Conference Program

Below is the preliminary list of sessions and speakers. Please note that times and speakers are subject to change.

9:00 AM – 5:30 PM | Separate Registration Required
Workshop: Data Modeling and Metadata for Audiovisual Archives

Presenters

Randal Luckow, HBO
Meghan Fitzgerald, NASA
Andrea Leigh, Library of Congress

This one-day workshop focuses on the role and importance of creating a data model synthesizing metadata and cataloging concepts and principles within an organization or enterprise-wide. This workshop is intended for data managers and catalogers at a moderate level of understanding metadata standards and implementation practices.

9:00 AM – 5:30 PM | Separate Registration Required
Workshop: WARC IT: Archiving Social Media

Presenters

Lorena Ramirez-Lopez, WHUT
Jasmyn R. Castro, National Museum of African-American History and Culture

During this one-day workshop, participants will explore various methods and tools used to capture and preserve webpages and content from popular social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat). In the morning, workshop facilitators will discuss social media and web archiving examples from their respective institutions and review the best tools for doing so. Attendees will then be given the keys to the official “WARC-IT” social media accounts, and be asked to explore and document New Orleans on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. In the afternoon, participants will then use the same methods and tools discussed earlier to gather all the content created during the workshop, and prepare submission information packages (SIPs) for a digital repository

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM | Separate Registration Required
Community AV Archiving Fair: A Community Archiving Workshop & Hack Day Collaboration

The Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) and AMIA/DLF Hack Day teams are joining forces, and in collaboration with the New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC), organizing the first ever Community AV Archiving Fair. Aimed at helping local individuals and organizations improve their audiovisual archiving skills, the Community AV Archiving Fair invites independent media makers, collecting institutions, and community groups in the New Orleans area to bring their challenges, their media objects, and their data for a day of collaborative problem solving and training in collaboration with the AMIA community. The fair is organized around a number of “stations,” each of which will be staffed by AMIA volunteers, and focus on a particular workflow, technique, or tool. Stations will likely include: Digitization Strategies, Inventory Strategies, Prioritizing Media for Digitization, File Management & Storage, Disaster Preparedness & Recovery, Tool/Resource Matchmaking, How to Run a Community Archiving Workshop, and more!

9:00 AM – 5:30 PM | Separate Registration Required
Workshop: Content Description for Time-Based Material

Presenters

Randal Luckow, HBO
Meghan Fitzgerald, NASA
Murray Browne, Turner Broadcasting
Andrea Leigh, Library of Congress
Steven Sielaff,Institute for Oral History, Baylor University

This one-day workshop focuses on the role and importance of creating rich descriptive metadata to describe time-based content. This workshop is intended for catalogers at a moderate level of understanding metadata standards and implementation practices. Content description for time-based material is provided at the timeline level. Tagging or key wording subjects within audiovisual material is challenging. This workshop provides the basis for archivists and librarian to make good decisions about how descriptive metadata schemas are best implemented in content management systems and vocabulary control tools. This workshop will discuss how all types of time-based media can be described in support of search and retrieval by subject. The workshop includes discussions of vocabulary management, linked data, and implementation of shared data authorities, with a focus on oral histories case studies. Dynamic presentations encompass picture and sound materials and include interactive exercises to put cataloging and metadata concepts directly into practice.

12:30 PM – 5:30 PM | Separate Registration Required
The Reel Thing XLII

Chairs

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.

1:30 PM – 5:30 PM | Separate Registration Required
Workshop: An Archivists’ Guide to Matroska

Presenters

Dave Rice, CUNY
Morgan Morel, BAVC

Matroska is a flexible audiovisual container currently undergoing standardization work within the Internet Engineering Task Force for preservation use. This workshop will review the architecture of Matroska and demonstrate many features relevant to archival work, such as: Utilizing Matroska’s checksum features, Metadata management, Description of technical characteristics, Attachment management (logs, supporting documentation, related imagery, decoders), Presentational control & ordered editions, Validation and best practices. Participants will work with tools such as ffmpeg, mkvalidator, mkvpropedit, mediaconch, and mkclean

5:45 PM – 6:45 PM | Signup Required
Networking & First-Timer Event

This event brings together students, early professionals, first-timers and seasoned AMIA veterans and leaders for pre-conference networking and meet-and-greet with AMIA’s committee leaders and board members! This informal outreach effort helps newcomers make the most of their time at the AMIA conference and provides professional development opportunities for students and early professionals.

