Session: A Star is Born! The Nitrate Picture Show
Speakers
Jared Case, George Eastman House
Deborah Stoiber, George Eastman House
Nitrate film has long been viewed as only master material. In 2000, in conjunction with the FIAF Congress, the British Film Institute held a series of screenings called “The Last Nitrate Picture Show.” Fifteen years later, nitrate film is just as vital as it has always been. Stored properly, meticulously inspected and repaired, projected on machines appropriate and well-maintained, and presented by qualified projectionists in a compliant theatre, nitrate release prints still provide the ultimate theatrical experience. This was the thought behind the creation of The Nitrate Picture Show: A Festival of Film Conservation, an annual weekend dedicated to the exhibition of nitrate prints, which held its first edition in 2015. This panel will give insight into the decisions made about the festival, the preparations needed to make it possible, and provide useful information about how attendees can assess their own nitrate collection’s viability.
This Open Session is hosted by the Nitrate Committee and will include a short meeting of committee members and those interested in the work of the committee following the session.
12:00pm – 1:00pm | Directors
Meeting: Publications Committee
12:00pm – 1:00pm | Forum
Meeting: Copyright Committee
12:00pm – 1:00pm | Council
Meeting: International Outreach Committee
12:00pm – 1:00pm | Studio
Meeting: Cataloging & Metadata Committee
12:00pm – 2:00pm | Vendor Cafe
Poster Session: Thursday Presentations
- Archival Workflows and Micro-services at CUNY Television
Dinah Handel, National Digital Stewardship Resident at CUNY Television - Roadside Memories: A Digital Tour of Florida Attractions, 1945-1980
David Morton, University of Central Florida - Modern Workflows for Deteriorating Physical Assets at NBCUniversal
Jen O’Leary, UCLA Moving Image Archive Studies - Searching for Sanctuary: The Anti-War Documentary Footage of Fred Engelberg
Shani Miller, UCLA Moving Image Archive Studies - A (Motion) Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Supporting Access to Motion Picture Oral Histories
Robin Margolis, MLIS UCLA, Media Archiving - Visualizing Video Data Over Time
Henry Borchers - Implementing a Video Digitization Program: Western Front’s Early Literary Digitization Project
Kristy Waller, The Western Front Society
Shyla Seller, The Western Front Society - Workflows for Born Digital Materials in a Museum Collection
Eddy Colloton, Denver Art Museum/New York University, MIAP Program - Expanding Access Through Music: The Adrian Cowell Films and Research Collection
Andrew Weaver, University of Washington Libraries - The Ethical Ambiguity of Preserving Medical Films
Manda Haligowski - Discovering Small Audiovisual Collections with AV Compass
Lauren O’Connor, Bay Area Video Coalition
Kathy O’Regan, Bay Area Video Coalition - Wyoming in Film: Increasing Access to Wyoming’s Motion Picture Heritage
Kathy Gerlach, University of Wyoming American Heritage Center - SAMMA Solo vs. Blackmagic Design: A Cost-Benefit Analysis
Alex Marsh, Duke University - Commercial Content & Alternative America: Exploring the David Stern Archive
Ariel Schudson, EACH Archive (independent archive)
Adam Tamberg, EACH Archive (independent archive)
1:00pm – 2:00pm | Forum
Meeting: Small Gauge & Amateur Film Committee
1:00pm – 2:00pm | Directors
Meeting: Open Source Committee
1:00pm – 2:00pm | Council
Meeting: Advocacy Committee
2:00pm – 3:00pm | Broadway III&IV
Beyond Oral History: Using OHMS to Enhance Access to Audiovisual Collections
Chair
Callie Holmes, Russell Library, University of Georgia
Speakers
Craig Breaden, Duke University Libraries
Alex Kroh, Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia
Are you troubled by the need to allow users to effectively skim and search digital audiovisual content? Do you experience feelings of dread when wondering how to make that happen? If the answer is yes, then don’t wait another minute, let OHMS help! Created by the University of Kentucky’s Nunn Center for Oral History, OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer) presents digitized content alongside a time-correlated transcript and index. With OHMS, users can quickly skim an index or use keyword searching to jump to a relevant moment in the online media. Best of all, OHMS requires few institutional resources for installation (and minimal ongoing tech support) and can be used with free online streaming services such as YouTube. This session will include an overview of OHMS implementation and workflows and will give examples of applications to non-oral history collections, including home movies, broadcast interviews, and field recordings.
