2019 Conference Program
Times and days are subject to change.
Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday
7:30am – 5:30pm | Separate Registration Required
Tour of the NAVCC at Culpeper
8:00am – 12:00pm | Separate Registration Required
Python for AV File Management
Benjamin Turkus, New York Public Library
Nick Krabbenhoeft, New York Public Library
Python is often referred to as the “swiss army knife” of computer programming languages, capable of meeting the needs of nearly any task with its characteristic ease-of-use, simplicity, and efficiency. In this half-day workshop, Nick Krabbenhoeft and Ben Turkus, two members of NYPL’s Research Libraries, will go full Leatherman, introducing participants to all the various ways that Python can have a transformative effect on media digitization workflows. Designed for archivists working with digital/digitized media collections of any size, this will be a practical and skills-oriented effort, offering participants a thorough grounding in Python basics, and an introduction to a number of Python tools that allow for the general manipulation and analysis of media. Specific modules/libraries/tools will include: the os, glob, re, subprocess, shutil, csv and json modules; FFmpeg; pymediainfo/MediaConch; pandas; matplotlib; and seaborn.
8:30am – 5:30pm | Separate Registration Required
Audiovisual & Preservation Technology Basics for Non-Engineers
James Snyder, Library of Congress
This workshop will focus on providing a good technical basis, in plain English, for those who do not already have audiovisual engineering or technical training. It builds on the 2014 half-day seminar, and expands to a full day in response to attendee feedback. It will allow non-technical people of all types to have a good, basic grasp of the technologies, concepts and terms involved in audiovisual recording and reproduction in general, digitization of audiovisual materials, and file-based workflows, metadata and long-term data archiving. Workshop attendees will walk away with a good, operating grasp of the technologies involved, de-mystifying the terms and concepts audiovisual archivists face every day at institutions large and small so they know what materials they are looking at, how to handle their preservation, and how to plan for their digital conversion. They will have a functional knowledge of the terms and concepts required to write grants and contracts for digital conversion and storage of audiovisual materials.
12:30pm – 5:30pm
Packing and Shipping Nitrate Film Certification | Separate Registration Required
Rachel Del Gaudio, Library of Congress
Robert Smith, CARGOpak
Fulfill your nitrate film packing and shipping training requirement while at this years AMIA conference! Nitrate film is classified as a hazardous material and the regulations of packing and shipping it are very strict. This half day workshop will provide attendees with all the relevant regulatory information to be able to pack and ship nitrate film. Here is a chance to train new employees or to renew your existing DG/hazmat training without incurring the cost of a personal training session or webinar. The class is exclusively about Nitrocellulose film shipping, only UN1324 in a half day workshop.
Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday
8:30am – 5:30pm | Separate Registration Required
Cataloging the Moving Image: Data Modeling, FRBR, BIBFRAME, and PBCore
Randal Luckow, HBO
Andrea Leigh, Library of Congress
Meghan Fitzgerald, NASA
Rebecca Fraimow, WGBH Boston
This highly-interactive workshop will provide participants with real-world strategies to evaluate and implement data models, descriptive standards, controlled vocabularies, and shared data authorities, through practical hands-on exercises. Dynamic presentations will illustrate the role and purpose of putting in place a strong data model for bibliographic description, using BIBFRAME and FRBR examples, and the value of implementing standards such as LCSH, LCGFT, and AAT as data authorities. Participants will put these cataloging and metadata concepts directly into practice utilizing tools emerging from the NEH-funded PBCore Development and Training Project. A special hands-on session will apply genre/form headings to moving images, and show how they are used symbiotically with Library of Congress Subject Headings to describe both what a work is and what it is about. Participants will complete simple and complex inventory projects using PBCore Inventory Templates; generate detailed PBCore catalog records using the PBCore Cataloging Tool; compare/contrast inventory records, catalog records, and XML records; and validate PBCore XML records using the PBCore XML Validator. Participants will also practice cross walking between different standards. Presenters include well-respected experts in the field who take care to design sessions that are highly engaging and reflect the most current developments in audiovisual archiving. This workshop is sponsored by the Cataloging and Metadata Committee in collaboration with the PBCore advisory subcommittee. This workshop is intended for those with a moderate level of understanding of metadata standards and implementation strategies.
8:30am – 12:00pm | Separate Registration Required
Airtable for A/V Archivists
Stephanie Sapienza, University of Maryland
Ed Summers, University of Maryland
Airtable is an online relational database application that operates somewhere between Excel/Google Spreadsheets, FileMaker, and OpenRefine. With a high ease of usability and very low barrier of entry, Airtable is ideal for archivists without resources or skill sets to implement more technologically complex solutions for metadata management. It’s an ideal solution for low-budget cultural heritage organizations and regional archives operating with a disbursed labor force. This workshop will start by discussing different metadata starting point scenarios users may be working from. Then we will utilize a pre-existing data set of item-level records, and work as a group to: – Create controlled vocabularies/authority lists; – De-duplicate and normalize records; – Concatenate repeating fields into one column with multiple values; – Create custom views of subsets of your metadata; After the group exercises, we will provide an overview of some more advanced uses of Airtable, including using Airtable Blocks, and the Airtable API.
9:00am – 5:00pm | Separate Registration Required
Doing Oral History
Teague Schneiter, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences
Tuni Chatterji, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences
Steven Sielaff, Baylor University Institute for Oral History
Anne Kelly, USC Shoah Foundation
Jenni Matz, Television Academy Foundation
“Doing Oral History” will provide training in each of the core areas of this important documentation method. Attendees will learn how to record, archive and provide access to a single interview, and even how to start their own oral history program. Workshop leaders will teach the following one hour sessions: 1) What is Oral History?/Project Design, 2) Legal and Ethical Framework, 3) Recording Technology (Equipment, lighting, set up), 4) Interviewing Techniques, 5) Lunch break, 6) Metadata & Cataloging, 7) Transcription & Other Derivative Works, 8) Access and Outcomes, 9) Afternoon Section Overflow & Q&A. The workshop will be interactive and include sample materials, assignments, workshopping, a practice interview (with feedback from professionals), and training how to index oral histories using OHMS. This session is also targeted training for professionals looking to learn more about how to ethically work with oral history materials.
9:00am – 5:00pm | Pre-Registration Required
AMIA/DLF Hack Day
A partnership between AMIA and the Digital Library Federation, Hack Day is a unique opportunity for practitioners and managers of audiovisual collections to join with developers and engineers for an intense day of collaboration to develop solutions for audiovisual preservation and access. Within digital preservation and curation communities, hack days provide an opportunity for archivists, collection managers, technologists, and others to work together develop software solutions, documentation or training materials, and more for collections management needs.
10:00am – 5:00pm | Pre-Registration Required
Community Archiving Workshop
The Community Archiving Workshop provides an opportunity for AMIA Conference attendees to serve the regional community and work with local volunteers to jump-start the preservation of audiovisual collections. For this workshop we will be working with the Deaf Folklife Films Project in partnership with the Mid-Atlantic Region Moving Image Archive (MARMIA) and the Regional Audiovisual Archives Committee. The Deaf Folklife Films Project aims to foster the emergence of Humanistic studies of the language and history of the American deaf community through discovery of the indigenous perspective in films produced in the deaf community. The collection contains film and video recordings originating from educational institutions, the Rochester Deaf Heritage Preservation Project, records of theatrical productions and workshops, and home movies from families in the United States and Mexico.