6:45 PM – 7:45 PM
Opening Night Reception

It’s opening night in New Orleans! A chance to say hello to friends, meet new colleagues, and get ready for the days ahead.

8:00pm
Dawson City: Frozen Time | A Screening and Q&A with Director Bill Morrison

Bill Morrison, Director
Snowden Becker, UCLA

This meditation on cinema’s past from Decasia director Bill Morrison pieces together the bizarre true history of a long-lost collection of 533 nitrate film prints from the early 1900s. Located just south of the Arctic Circle, Dawson City was settled in 1896 and became the center of the Canadian Gold Rush that brought 100,000 prospectors to the area. It was also the final stop for a distribution chain that sent prints and newsreels to the Yukon. The films were seldom, if ever, returned. The now-famous Dawson City Collection was uncovered in 1978 when a bulldozer working its way through a parking lot dug up a horde of film cans. Morrison draws on these permafrost-protected, rare silent films and newsreels, pairing them with archival footage, interviews, historical photographs, and an enigmatic score by Sigur Rós collaborator and composer Alex Somers. Look for AMIA legends Sam Kula and Bill O’Farrell in the film! Thank you to our friends at Kino Lorber for sponsoring the film tonight. And thanks to Shotgun Cinemas for collaborating on the screening as part of a Science on Screen grant.

8:30 AM | Continental breakfast 8:00am – 8:30am
Welcome to AMIA 2017!

Chair

Andrea Kalas, AMIA President

Please join us for the official Conference welcome and to recognize the 2017 Scholarship and Internship recipients.

9:30 AM
AMIA 2017 Keynote: DeEtta Jones

Diversity, inclusion, and equity goals should be anchored in an organization’s shared values and aspirations. How we anchor our work to these values will allow allows us collectively build a is sustainable and robust community. DeEtta Jones, founder of DJA Associates, is a leading voice in shaping contemporary thinking and practice around integrated and sustainable approaches to organizational change, personal transformation, workplace culture, diversity, inclusion, and equity.

10:30 AM – 6:45 PM
The Vendor Cafe

Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the vendor exhibits! The Vendor Cafe is a great way to learn what is working and what is on the horizon. Whether or not you are a buyer, the Cafe is an opportunity to meet colleagues who provide the products and services we all rely on.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
XFR Collective: Growing and Sustaining Community Audiovisual Archiving in New York City

Chair(s) and Speakers

Dinah Handel, The New York Public Library
Mary Kidd, XFR Collective
Marie Lascu, XFR Collective
Ana Marie,XFR Collective

It comes as no surprise to anyone in the moving image archiving field that preservation and access of audio/visual materials is costly and time consuming. XFR Collective, a volunteer-run non-profit based in New York City is attempting to alleviate these concerns, in particular for collections that fall outside traditional collecting institutions. This panel will feature members of XFR Collective in conversation about the structure and operations of XFR Collective and the challenges and successes we’ve had as an entirely volunteer-run non-profit organization. This session is also an opportunity for those interested in starting their own iterations of XFR Collectives to gather resources and ask questions.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Louisiana, The State We’re In: Challenges, Collaboration, & Opportunities

Chair(s) and Speakers

Edward Benoit III, School of Library & Information Science, Louisiana State University
Leslie Bourgeois, Louisiana Public Broadcasting
Mackenzie Roberts, School of Library & Information Science, Louisiana State University
Gemma Birnbaum,National WWII Museum

Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region moving image collections face several challenges including depressed financial support, subtropical climate, and a lack of moving image archival programs. This panel discusses the current state of moving image collections in Louisiana focused on their challenges, collaborative solutions, and successes. Panelists will highlight the collaborative Louisiana Digital Media Archive, the media and education center at the National WWII Museum, and the findings of a statewide moving image preservation survey.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Plenary Breakout: Turning Values Into Action

Facilitator

DeEtta Jones, DJA Associates

Building on the morning’s Keynote, DeEtta Jones will lead a facilitated forum that takes these themes of the Keynote and asks how do our behaviors as an organization show the values we share as a membership? How should these values be expressed? The forum will include work in smaller groups, with the results captured as a tool for committees, members and the Board.