2:00pm – 3:00pm | Galleria South
Managing and Marketing Your Archive for Cinema Exhibition
Chair
Barbara Twist, Art House Convergence
Speakers
Barak Epstein, Texas Theatre
Dan Halsead, Hollywood Theatre
This session will address the limited access to archival material by non-academic and non-industry film consumers by proposing an increase in on-screen exhibition via several ways: increasing cinema exhibitor access to archives, packaging archival content into series and shorts programs, and marketing your archive to cinema exhibitors directly or via a third-party. Programming repertory and archival content are important cultural missions of many independent cinemas, yet they also represent a significant revenue stream. The audiences that frequent these theaters represent a more highly-educated and more committed moviegoer who is traditionally interested in archival and repertory screenings. The session will present several case studies of recently successful packaged archival and repertory series, including Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema. The speakers (Russ Collins and Barbara Twist) represent exhibitors who regularly program repertory and archival content and the Art House Convergence, who represents hundreds of independent film exhibitors in the United States.
2:00pm – 3:00pm | Broadway I & II
The Long Goodbye: Curation Through Careful De-accession
Chair
Sean Savage, Academy Film Archive
Speakers
Stefan Palko, Academy Film Archive
Deborah Stoiber, George Eastman House
It’s simply not feasible to save all the media consigned to our institutions, and we must inevitably come to terms with our limitations in collection criteria, storage and staffing. In this session, representatives from the Academy Film Archive (AFA) and George Eastman House (GEH) will trace the journey of a hypothetical collection (illustrated by several real world examples), from arrival at the repository, to assessment and inventory, de-accession and disposal—in short, distilling a collection to essential material that effectively honors the work, artist and/or donor. Stefan Palko will discuss managing the unprecedented volume of incoming collections, and AFA’s tribunal process. Sean Savage will present examples from processing the Saul Bass collection and others, and consider what effectively amounts to curation at this level. Finally, Deborah Stoiber discusses the GEH’s drafting and implementation of new de-accession policies, and contending with large donations of 16mm film, technical books and video items.
3:30pm – 4:00pm | Broadway I & II
Kim Jong-Il: Dictator, Cinephile, Film Preservationist?
Presenter
Justin Mckinney, Independent Consultant
This session examines the circumstances and creation of the massive private film collection by former North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-Il, with a particular focus on the “Resource Operation No. 100” that utilized state resources to acquire and copy films from around the world to build Kim’s collection, where they were stored under preservation conditions. This session will provide insight into Kim Jong-Il’s cinephilia and the potential value of this collection as both an archive of North Korea’s film history and a diverse international collection.
3:30pm – 4:30pm | Broadway III&IV
Party Like it’s 1999: Emulated Access to Complex Media Collections
Chair
Julia Kim, Library of Congress
Speakers
Alison Rhonemus, New York Public Library
Morgan McKeehan, Rhizome Art Base
Dianne Dietrich, Cornell University
Born-Digital material is pervasive, but where and how is it accessible, especially in the case of complex born-digital? In this session, we will highlight 4 cutting edge use cases of complex born-digital emulations that have been made accessible to researchers. Panelists will highlight the work at Cornell University Library, New York Public Library, New York University, and Rhizome Art Base. This panel will offer multiple institutions’ perspective on using emulation, including technical challenges, documentation, and opportunities for future work and collaboration. Audience members are highly encouraged to bring obsolete CD-ROMs for a Rhizome-led workshop on Emulation as a Service. Audience members will come away with a good grounding of what is possible in emulation across different types of institutions and support structures.