AMIA Conference attendees will be paired with moving image archivists and community members to conduct basic processing, cataloging and inspection of the Deaf Folklife Films collection and, by doing so, will learn how to identify risk factors and make preservation recommendations for moving image collections. Participants in this workshop will be handling collections of film (16mm, Super 8, 8mm), analog video (VHS, Video 8, Hi-8, Betacam), and optical media (DVDs). There will be a presentation on re-using and re-mixing audiovisual archive material, by the Regional Audiovisual Archives Committee, and stations where participants can learn film inspection/ repair, and media digitization. There will be ASL translation throughout the workshop.
12:30pm – 5:30pm
The Reel Thing | Separate Registration Required
Grover Crisp, Sony Pictures
Michael Friend, Sony Pictures
Curated by Grover Crisp and Michael Friend, The Reel Thing addresses current thinking and most advanced practical examples of progress in the field of preservation, restoration and media conservation.
5:45pm – 6:45pm
Newcomer’s Orientation
Casey Davis Kaufman, AMIA Board
Teague Schneiter, AMIA Board
Are you new to AMIA? Is this your first time at the annual conference? Have you been to our annual conference before but would like a refresher on how to make the most of it? If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, then be sure to join us! This lively and participative orientation is a great way to have a clear understanding of what AMIA is and does; meet other newcomers to the annual conference; get advice on conference sessions to attend based on your interests; meet AMIA volunteer leaders who will help introduce you to other members; feel that you are meeting up with old friends when you come to AMIA 2019 in Baltimore next year!
6:45pm – 7:45pm
Opening Night Reception
It’s opening night in Baltimore! A chance to say hello to friends, meet new colleagues, and get ready for the days ahead.
8:00am – 9:00am
AMIA 2019 Welcome & ASN Roadshow Highlights
Dennis Doros, AMIA President
Please join us for the welcome to Baltimore, recognition of the 2019 Scholarship and Internship recipients, and the Conference Keynote address.
9:45am – 6:30pm
The pAVilion
Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the pAVilion! The pAVilion brings together exhibitors with demos, skill shares, “ask an expert” spaces, and small group discussions. Roundtables are scheduled throughout the day, and the Poster Session is 12:00pm – 2:00pm. Check the app for an updated list of demos, and topics – including a resume table, a professional headshot booth, and more. Our goal is to create a hub for sharing information at the conference.
11:00am – 12:00pm
Workshops in Progress: Community Archiving Workshop Training of Trainers Project
Sandra Yates, Texas Medical Center Library
Moriah Ulinskas, Independent
Kelli Hix, Nashville Metro Archives / Independent
Pamela Vadakan, California Revealed
Amy Sloper, Harvard Film Archive
The Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) has been a one-day workshop at the AMIA Annual Conference since 2011. Its mission is to help regional community groups learn to identify and preserve their legacy recordings. The work of CAW has meant that diverse communities are developing the capacity to safeguard their audiovisual materials and make unique regional cultural recordings more available. This session will report on the progress of the CAW Training of Trainers project. Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) with the generous support of AMIA, this project aims to produce a series of regional workshops which will address the problem of obsolescence in audiovisual collections.
11:00am – 12:00pm
Supporting Digital Scholarship: Enabling Analysis of AV Collections at Scale
Casey Davis Kaufman, WGBH
Jaime Mears, Library of Congress
Clifford Anderson, Vanderbilt University
Stephanie Sapienza, University of Maryland
In this session, representatives from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive (VTNA), University of Maryland’s Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), the Library of Congress LABS Division, and WGBH and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, will provide an overview of the digital humanities; they will share policies developed that support use of their institutions’ collections in digital humanities research; they will demonstrate how these collections have been exposed in ways that enable computational analysis and reuse in digital humanities initiatives; and will they present case study examples of how they’ve enabled discovery of archival collections through digital scholarship.
11:00am – 12:00pm
LSRS: How to Preserve in the Cloud
Andrea Kalas, Paramount Pictures
Andrea Kalas, long time AMIA member, discusses one of the areas of intense technical development and implementation: The Cloud and what it means to the longevity of audiovisual art, culture and history. The Cloud promises and can deliver, through virtually infinite processing, magic solutions to some very real problems: pattern recognition trained on specific data sets can add incremental search terms with incredible speeds; sharing of large data sets around the world means more inclusion. The Cloud remains quite unknowable at this point in time too, and that’s something Andrea and a group of others took on recently. She’ll discuss the outcome of this work from the Entertainment Technology Council and share a white paper called Guidelines for Preservation of Moving Images in the Cloud.
12:00pm – 2:00pm
Poster Session
- As Time Goes By: Public Television and the Post-Retirement Experience
Christopher Banuelos, University of Kansas
Julia Davila-Coppedge, The University of Texas at Austin
- Cold Storage: Icelandic Home Movies in the Archive
Sigríður Regína Sigurþórsdóttir, National Film Archive of Iceland - Cooperative Video Preservation with the Academic Libraries Video Trust
Phil Salvador, American University
Chris Lewis, American University - What’s in your Repository? Facing Legacy Data in Smithsonian DAMS
Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution - Digitizing and Reassembling William Miles’ Black Champions Interviews
Tyler Bequette, Washington University in St. Louis
Jim Hone, Washington University in St. Louis
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Meeting: Small Gauge & Amateur Film Committee
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Meeting: Open Source
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Meeting: Conference Committee
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Meeting: Preservation Committee
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Meeting: Education Committee – Student Chapter
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Meeting: Regional Audiovisual Archives Committee
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Close It Out: Task Management Platforms in AV Archives
Brendan Coates, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Morgan Morel, Bay Area Video Coalition
Dinah Handel, Stanford
Workflow development, documentation, and project management are important skills in librarianship; as the possibilities of instantiating our workflows in code grow more numerous and accessible, what does it mean for the archival AV community to integrate workflow automation and task management software in our work-lives? Drawing on a range of titles, work experiences, and organizational settings, this panel will focus on the use of task management software in an archival AV context, with a particular focus on commonly used platforms such as Jira/ Trello, Salesforce, and Aeon. Panelists will describe their own use of these tools with a critical eye towards how they are, in turn, changing the nature of our work. Audience members will learn about the practical and philosophical foundations of working with these systems from a project management perspective with a focus on creating better working relationships between colleagues and improved services for users.
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Engaging Students and Instructors with Local Television News Collections
Mary Lynn Miller, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia
Jason Woodworth, University of Georgia
Laurel Schafer, University of Georgia
Archives holding local news collections may struggle to find institutional support for the care these collections require. One way to gain support is by demonstrating that they are being used for research and instruction. This interactive presentation uses examples from the University of Georgia to illustrate approaches to connecting with scholars and facilitating student use of local news collections. The presentation will include pre-recorded presentations by students who have used the collections and helpful information about how to work with donor stations, instructors, and students to enable successful research and scholarly creation using these materials.