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting: Open Source Committee

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting: Cataloging and Metadata Committee

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting: Publications Committee

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Thursday Poster Session

Visit the poster presentations – they provide valuable information and interesting insights from current initiatives and projects.

Preparing Festival Archives for Digital Scholarship: A Collaborative Research Model
Developing a Multilingual Controlled Vocabulary: Case Study from the Academy
Appraisal and Selection Strategies for Digital Video Preservation
Based on a True Story: Representations of the Archive in True Crime Documentaries
DIY VHS Preservation for Circulating Collections
Dallas After JFK: 50th Anniversary and Beyond in Archival Films

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Meeting: PBCore Advisory Sub-Committee

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Meeting: Moving Image Related Materials and Documentation Committee

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Meeting: Access Committee

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Resume Review Table

Are you a graduate student looking to sharpen your resume? Or are you an archivist already on the hunt for the perfect job? If so, then bring a copy of your resume with you to New Orleans, and stop by the AMIA Resume Review Table in the Vendor Cafe. There, you’ll have a chance to get feedback and suggestions for improvement from seasoned professionals who have lots of experience serving in a hiring capacity. The Resume Review Table will be open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 1pm – 2pm and resume review will be first come, first served.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Reel Bad Arabs: Lessons from Jack Shaheen’s Moving Image Archive

Chair(s) and Speakers

Greta Scharnweber, New York University/Kevorkian
Brendan Allen, Democracy Now!
Amita Manghnani, Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University
Pooja Desai,Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University

The Jack G. Shaheen Collection on Arabs in U.S. Film and Television documents damaging stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in US popular media through its nearly 3,000 motion pictures (spanning late-19th century silent films to contemporary Hollywood productions) and television programs (including comedies, dramas, cartoons, and commercials) on DVDs and VHS tapes. Comprised of a complex range of mixed media audio-visual materials, paper ephemera, and cultural objects, it has presented a series of intriguing archival and institutional challenges since it was gifted to NYU in 2010. In this session, panelists will share the project history in brief and explain the particulars of some of these challenges, the bulk of which surround a sizeable collection of off-air VHS recordings. Speakers will share with the audience some of the strategies, both failed and successful, that they have employed to preserve, catalog, and make this rich moving image archive accessible to researchers at NYU and beyond.

2:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Israel Film Archive’s Digitization Project – Outline & Inspiration

Presenters

Gloria Ana Diez, ASAECA
Hila Abraham, Israel Film Archive – Jerusalem Cinematheque

By June 2017 the Israel Film Archive (the custodian of hundreds of thousands of original negatives, prints, access copies and born digital works of Israeli cinema from all genres starting 1896 till this day) will accomplish 2.5 years of research and fundraising efforts to realize phase 1 in its 7 million dollars project to implement best practices and high-end equipment to allow quality digitization and responsible digital preservation of its audiovisual materials. Nevertheless, like many other archives who work in the somewhat margins of the international AV community, we had to sort out our way from years of severe shorthand of resources, staff, status, knowledge & national awareness. Topics & specific use-cases that will be discussed: where does one even start? gathering & sorting out best practices, technology and equipment decision-making, revising metadata approach, dealing with uncertainty and fear of doing mistake which will have heavy costs, fundraising strategy and more.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Providing Access to Multilingual Oral Histories for the Global Community

Chair(s) and Speakers

Teague Schneiter, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Jade Takahashi, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Sandra Aguilar,University of Southern California Shoah Foundation

Oral histories are accessed in diverse ways in the digital ecosystem. In the fragmented and increasingly global digital environment, how can archives provide meaningful and equal access to content recorded in multiple languages? Exploring the challenges and opportunities presented through the process of providing access to multilingual oral histories featured in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, University of Kentucky Nunn Center’s The Haiti Memory Project and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Getty Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA project. This session provides examples and tools for preparing cross cultural and multilingual materials for widespread access in the digital environment.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Selling the Archive: Licensing Footage at Regional Archives

Chair(s) and Speakers

Ruta Abolins, University of Georgia
Heather Heckman, University of South Carolina
David Weiss, Northeast Historic Film

Now that there are innumerable ways to deliver contact to a public hungry for moving image and sound productions the popularity and use of archival footage and sound has also grown. Anyone and everyone can become a documentarian or producer. What does this increased use for archival footage mean for regional archives with specialty collections? This session will look at three archives and their history of licensing, what they license and why, and lessons learned from selling footage and sound from the collections they manage.