3:30pm – 4:30pm | Galleria South
EXTRA: Examining AV Enterprise at a Regional Academic Archive
Chair
Molly Rose Steed, University of Utah
Speakers
Jessica Breiman, University of Utah
Tawnya Keller, University of Utah
In 1977, EXTRA’s dynamic mesh of critical exposés, in-depth interviews, short subject documentaries and experimental film represented a turning point for visual media in Utah and launched the careers of artists and journalists, who took advantage of new possibilities in production and pre-recorded programming. In 2014, a grant to digitize this local television newsmagazine became a turning point for the University of Utah’s AV Archive – a small division of the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Special Collections department – helping to redefine its operations and its role within the library. In this case study, the Marriott Library’s AV and Digital Preservation archivists will discuss not only the content and progress of the EXTRA project but also the significant institutional takeaways for regional archives and academic libraries just beginning to tackle their AV collections that resulted from the process as a whole.
4:00pm – 4:30pm | Broadway I & II
Fandom Despecialized: Fan Edits and the Search for Authenticity
Presenter
Jimi Jones, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This talk explores the world of fan edits. One fan edit in particular, Star Wars Despecialized, represents an attempt by a distributed network of online Star Wars fans to create and disseminate a high-quality version of the film that represents its original, unaltered 1977 release. In this talk I discuss the phenomenon of this particular fan edit in terms of a search for the authentic, unadulterated Star Wars. I look at how this community collaborates, how it disseminates its works and what the resurrection of the original, authentic Star Wars means.
4:45pm – 5:45pm | Broadway III & IV
How Motion Picture Film is Used to Preserve Moving Images
Chair
Tommy Aschenbach, Video & Film Solutions/Colorlab
Speakers
Walter Forsberg, Smithsonian NMAAHC
John Klacsmann, Anthology Film Archives
Bev Pasterczyk, Kodak
The conversation regarding moving image preservation has shifted from film to digital and, as a result, the knowledge of photochemical motion picture film technology is slipping away from the moving image archival community. This presentation serves to reintroduce the moving image archival community to motion picture film/photochemical methods of preservation. Film not only provides the opportunity to recreate images in the manner in which they were intended to be seen, but also offers a long term preservation solution.
4:45pm – 5:45pm | Broadway I & II
From Acquisition to Access at the BFI National Archive: Case Studies
Speaker
Helen Edmunds, British Film Institute
Katrina Stokes, British Film Institute
This presentation travels the path with our film heritage from its acquisition to access. We will review the BFI’s on-going project to unlock moving image for new audiences with the digitization and publication of 10,000 films in partnership with UK Regional and National archives and rights holders. We will consider how the workflow processes developed for this mass digitization project are being utilized for other large-scale digitization projects, with a discussion on the BFI’s partnership with digital publisher Adam Matthew in a project to unlock for international higher education students a collection of largely previously unseen socialist propaganda films.
4:45pm – 5:45pm | Galleria South
Metadata Grand Unified Theory: PBCore, EBUCore, and the Semantic Web
Chair
Casey Davis, WGBH Educational Foundation
Jack Brighton, Illinois Public Media
Speakers
Rebecca Fraimow, WGBH
Evain Jean-Pierre, EBU (European Broadcasting Union)
Morgan Morel, George Blood Audio/Video/Film
The adoption of PBCore in the United States has paralleled the rise of EBUCore in Europe as core metadata standards for audiovisual materials. During the past year, the two communities have formed a working group to explore ways to align PBCore and EBUCore for interoperability. Coinciding with the release of the PBCore 2.1 Schema in May 2015, it was decided to stop reinventing existing vocabularies, and instead leverage excellent work already completed by the European community. This paves the way for the adoption by PBCore of the EBUCore ontology, and unifying the vocabularies of both metadata standards. This means PBCore users can now also take advantage of EBUCore’s integration with RDF and semantic web applications. During this session, working group leaders from EBUCore and PBCore will tell the story of this work, and how it can be leveraged by users of both communities.
5:45pm – 6:45pm | Grand Ballroon I
Cocktails in the Vendor Café
Join us for cocktails in the Vendor Café before heading out to enjoy Archival Screening Night or an evening in Portland! Find your drink ticket in your registration package, courtesy of the exhibitors in the Café.
7:45pm – 10:30pm | Whitsell Auditorium
Archival Screening Night
Archival Screening Night is a showcase for AMIA members’ recent acquisitions, discoveries, and preservation efforts. The program represents the magnificent spectrum of media formats, works, and collections protected and preserved by the AMIA community.