2:00pm – 3:00pm
LSRS: Intelligent Content Discovery for Media Archives using AI and Machine Learning
Buzz Hays, Google
Rodrigo Coelho, Iron Mountain
Metadata extraction from media archives is becoming more challenging as archives grow in size. This presentation will focus on practical uses of AI/ML tools for mining meaningful metadata from visual and audio content to better inform content curators and archivists. An overview of the tools available on Google Cloud will be discussed (Intelligent Content Discovery: Speech-to-Text, Visual Intelligence, Logo Detection, Explicit Content Detection, Sentiment Analysis), followed by a demonstration of Iron Mountain’s InSight media asset management tool to demonstrate the visualization of media archive metadata along with a simple method of retraining machine learning models with no data science or ML experience.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
Share That Knowledge! Developing Strategies for Knowledge-Sharing within Audiovisual Archives
Karen F. Gracy, Kent State University
Erwin Verbruggen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Catherine Gadbois-Laurendeau, Cinémathèque québécoise
Janneke van Dalen, Austrian Film Museum
Nadja Šičarov, Austrian Film Museum
The transfer of knowledge across generations of archivists within an institution is an essential part of the preservation of audiovisual heritage. While some areas of knowledge are easily recognizable and documented, it is the tacit or intangible knowledge an archivist holds that is in most danger of being lost. Systematic knowledge transfer is rarely acknowledged and undertaken in a methodical manner. While institutions may have their own individual methods of passing on knowledge, these methods are rarely articulated and shared through published research. Thus, this panel focuses on knowledge sharing in the field of audiovisual archiving as a part of the research project Share That Knowledge! Finding Strategies for Passing on Knowledge Across Generations of Archivists. This three-year project brings together archive affiliates from thirteen AV archiving institutions who will conduct research aimed at formulating a set of successful methods and strategies for passing on knowledge within audiovisual archives.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
Building Sustainability into Queer Archival Initiatives
Claire Fox, New York University
Kendell Harbin, Roaming Center for Magnetic Alternatives
Louisa Trott, University of Tennessee
Alexandra Juhasz, Brooklyn College
What does queer history look like? What does it sound like? How does it feel? Browsing through an LGBTQ+ media archive might help you find an answer. But how do you find one? Is there one in your town? Can you find materials online? And if you can, how do you know it still exists? This panel brings together three speakers from different queer media preservation initiatives: Kendell Harbin, who runs the Roaming Center for Media Alternatives in libraries across the Midwest; Louisa Trott, who works on the Voices Out Loud Project to preserve East Tennessee’s LGBTQ+ history and culture; and Alexandra Juhasz, who initiated the VHS Archives Working Group at CUNY to consider the connection between migrating tape formats and caring for the people who created them. Together, panelists will think through how a sustainable, accessible queer archive might look, based on their experiences doing the work.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
LSRS: Digital Asset Management in 2019: Trends in Stills Archiving (AI)
Dony West, Paramount Pictures
Caitlin Denny, Paramount Pictures
Rebecca Ruud, Paramount Pictures
Our first topic would discuss the pro’s and con’s of incorporating “computer learning” applications into our current preservation workflows for out stills collection at Paramount. A general overview of our current preservation methods, and newly integrated AI within our DAM. Production photography from lost silent stills. Our Sr Archivist in photochemical will discuss our collection of rare, silent stills within our collection. Discussing our search & discovery process, as well as preservation and digitization of this amazing photography. How a still illustrates a motion picture archive – Designs for home media, Costume exhibition, Internal Marketing, Licensing, Franchise Support, and Reference. Stills are often overlooked as a pivotal part of the film making process. We will discuss a bit of the historical and contemporary trends and use cases for these important assets, and how they are used in support beyond the marketing of a film.
4:45pm – 5:45pm
Surviving the Game: Fear, Labor & Community on the Information/Archives Battlefield
Ariel Schudson, Archivist’s Alley
Snowden Becker
Tre Berney, Cornell University
One of the most commonly used phrases in the archives and information profession is “I would be afraid to do/say that- I might lose my job!” The poisonous silences linked with labor and structural oppression are a dominating aspect of the archives/information landscape for young professionals. Affecting our mental/physical/emotional health, issues borne from fear and poor labor practices are currently causing many of its most talented members (or possible members) to find work elsewhere. Making the decision to start talking about uncomfortable topics is the only way that we can change them. Through the use of anonymous documents and in-person discourse, we will work through crucial topics like fear, labor, hiring practices, the kyriarchy and self-care, ruminating on what we can do as a community to support and care for each other as well as the work we do in this precarious time.
4:45pm – 12:00pm
Case Study: Earth Science Communications Content Registry at NASA
Meghan Fitzgerald, SSAI @ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
This case study will walk through the planning and implementation of a project to create a registry of web content for NASA’s Earth Sciences Division, called ESCCOR: Earth Science Communications Content Registry. The presentation will include information about data models, schemas, and controlled vocabularies used to create the ESCCOR ontology; selection and implementation of software using APIs and linked data; hurdles and how we overcame them; and a live demonstration. ESCCOR catalogs, indexes, and registers public-facing web content created by various communications-focused departments. This case study is an example of how to apply archival and library science principles, standards, and processes to ephemeral content produced by NASA groups creating educational Earth Science audiovisual content for daily public web consumption. The speaker is the project manager, cataloger, and taxonomist for ESCCOR. She will share what she’s learned so that others working on similar projects can benefit from those learnings.
4:45pm – 5:45pm
LSRS: Creation of an Archival Moving Image Database for AI Research
Jim Lindner, Media Matters
David Weiss, Northeast Historic Film
Northeast Historic Film is embarking on a project to make archival film samples open and available to the scientific community for algorithmic finding aid research. We realize that for algorithms to be developed, appropriate sample materials must be available to the scientific community. Virtually no work has been done on algorithmic finding aides appropriate for legacy archival content. This is a huge problem. While Archives have embraced issues related to access, virtually no work has been done on non-textual finding aids. We realize that the expertise for this work does not lie in our field; rather it is in other communities that may not even be aware of the issues and differences of archival moving image content vs. contemporary content. Our intent is to provide different “seed” footage to a few repositories that represent different aspects of a very complex project.
5:30pm – 6:30pm
Meeting: Oral History Committee
5:30pm – 6:30pm
Raise a Glass in the pAVilion!
Before you head out to the Awards + Archival Screening Night, join the pAVilion exhibitors in raising a glass in honor of the 2019 Award recipients. Check your registration envelope for a drink ticket.
6:15pm
Shuttles Start for Parkway Theatre
We will have shuttles looping for Awards + Archival Screening Night on Thursday. Shuttles will start at 6:15pm for those who would like to grab something to eat near the theatre. The Parkway Theatre is located at 5 W North Ave, Baltimore. The theatre is roughly two miles from the hotel. Alternate transportation includes the Charm City Circulator which stops nearby, ride-share, or taxi.
7:30pm – 10:30pm
Awards + Archival Screening Night
Please join us to celebrate our 2018 AMIA Awards honorees. Following the Awards is AMIA’s annual 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.
Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday
8:00am -8:40am
Friday Keynote: Ashley Minner
Ashley Minner is a community based visual artist from Baltimore, Maryland. An enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, she has been active in the Baltimore Lumbee community for many years, and regularly visits communities throughout the U.S South and Latin America as well. Ashley is a professor of the practice and folklorist in the Department of American Studies at University of Maryland Baltimore County, where she also serves as the inaugural director of the minor in Public Humanities. Ashley is a doctoral candidate in the Department of American Studies at University of Maryland College Park, where she is completing her dissertation on the changing relationship between Baltimore’s Lumbee community and the neighborhood where they first settled.
9:00am – 2:00pm
The pAVilion
Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the pAVilion! The pAVilion brings together exhibitors with demos, skill shares, “ask an expert” spaces, and small group discussions. Roundtables are scheduled throughout the day, and the Poster Session is 12:00pm – 2:00pm. Check the app for an updated list of demos, and topics – including a resume table, a professional headshot booth, and more. Our goal is to create a hub for sharing information at the conference.