2:30 PM – 3:00 PM
Managing Media Digitization Workflows

Presenter

Mike Casey, Indiana University

Archivists agree that analog video and audio holdings must be digitized to survive. Because this work requires significant resources, it must be conducted as efficiently as possible.This presentation will explore managing efficient media digitization workflows. Using Indiana University’s video and audio digitization operations as a case study, Mike Casey will discuss applying the theory of constraints and adapting software development methodologies to efficiently manage digitization workflows. This will include how to identify and remove bottlenecks in the workflow, how to adapt the Agile form of software development called Scrum to manage the workflow, and the frequent feedback loop provided by the daily standup meeting. He will also explore the value of systems thinking in evaluating the digitization operation and the practical need for automation of some workflow steps, detailing what tasks are better completed without human intervention. The more efficient the digitization workflow, the more that can be preserved.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Reel News: Broadcast Videotape and the Historical Record of Resistance

Presenters

Mark Quigley, UCLA Film & Television Archive
Jeff Martin, Independent Consultant

A significant portion of the moving image record of social movements in the 20th Century in the United States, including the struggle for African American, Chicano/a and LGBTQ rights exists on endangered 2″ videotape. In addition to news coverage of civil and human rights struggles gathered on magnetic media in the 1960s through 1980s, the lower production costs associated with videotape resulted in the significant production of broadcast public affairs programs that provided a previously unavailable direct mass medium platform for marginalized communities to explore social issues in-depth. By closely examining, contextualizing and screening excerpts of this footage, this panel will serve to illuminate the vital, often hidden socially-relevant content emended on 2″ tapes, while providing session attendees with strategies for developing initiatives at their own institutions for preserving this material and presenting it to the public.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Please Come Talk to Us: An Interactive Student Chapter Session

Chair(s) and Speakers

Blanche Joslin, Ryerson University
Rachel E. Beattie, University of Toronto
Magnus Berg, Ryerson University
Winnie Schwaid-Lindner, New York University
Gregory Helmstetter,New York University

Running an AMIA Student Chapter can feel like an isolated endeavor. As student committees of an international organization, we are geographically dispersed but often face the same hurdles and share the same goals. In the past 5 years, the number of AMIA student chapters has more than quadrupled. This remarkable growth highlights the need for communication, so that all chapters – new and old – can share effective methods of archival leadership, combined with their own tips and tricks for navigating both the academic and archival spaces. To start the conversation, we have brought together the leadership from three student chapters to discuss collaboration and outreach within our vastly disparate communities. From there, the session will become an egalitarian round-table. By providing an opportunity for student chapters to discuss and share experiences, we will learn from each other so that we can continue to reach out, educate, and engage those around us.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
A Dream Insured: Preservation of Corporate AV Builds Community Power

Chair(s) and Speakers

Yasmin Dessem, UCLA Library
Kelly Besser, UCLA Library
Shani Miller, UCLA Library

The Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company was a Black owned and operated insurance firm established in Los Angeles in response to discriminatory practices that restricted the ability of African American residents to purchase life insurance. Throughout its nearly eighty-five year run, GSM displayed a commitment to self-documentation on extensive media formats, building a treasure trove of images and sound that illustrates the shifting demographics of Los Angeles, and the empowerment of a community. This panel will examine UCLA Library’s efforts to preserve the collection from initial processing through digitization with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation and the Haynes Foundation. Speakers will present methods for enhancing metadata and encouraging connections using collection data, as well as share favorite discoveries from Kodachrome home movies shot in a segregated Los Angeles to the corporate camp of public relations film Holiday in Acapulco.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
The New Preservationists: Documentary Filmmakers are Excavating Rare Media Artifacts to Tell Their Stories

Presenters

Matt White, ACSIL
Shola Lynch, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Peabody Award winning filmmaker
Robert Stone, Academy Award & Emmy nominated filmmaker

Our best storytellers dig deep into global media archives to address the emerging audience for premium historical documentaries. While long-running history platforms such as PBS’ American Experience and BBC’s Storyville have been carrying the archival-based programming torch for decades, a new emphasis on such programming from Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Hulu, ESPN, and other international players has shined a new light on the archival mission. Indeed, the primary media awards for documentaries—the Oscars, Emmys, BAFTAs—have been dominated recently by films such as OJ: Made in America, Amy, 13th, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. Our panelists, Robert Stone and Shola Lynch, have each challenged the idea of the historical film through trail-blazing works that continue to enrich the public conversation. We will use this forum to explore the craft of the archive-inspired film and show how these films themselves are vehicles for preservation efforts.