9:30am – 10:00am
Tales from the Vinegar Room: Practical Experiences with Decaying Acetate
Janine Winfree, George Eastman Museum
Deborah Steinmetz, Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
All triacetate film is at risk of vinegar syndrome. Once decaying acetate material is identified, it is typically quarantined into a vault some might refer to as a “vinegar room.” How does an institution deal with their vinegar room? What are our obligations as archivists to decaying acetate material that poses a health risk not only to our collections, but to ourselves? Two panelists will present their practical experiences with vinegar rooms, including the history of the vinegar room at their institutions and how they have tackled creating an inventory or a preservation strategy for the materials therein. The experiences of these two panelists will spark a discussion on how institutions can evaluate their own storage, cataloging, and preservation of decaying triacetate materials. Collections management of materials is at the forefront of this discussion: how do institutions decide which material is too decayed to keep in their collection? How do we effectively quarantine decaying materials in order to minimize the risk to other safety film? The findings of these two panelists will help answer these questions and perhaps drive others to create a realistic strategy for their own institutional vinegar rooms.
9:30am – 10:30am
Open Sourcing Online Video Distribution Technologies
Erwin Verbruggen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Johan Oomen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Chris Lacinak, AVP
Nick Richardson, Australian Centre for the Moving Image
We preserve our moving image and sound collections with the goal of reaching new audiences. In this panel we highlight four innovative, open approaches to presenting audiovisual collections online: (1) How do you publish your collections online using an open source tool? Aviary is a playout platform that provides users with search, navigation, and playback across audio and video collections. Aviary is the result of a collaboration between AVP (USA) and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies (USA). (2) How do you attract different audiences to the long tail of your collections? The ReTV research project’s Trans-Vector Platform (TVP) provides deep insights into the interactions with digital content. It re-purposes media across channels, thus ultimately attracting more viewers and generating more value from media content. (3) Do we still need to provide dedicated spaces and devices for access in the traditional “library” model? As part of its $40 million museum renewal, the ACMI (AUS) is exploring ways to push collection content to the smart device that almost every visitor has in their pocket. ACMI is developing its own Museum OS to manage data within the exhibition in order to be more nimble and responsive. (4) How do you provide an open source, uniform playout experience for cross-collection access? Europeana, the EU portal for cultural heritage, provides access to more than 1.1 million videos and 700k audio recordings. Access statistics on the Europeana Collections portal have consistently reported a greater interest in these items over image and text. The EUscreen-backed Europeana Media unviersal player aggregates content from various European audiovisual collections using IIIF Manifests as a standard. This session is sponsored by the Access and the International Outreach Committees. There will be room for a Q&A.
9:30am – 10:30am
Organizing the Archive: The Union Makes Us Strong
Trisha Lendo
Common topics at AMIA conferences and on the AMIA listserv are low pay, a lack of benefits, and the abuse of contract employees. One tool we all have as workers is organizing our workplace no matter what the size or type. Over the last few years many industries have found strength and improvements through their unions including teachers, grocery store workers, and graduate students and many archivists can be doing the same. Where should you start? What Union should you join? What are your legal protections? This panel will consist of archivists from a variety of unions and institutions who will share their experiences and take questions. Institutions of many shapes and sizes will be examined including labs, libraries, studios, and an institution as small as a historical society. The goal of this panel is to empower archivists to unionize for better working conditions, better pay, and workplace safety. This pop-up session also hopes to connect archivist who are already in unions to share their strategies and contacts. The ideas and conversation in this panel are just a start to an ongoing and larger movement of film archivist advocating for their rights by unionizing.
10:00am – 10:30am
Storage at Low Temperature: Why Is It Important and How to Implement It
Jean-Louis Bigourdan, Image Permanence Institute/RIT
Research on the stability of film materials has demonstrated that the most important factor to maximize the useful life of film collections is the control of environmental conditions. Cold and dry conditions result in a longer life span. Archivists face a variety of issues depending on their resources, the size and state of preservation of their collections. Regarding the implementation of low temperature storage, choosing the best-fit option can be a daunting task given the multiple factors to consider. The objective of this presentation is to provide a comprehensive synthesis of the research, and to discuss the intricate decision-making process of implementing low temperature storage. Understanding the behavior of film as it experiences temperature and RH transitions, and the impact of low storage temperature alternatives will be addressed. A step-by-step approach will provide directions to select, implement, and monitor the most suitable low temperature storage option in a given situation.
11:00am – 12:00pm
Building on Samvera Open Source Audiovisual Collections Management Systems
Casey Davis Kaufman, WGBH
Karen Cariani, WGBH
Jon Dunn, Indiana University
Irene Taylor, Washington University
This presentation will discuss building and using an open source community supported system to manage audiovisual materials. WGBH Educational Foundation, Washington University in St. Louis, and Indiana University will discuss their challenges and successes of building applications for AV content and metadata management based on the Samvera digital repository framework and its Hyrax and Avalon Media System “solution bundles.” The panelists will discuss features, components, and demonstrate advantages of using new standards from IIIF for interoperability of AV content and researcher needs.
11:00am – 12:00pm
Improving Metadata in DPX Files: Tools and Guidelines from FADGI
Kate Murray, Library of Congress
Criss Austin, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Chris Lacinak, AVP
The US Federal Agency Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) Audio-visual Working Group, in conjunction with AVP and PortalMedia, has released embARC (Metadata Embedded for Archival Content), a new free open source tool to manage internal file metadata. embARC includes flexibility functionality for DPX files which enables users to audit and correct internal metadata of both individual files or an entire DPX sequence while not impacting the image data to support FADGI’s Guidelines for Embedded Metadata within DPX File Headers for Digitized Motion Picture Film. The FADGI Guidelines and its supporting research explored gaps and ambiguities within the SMPTE 268 standard document; embARC was created to implement proposed solutions. The FADGI team is working on adding capacity for other formats beyond DPX including MXF and beyond.
11:00am – 11:30am
Physical Conservation Treatments for Digitizing Film: Re-plasticization
Greg Wilsbacher (on behalf of Preservation Committee), Moving Image Research Collections, Univ. of South Carolina
Tommy Aschenbach, Colorlab, Inc.
Reto Kromer, AV Preservation by reto.ch
Diana Little, The MediaPreserve
How do you preserve a film that has become warped, brittle or hockey pucked? This panel brings leading experts in photochemical and digital film preservation together to discuss a common and controversial physical conservation technique used when preparing film for preservation scanning or printing; re-plasticization. Tommy Aschenbach, Reto Kromer and Diana Little will discuss the history of this technique, the ethics surrounding its use and their individual experiences in order to improve the depth of knowledge available to the field on this form of treatment.
12:00pm – 2:00pm
Poster Session
- Making the Tough Choices: Sifting Through Production Elements
Ben Harry, Brigham Young University - Poster: Would You be Interested in a Three Day Hands-on Workshop for Video Archivists?
Paul Klamer, NAVCC Library of Congress - Poster: LA Phil Teaches the Walt Disney Concert Hall to Dream
Meredith Reese, Los Angeles Philharmonic - Poster: Between the Wasteland and the Toaster: Engaging Local Television Programming
Ethan Thompson, Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi - Poster: Assigning Newsfilm: Addressing Students’ Archival Inexperience at UC Santa Barbara
Hannah Garibaldi, Film and Media Studies Archive at the University of California, Santa Barbara - Poster: Optical Media Preservation Strategies for Audiovisual Content
Annie Schweikert, NYU
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Meeting: News, Documentary & Television Committee
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Meeting: Education Committee
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Meeting: Publications Committee
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Meeting: Projection & Technical Presentation Committee
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Meeting: Independent Media Committee
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Meeting: International Outreach Committee
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Say Yes to Assessment: Three Approaches to Moving Image Collection Management
Courtney Holschuh, The Museum of Modern Art
Theo Harrison, The Museum of Modern Art
Brian Meacham, Yale University Film Study Center
Chuck Woodfill, Paramount Archive
The benefits of collection assessment range from richer database records, more efficient storage, prioritization of preservation needs, and better informed collection management. Moving image collection assessment can be daunting, and there is no “cookie cutter” model. This panel discussion with explore three different institutional approaches to collection assessment: The Museum of Modern Art, NBCUniversal, and the Yale Film Study Center. Each institution will discuss the specific needs of their collections, how they approached collection assessment, what methods were used, the challenges they faced, and what they learned in the process.
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Known Issues or Non Issues With AV Preservation Equipment
Morgan Oscar Morel, Bay Area Video Coalition
Blanche Joslin, New York University
Dave Rice, CUNY TV
Libby Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound (MIPoPS)
The purpose of this panel is to discuss known issues with gear that is popular or common in our community. Modern analysis tools like QCTools have made possible to identifier problems with legacy equipment that were difficult or impossible to see before. Technicians and digitization specialists from NYU, MIPoPS, CUNY TV and BAVC will openly discuss errors and issues that they’ve encountered with equipment in their digitization workflows, focusing on the workarounds and solutions they use to mitigate these problems.
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Advocacy, Access & Agendas
Mark Quigley, UCLA Film & Television Archive
Ruta M Abolins, UGA/Peabody Archive
Becca Bender, Rhode Island Historical Society
Karen Cariani, WGBH Media Library and Archives
Caroline Frick, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
Siobhan C. Hagan’, Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive
Ross Melnick, University of California, Santa Barbara (via Skype)
Dan Streible, New York University
Mark Williams, Dartmouth College (via Skype)
Greg Wilsbacher, University of South Carolina
Lightening talks by archivists and academics will advocate for expanded initiatives to preserves and provide access to newsfilm, newsreeels, and newsmedia. Each speaker will screen a few minutes of newsfilm/video from archival collection(s) and then each give a short talk based on that footage, pointing towards the themes of increased advocacy for and access to these newsfilm collections across disciplines, and generating new opportunities to build momentum for collaborative efforts. The theme of the session is to create synergy and strategies among mutually-interested groups, such as academics from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and archivists in AMIA to promote the expanded preservation and use of newsreels, newsfilm and newsmedia.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
DV Rescue! Lessons Learned and Outcomes from Battling DV Obsolescence
Libby Savage Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound/Seattle Municipal Archives
Dave Rice,CUNY TV
DV videotape formats face an exceptional obsolescence risk. Falling in-between professional expertise in file-based digital preservation and analog videotape digitization, DV tape are best preserved by migrating the data from the tape into a file rather than handling them as a video digitization event. This panel will review the work of a project responsive to the status of DV, called DV Rescue. The DV Rescue project is funded by the NEH in order to research DV preservation and to create new tools to facilitate the efficient transfer of data from tape to file. The presenters will show early models of their work, research conclusions, and methods to troubleshoot DV capture and preservation.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
Local TV News Archives: A Portal to Buffalo History
Laura Treat, KLRU-TV PBS Austin
Rich Newberg, Buffalo Broadcasters Association (BBA)
Heidi Ziemer, Western New York Library Resources Council (WNYLRC)
Meg Cheman, Buffalo and Erie County Public Library
Local television news archives contain infinite possibilities for public and community engagement with regional history. However, numerous challenges exist for news archives custodians to preserve and promote their collections. In this case study, representatives of the Buffalo Broadcasters Association, Western New York Library Resources Council, Niagara Frontier Council for the Social Studies (NFCSS), and Buffalo & Erie County Public Library discuss how they are increasing access to the news archive of local affiliate WIVB-TV (CBS) and the value of relationship building in this work. Discussion will emphasize gaining station support, developing workflows for online access, and working with educators and community members to make the archives part of a larger effort to raise awareness of New York State history. Drawing on their successful experience of initiating multiple access points to local history through television news, panelists offer insight and incentive for attendees of all experience levels looking for these kinds of opportunities in their own regions.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
Artifacts of Production: Managing Film Outtakes
Genevieve Havemeyer-King, New York Public Library
Megan McShea, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Amy Sloper, Harvard Film Archive
Large film collections contain more production elements than their archivists are willing to admit. We lament about our struggles to manage these materials in a responsible and meaningful way under dire budgetary circumstances and often without buy-in from stakeholders, while knowing that they no doubt contains unseen gems, alternate endings, or glorious candid footage. A labor of love, production outtakes, trims, cuts, edited elements – whatever one calls them – demand preservation but pose some of the greatest challenges to appraisal, selection, organization, conservation, and digitization. Through guided discussion with attendees of this session, we hope to kickstart a larger effort to compile terminology, methodologies, tips, and best practices from the archival community into a public guide that will benefit preservationists and content-makers alike.
4:45pm – 5:15am
WTF is a TBC?
George Blood, George Blood Audio/Video/Film/Data
Analog video is a marvel of engineering. Many individual problems had to be solved to reliably produce a quality picture. This paper explores the role of a time base corrector: the problem is solves, how it works, and why it is critical to accurate reproduction. Attendees will gain an understanding of the theory and practice of a TBC, and leave promising never to consider video preservation complete without one.
4:45pm – 5:45pm
Counter-Archives and Counter-Pedagogy: Building Outreach through Education in Film Preservation
Paul S Moore, Ryerson University
Leonardo Gomes, Ryerson University
Shannon Gagnon, Ryerson University
Rajneet Sahota, Ryerson University
Cole Anderson, Ryerson University
Film and video “counter-archives” disrupt conventional national narratives to write difference into public accounts. Resistant and community-based, these archives counter the hegemony of traditional archival institutions that have normally neglected or marginalized women, Indigenous Peoples, the LGBT2Q+ community, and immigrant communities. But film preservation for counter-archives requires a “counter-pedagogy,” where training is paired with student-centred research and professional development. Student archival internships are a significant part of Archives | Counter-Archives, a national-scale multi-year project across Canada. The Master’s in Film Preservation and Collections Management at Ryerson University is a special hub of activity in this component of the project. To ask what role AV heritage should take is to examine the relation of AV archives to networks of power in society. Altogether, our film preservation students are central to outreach, and their on-site training stands as a counter-pedagogy to connect and mobilize smaller archival organizations, researchers, and policy-makers interested in determining the special needs of audiovisual preservation across different communities and contexts.
4:45pm – 5:45pm
Sustaining The Profession: Continuing Education, Professional Advocacy, and Equity
Yvonne Ng, Witness, Moderator
In 2019 the National Film Preservation Board funded a report on diversity, equity and inclusion in the audiovisual archives field. Working in collaboration with the NFPB’s Diversity Task Force, AMIA fielded a survey for members and the broader archives community gathering data on age, race/ethnicity, sexual identity, level of education, years of professional experience, and other factors to examine how they might interact to affect salary, employment, and professional advancement. The results of that survey, as well as multiple in-person and online forums, resulted in a number of recommendations to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the audiovisual archives field, as well as new potential collaborations and projects. This session will report on those findings as well as offer an opportunity to discuss the recommendations in an open forum.
5:15pm – 5:45pm
Tales of Futures Past: Lessons Learned from the File Format Wars
James Snyder, Library of Congress
Media preservation involves files every day. Files that original content producers created. Files we must make to allow preservation and access to both digitized physical media and content that started life as digital. Participants will learn about how files and essence coding systems were originally created, the file format wars that mimicked the incompatible physical media formats, and how certain file types prevailed.
5:45pm – 6:45pm
Meeting: LGBT Committee
5:45pm – 6:45pm
Meeting: PBCore Advisory Sub-Committee
7:00pm – 7:45pm
Finding Dafoe in the Archive: Preserving a University’s Videotape Collection
Hugo Ljungbäck, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
For the past two years, I have been charged with reviewing and digitizing 1″ Type C reels, 3/4″ U-matic cassettes, and VHS tapes from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s recently-defunct television studio. This collection offers a portrait of the university’s pedagogical and intellectual history. One of the videotapes recovered is a 1975 Theatre X production, “Civil Commitment Hearings,” which includes a young Willem Dafoe, then a UWM theatre student. This 1975 production is exemplary of both the television studio’s commitment to community programming during the period, and the experimental and political plays Theatre X staged throughout the company’s time. In my presentation, I aim to consider the intersection of the tape’s politics, production context, preservation, and re-purposing, while discussing the challenges of saving “obsolete” media in an institutional context on a DIY budget. Using “Civil Commitment Hearings” as a case study, I hope to tease out some of the complexities, challenges, and questions raised by working within a university videotape archive.
8:00pm – 9:00pm
The Spider and the Fly: A Talking Case Study
Kyle Westphal, Chicago Film Society
Jeff Kreines, Kinetta
Kate Dollenmayer, Academy Film Archive/Center for Home Movies
Andrew Tamburrino, Colorlab
The first 16mm projectors with optical sound playback arrived on the market in 1932, but home movie makers with talkie ambitions would have to wait until 1935 for the RCA PR-25 Sound Camera, the first 16mm camera that recorded picture and sound simultaneously. Few amateur films with sound from this era remain extant. One recently discovered example, “The Spider and the Fly” (1938), is a charming artifact that demonstrates the expressive possibilities and technical limitations of amateur talkies. A single reel plucked from a larger collection with only a suggestively incomplete hand-written note in the can for context, the “Spider and the Fly” preservation project grew out of a screening at a 2016 edition of Home Movie Day. This panel will include a screening of a new 16mm print of “The Spider and the Fly” and a discussion of the scholarly and technical research that supported its preservation.
9:15pm – 10:15pm
Screening Medicine: Imaging and Recording the Body with Time-Based Media
Timothy Wisniewski, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Angela Saward, Wellcome Collection
Sarah Eilers, Historical Audiovisuals, History of Medicine Division, Naltional Library of Medicine
Why was film considered to be such a powerful medium for the medical professions? This screening and panel discussion looks at the influence of the moving image and sound on the medical profession and vice versa throughout the twentieth century. Many doctors and medical professionals have appreciated the power of the image and used it to augment their research; on occasions they have even turned the cameras on themselves, becoming competent amateur filmmakers in their own right. Looking at two research settings, the laboratory and the clinic (from microscopy to cineradiography), it’s possible to look at the commonalities in medical films and video material held in the archives of three important medical research institutions – the Alan Mason Chesney Archives at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes, Historical Audiovisuals at the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, and Wellcome Collection and consider how this material has contributed to the understanding of ourselves.
8:00am – 9:15am
AMIA Membership Meeting & Project Lightning Talks
Dennis Doros, President
Members and guests are welcome and encouraged to attend the Membership Meeting to hear the annual State of the Association report, updates, about current projects, and offer special recognition to AMIA members who have gone above and beyond in their service. The open forum provides an opportunity to raise questions not addressed elsewhere in the conference. At the end of the meeting, the 2019/2020 Board of Directors will take office as we thank departing board members Casey Davis Kaufman and Yvonne Ng, and welcome Snowden Becker and Regina Longo.
9:30am – 10:30am
The Oral History Association’s Archival Principles and Best Practices Release
Steven Kent Sielaff, Baylor University Institute for Oral History
In October 2019 the Oral History Association (OHA) is expected to approve the newest addendum to its Principles and Best Practices documentation: a section specifically on archiving oral history. This addition follows the complete revision of the base best practices document in 2018. This session will discuss the contents of both, sharing with the AMIA membership the latest official positions of the OHA on proper oral history practice. With the creation of a new AMIA oral history committee this year, plus the addition of a day-long pre-conference oral history workshop, there should be a sizable audience of both experienced and initiate oral historians among the attendees of AMIA 2019. This session will serve as a wonderful entry point to the professional standards of the OHA. The session will be led by Steven Sielaff, who was involved in the Archives addendum creation process and served as its editor. The base Principles and Best Practices document is currently available online . The first half of the session will be spent highlighting specific areas of this document and fielding questions. The second half will be similarly dedicated to the Archives addendum, which will be available as a handout during the session due to its imminent release. During this half Steven will also share updates on the work of the OHA Metadata Task Force, of which he is the current chair.
9:30am – 10:30am
Home Movie Digitization and Access: New Models for Outreach
Dwight Swanson, The Center for Home Movies
Siobhan Hagan, DC Public Library
Patricia Villon, Center for Asian American Media
Kirsten Larvick, Al Larvick Conservation Fund
Ina Archer, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)
Inspired in part by personal digital archiving, community archives, and Home Movie Day, many archivists are no longer satisfied with solely being custodians of home movies in a centralized archive, but instead are developing a new paradigm through outreach to specific communities and assisting them directly with home movie conservation, digitization, and access. This session showcases four projects that are breaking new ground in the area of home movies. Digitization is central to all of the programs, but each of them expands upon that core mission in different ways to make their donors’ films and videos accessible to the family members and the public, while also contextualizing the media through additional projects such as oral histories, public events, and numerous forms of contextualization.
9:30am – 10:00am
Using Data for Preservation Advocacy within the Smithsonian Institution
Alison Reppert Gerber, Smithsonian Institution Archives
Kira Sobers, Smithsonian Institution Archives
For many archives who care for mixed media collections, audiovisual preservation can be a struggle. These collections provide a unique challenge for organizations due to the sheer complexity of preservation – overall content management, physical stabilization, and digitization. A comprehensive plan for staffing, equipment set-up and maintenance, continued training, collection prioritization, and digital preservation infrastructure requires institutional support and funding. But how do you best raise awareness and garner support for your audiovisual collections? The answer – data gathering! Since 2015, the Smithsonian Institution has undertaken two large projects to gather data, using widely available tools and understandable methodologies, in order to support future audiovisual preservation initiatives. The 2016-2017 survey served as an inventory to gather group-level information on formats, condition, and storage environments. The 2018-2019 Audiovisual Preservation Readiness Assessment (AVPRA), performed by AMIA’s Community Archiving Collective, gathered information about current preservation rates, risk of collection loss, and institutional capability to care for these at-risk collections.
9:30am – 10:30am
SIMAA: From Time Immemorial: Centering Indigenous Knowledge in Archival Practice
Jennifer R. O’Neal, University of Oregon
Michael Pahn, National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center
This presentation will examine the traditional Indigenous knowledge systems that are at the center of Native American lifeways and culture. We argue that it is imperative that these traditional knowledge systems must be the foundation for the overall care and management of Indigenous archives in non-tribal repositories. Further, we show that applying a decolonizing practice approach will ensure that Indigenous ways of knowing will be centered in the stewardship of collections. Examples of how this work can and should be implemented in repositories are presented to show specific examples and as a call to action.
10:00am – 10:30am
What Do We Owe Each Other: Archives and Social Infrastructure
Elena Rossi-Snook, The New York Public Library
Alexander Whelan, AMIA Film Advocacy Task Force
In addition to reporting on the latest AMIA Film Advocacy Task Force We Save 2 Film 16mm workshop, a 3-day film-watching, film-making, film-archiving extravaganza for middle-school students, this presentation will address and create an open dialogue to consider to what degree we as archivists and librarians can make a vocational contribution to our communities. In considering “archiving” as an act of saving material, the Film Advocacy Task Force can’t help but wonder: can we use the heritage we preserve- and the physical space of the archive- as tools for inspiration, inclusion, critical-thinking and civic-mindedness?
11:00am – 12:00pm
Monitoring Digital Preservation Maturity With the NDSA Levels of Preservation
Karen Cariani, WGBH
Linda Tadic, Digital Bedrock
Establishing digital preservation workflows or performing a gap analysis of your current practices can sometimes feel like an overwhelming task. The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Levels of Preservation grid, recently updated, was developed to guide organizations as they think through their current and planned digital preservation workflows and policies. This session will discuss what the tool is, how it can be helpful, how it can be used, and request feedback from the community on the current revision. The session will be an open discussion about best practice for digital preservation, and specifically for moving image collections. Other potential groups that share similar information, such as PASIG will also be introduced. Karen Cariani and Linda Tadic, NDSA Coordinating Committee members, will present the new revision and lead discussions to gather feedback. Linda Tadic will discuss how she has used the grid in trainings and teaching about digital preservation.
11:00am – 12:00pm
SIMAA: What Can We Do? Community Archiving Workshop and the Role of Professional Associations for Tribal Archives
Sandra Yates, Texas Medical Center Library
Amanda Castro, Malki Museum
Aaron Saubel, Malki Museum
Open call for roundtable participants,
With the support of AMIA, the Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) has conducted workshops at the annual conference of the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, & Museums (ATALM) for the last two years. At the 2019 ATALM conference in Temecula, CA, Malki Museum from Banning, CA was the workshop’s feature collection. The session will summarize the activities of the day-long workshop that took place on October 8th. Amanda Castro, Malki Museum Director, will talk about the museum’s background as California’s First Museum Founded by Native Americans on a reservation, its collections, and its involvement at the ATALM workshop. Other stewards of tribal archives will begin a roundtable discussion about the role of professional associations, like AMIA and ATALM, in supporting tribal archives in the preservation and access of their materials for their communities.
11:00am – 12:00pm
Equity Through Archival Internships and Classes at the Community College Level
Jackie Jay, Diablo Valley College
Our diverse community is in our community colleges. We have an opportunity to provide introductory audiovisual courses and hands-on experience to students at the community college level, which not only provides them with a leg up if they decide to continue their archival education, but could help us develop the next generation of repair technicians through the community college technical school programs. As an adjunct professor at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, CA I helped develop a survey course called Digital Assets: Tools and Methodologies. In the course students of diverse ethnic, socio-economic and education levels learn care and handling of archival materials, creation of digital assets from two-dimensional objects, develop identifiers and metadata for their assets, upload them to a cloud-based DAM, QC each other’s work and present their searchable group collections as their final projects. The students also visit the San Francisco Opera Archives and the DigiCenter at the San Francisco Public Library. For almost all of the students this was the first time that they had ever visited an archive or met anyone who scanned physical objects as a part of their job.
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Meeting: Copyright Committee
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Meeting: Nitrate Committee
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Meeting: Advocacy Committee
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Meeting: Cataloging & Metadata Committee
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Preserving Projection: Documenting History, Heritage, and Practices
Meghan Bouffard, Simmons University
Spencer Christiano, George Eastman Museum
Jesse Crooks, Renew Theaters, Inc.
Sam Lane, George Eastman Museum
Part discussion, part demonstration, this panel will explore film projection and its importance as part of our cultural heritage, along with methods being used to ensure its preservation. A projection demonstration will be followed by individual presentations and a panel discussion centered around film projection’s cultural importance and supporting community. Discussion points will include human components of projection, documenting practices, and the importance of film projection as cultural heritage. This panel asserts that preserving the practice of film projection is integral to the broader mission of preserving moving image media.
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Preservación dos veces/Preservation Twice: Preserving Early Puerto Rican Radio
Linda Tadic, Digital Bedrock
Dr. Luis Rosario Albert, Ana G. Méndez University, Gurabo Campus
Jim Lindner, Media Matters
Puerto Rico public radio station WIPR went on the air in 1949. In 2006, the station received an NEH grant to preserve 5,000 hours of its early radio broadcasts of news, music, and radio dramas that were recorded on ¼” audio reels starting in 1957. After digitization to WAV files, the IT department wrote the files to LTO3 tapes for data storage. Thirteen years later, the LTO3 tapes could not be read: there was no documentation of how the tapes were written in those pre-LTFS days. The content had to undergo a second wave of preservation, this time to determine how the files were written to LTO3, and sleuthing to identify and procure the correct hardware, operating system, and backup software with which to restore the files. The session is a case study on the complex factors involved in preserving digital content on legacy digital storage media.
2:00pm – 3:00pm
SIMAA: Tribesourcing Midcentury Educational Films: Digital Repatriation and Local Knowledge
Jennifer Jenkins, University of Arizona
Rhiannon Sorrell, Diné College
Melissa Dollman, University of North Carolina
Crystal Littleben, Navajo Cultural Arts Program
In this NEH-funded digital humanities project, we take midcentury educational films back into Indian Country where they were made in the 1940s through 60s and record new narrations by community members and elders from the insider point of view. This “”tribesourcing”” method allows for identification of local knowledge that might otherwise be lost, as well as providing a rich, community-based metadata record for each film. We will demonstrate the merging of old video and new audio in Mukurtu, and discuss what we have learned in the process of digitally repatriating these midcentury films. We’ll show examples of “before” and “after,” and discuss the collaborative process with tribal partners.
2:00pm – 2:30pm
Digital Transformation of Film Archives: 10 steps to become Digital by Design
Jan Müller, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA)
The NFSA has embraced digital – building collections and enabling access to them for use and re-use and integrating digital experiences in our events and exhibitions. Digital Transformation at the NFSA is not so much about transformation from analogue to digital; rather, it is about evolution from a first generation, hybrid analogue/digital film archive to an archive that is digital by design. ‘Analogue’ and ‘digital’ are not mutually exclusive or opposing forces. The NFSA’s physical collections, the onsite and online exhibitions, programs, events and even the building are an integral part of the digitalisation of the NFSA. An archive that is ‘digital by design’ means that our intention is to think, act and be digital first – for digital experiences to be intrinsically part of the life of the archive and the people who learn, experience and create with us. In this interactive presentation, the principles of becoming an archive that is digital by design and the steps that the NFSA will take in order to make Digital Transformation happen are highlighted. Attention in this presentation also for the serious focus on People and Culture and the structure of the organisation.
2:30pm – 3:00pm
Assessing Results from the Audiovisual Preservation Exchange (APEX) Collaborations with Latin American AV Archives
Juana Suárez, NYU
Pamela Vizner, AVP
The NYU MIAP Audiovisual Exchange Program started in 2008 in Ghana, and except for Spain in 2016, it has taken place in different Latin American countries since 2013. This presentation provides a balance of the different Latin American APEX editions, vis-à-vis the current AV archival scenario of the region in order to state what are some of the priorities and what the contributions of international associations such as AMIA (and other) may be to support sustainability in the region. Data included here adds not only results from APEX but also a summary of important transformations in the infrastructure of AV archives, training, creation of new cinematheques, emergence of digital hubs vis-à-vis the current political/ cultural transformation to highlight what the contribution of international associations like AMIA and similar can be to the sustainability of the region.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
H for Horrific: The Horror Movie Drought of 1936-1938
Charlotte Barker, Paramount Pictures
Kathryn Claypool, Paramount Pictures
While working on the preservation of the Bela Lugosi film The Human Monster (aka Dark Eyes of London), we stumbled upon a rating that was previously unknown to us; the BBFC’s “H for Horrific” card. During our investigation into the significance of this card, we were shocked to find that there had been a temporary stop in horror film production in the late 1930s in both the US and UK. Even more alarming was that most theories maintained that the H for Horrific card, along with the Hays Code, were directly to blame for it. Through further research, into this Horror movie hiatus, we determined that there were a myriad of factors that brought about the cessation of production of horror feature films during the years 1936-38. In this presentation, we intend to examine the cultural, technological, administrative and international pressures that caused studios to steer clear of the material.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
Archiving as Resistance
Natalie Cadranel, OpenArchive
This will be a presentation for moving image archivists interested in an ethical, participatory way to collect, preserve, and amplify audiovisual media created on mobile phones. It is also for organizations and individuals who are interested in starting their own mobile media collection efforts. I will outline key aspects of my current project, OpenArchive, a culmination of ethnographic research and open source mobile development over the past 5 years. In the presentation I will discuss sharing Save, a white-labeled open-source mobile app. created by and for archivists, activists, human rights defenders, journalists, and lawyers, case studies of recent participatory archiving efforts, and emergent groups interested in collecting and reusing mobile digital media. The application was originally a proof of concept envisioned during my masters thesis work at the UC Berkeley ISchool in 2013 to create a free, open-source mobile archiving application that maintains the privacy, provenance, and preservation of mobile media by uniting the efforts of Tor, Creative Commons, and the Internet Archive. With funding from the Knight Foundation, the application launched in beta for android in 2014. After extensive usability testing and research, I raised more funding and partnered with the Guardian Project and Human Rights Watch to create the newest version called Save (share, archive, verify, encrypt), now available in iTunes and Google Play. I will share findings from this research and my experiences working with those interested in using the mobile application, namely: journalists, archivists, and activists. During the session, I will break down the three key aspects of the application: privacy, preservation, provenance. Attendees will learn about how this tool might help them create local collections in their communities, how Tor works, creative commons licensing, and strategies for leveraging efforts of like-minded communities to preserve digital mobile media. Citizens armed with mobile devices are becoming history’s first responders, amassing rich, contextualized, and crucial historical documentation. However, the media they create is incredibly fragile and difficult to verify, often disappearing as a result of privacy concerns, data loss, or a lack of affordable, secure cloud storage; if shared, the most common destination for this media is on social media platforms that can chill free speech and are not committed to privacy, authentication, or long-term preservation. Attendees will learn about the mobile application Save by OpenArchive, which aims to foster a virtual commons where civil liberties are protected, and media retains its provenance once shared online.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
AMIA/DLF Hack Day Results
Earlier in the week practitioners and managers of digital audiovisual collections joined with developers and engineers for an intense day of collaboration to develop and refine simple tools for digital audiovisual preservation and access. Today we’ll review their work and hear the results of some of these collaborations. Our thanks to DLF for partnering with AMIA on Hack Day and funding the AMIA + DLF Cross-Pollinator Travel Award.
3:30pm – 4:30pm
SIMAA: The Work of Indigenous Knowledge in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Some Notes on Relationships
Guha Shankar, Libary of Congress
This presentation looks at the historical production and contemporary re-reproduction of indigenous cultural expressions through a case study of the Ancestral Voices project, a joint initiative of the Passamaquoddy Indian nation, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the digital tools, Mukurtu CMS and the Traditional Knowledge attribution labels. The presentation will take a detailed look at the ways in which digital tools and platforms are deployed in the preservation of and access to archival media to assist indigenous peoples in sustaining historical memory and strengthening the use and practice of imperiled lifeways within communities. The presentation also highlights the ways in which personal and professional relationships are critical in determining the shape and structure of such initiatives.
4:45pm – 5:45pm
When A State Makes A Film: Politics, Policy, and History
Martin Johnson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Angélica Gasparotto de Oliveira, Unibo – University of Bologna
Lauren Pilcher, Georgia College
Devin Orgeron, North Carolina State University
Audrey Amidon, National Archives and Records Administration
Governments have long utilized motion pictures to inform, persuade, and document the people and resources under their control. But, state-made films are more than just a visual reenactment of state power. In this panel, we will present work that demonstrates the diversity of state-produced films as well as tools for analysis, presentation, and publicity on these underseen and unexamined films and videos. This hybrid panel will present two case studies of government-produce films, as well as presentations on how government films can be taught in the classroom, and the challenges inherent in locating and identifying government film.
4:45pm – 5:15pm
Captioning Problems from the Video Bog
Chloe A McLaren, Cornell University Library
Desi Alexander, Cornell University Library
A joint report from Desi Alexander (AV Collections Coordinator) and Chloe McLaren (Metadata Projects Librarian) from Cornell University Library about how we are developing an AV captioning workflow, and the missteps we’ve taken along the way. Cornell has determined that all newly online, publicly available AV material should be captioned from Jan 1, 2020 onward. This has special implications for the library, since much of the “newly online” material is in fact recently digitized archival material, often indifferently recorded. As a small digitization shop within a large university library, we are attempting to simultaneously incorporate new tools and workflows to adequately caption, while not dissolving into sad puddles of goo under our respective desks.
4:45pm – 5:45pm
Would You Like To Save Your Game?: A Case Study
Laura Drake Davis, Library of Congress
David Gibson, Library of Congress
Amanda May, Library of Congress
Libraries, archives and museums are facing an ever increasing amount of interactive media in their collections, including software applications, time based artworks and video games. These materials provide unique challenges in regards to acquisition, description and preservation, and many institutions are working to develop new approaches to ensuring the long term preservation of and access to born digital cultural artifacts. This panel will present a case study from the Library of Congress on the development of a workflow for the cataloging, preservation and ingest of video game content into the Library’s digital repository. Digital Project Specialists Laura Drake Davis and Amanda May and Library Technician David Gibson will present different aspects of the workflow, highlighting the holistic approach that is required to ensure that this content is retained for future generations. This presentation will appeal to archivists working on their own solutions to the challenges of preserving born digital content.
4:45pm – 5:45pm
SIMAA: Indigitization: Supporting the Digital Preservation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage Where It Lives
Gerald Lawson, University of British Columbia
The Indigitization Program has helped Indigenous community organizations in British Columbia, Canada, to digitize more than 12,000 cassette tapes containing precious fragments of cultural heritage. With the program poised to expand into support for several other media formats, including magnetic video recordings, Gerry Lawson reflects on Indigitization’s grassroots origins, strategic growth and approach to partnerships.
5:15pm – 5:45pm
Technology Mythology (And Other Practical Information)
Eric Wenocur, Lab Tech Systems
Capture and preservation of audio and video media bring together a range of technologies–analog, digital, old and new. In some cases there is the right way or best practice for a particular process, other times more than one approach can work. But in all cases there are fundamental concepts dictated by the technology itself (and its original purpose). This presentation will explore a few fundamental technical concepts that may be misunderstood or overlooked when using common playback and capture hardware. We will touch on topics such as genlock, lip-sync and others that arise whenever archivists use video and audio technology. The approach will be a simple case-by-case explanation of the concepts and is appropriate for participants at all experience levels that work directly with A/V equipment.
5:45pm
Closing Night at AMIA 2019
A chance to say goodbye to colleagues and grab a drink before heading out to enjoy your last night in Baltimore.