4:45 PM – 5:15 PM
NATRA 1970: A 1/2″ Preservation of Black Power and Soul

Presenter

Jasmyn R. Castro, African American Home Movie Archive

In the late 1950s, a fraternal organization of R&B deejays named the National Association of Radio Announcers (NARA) formed to promote unity among radio personalities who specialized in “black music.” With the exception of a few white members, this was essentially an all-black organization that met annually to network, share tricks of the trade, and attend musical performances sponsored by record companies. During the mid-1960s, NARA changed its name to the National Association of Television & Radio Announcers (NATRA). After the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in April of 1968, the 1968 NATRA Convention in New York, NY marked a shift in the growing response of African American music professionals to the inequality they experienced in a majority white industry. Soul music was a recognized symbol of Black nationalist pride, and was seen as music created for the people, by the people. On August 23, 1970, Rev. Jesse Jackson was the guest speaker at the NATRA Convention held at the Royal Coach Inn in Houston, TX. This ½” videotape preservation of the 1970 NATRA Convention captures the integral role the music industry played in the broader landscape of the Black Power movement.

4:45 PM – 5:15 PM
The Winding Journey of Bill Genaust’s Iwo Jima Flag Raising Footage

Presenter

Criss Kovac, US National Archives

On the morning of February 23rd, 1945 Bill Genaust raised his Bell and Howell camera to capture the images of one of the most iconic moments in American military history. While Joe Rosenthal recorded the second flag raising on Iwo Jima in black and white as a single image, Bill Genaust documented the first and second flag raisings in real time, in full color, on motion picture film. The events of that day have evolved and live on, but not without the confusion and mystery which those 54 seconds have both confounded and solidified. The presentation will trace the path of the film from the time it was exposed to 4K scans completed in the efforts to identify the unknown flag raiser of Iwo Jima.

4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
No Time for a Hiatus: Reinvigorating Local TV Preservation

Chair(s) and Speakers

Siobhan Hagan, MARMIA
Laura Treat, University of North Texas Libraries
Sadie Roosa, WGBH Media Library and Archives

In this presentation, the chairs of AMIA’s most recent iteration of the Local TV Task Force will discuss the Task Force’s soft-launch of their work-in-progress online resource that will include: a timeline of local TV preservation history; case studies to flesh out guidelines on various topics such as copyright, digitization, and access; a previously created database of over 300 local TV collections, additional readings, a glossary of local TV production terms, and the release of a survey questionnaire designed to assist the Task Force in their work closing the significant gaps that still remain in the preservation of local television.

4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
Disaster Response and Planning for AV Archives

Chair(s) and Speakers

Rachael Stoeltje, Indiana University
James Lindner, Media Matters
Kara Van Malssen, AVPreserve
Pamela Vizner Oyarce,AVPreserve
Greg Wilsbacher, University of South Carolina

This panel and open meeting will provide a series of brief reports on efforts to support our colleagues after some recent natural disasters. In addition to these reports, we plan to have an open meeting to start the discussion to find ways that we can work together more collaboratively in our many organizations to better prepare for and provide assistance to archives in need directly following a natural disaster. Primarily, this will be an effort to build more bridges within overlapping efforts of professional organizations including AMIA, FIAF and perhaps through our shared umbrella organization CCAAA and also working with organizations with experience assisting post natural disasters.

5:15 PM – 5:45 PM
Digital Preservation of National Cultural Heritage Challenge and Solution: Cmam

Presenter

Sami Meddeb, Elgazala Technoparck

Methodologies for the long-term conservation of the national heritage through the transfer and migration of analog data and rare personal musical archives of singer in digital format while respecting international standards and using appropriate metadata

5:15 PM – 5:45 PM
Warning! Materials May be Unsettling: Sensitive AV Materials in Archives

Chair(s) and Speakers

Sarah Gardner, School of Information – University of Texas at Austin
Itza Carbajal, University of Texas at Austin School of Information
Sara Rogers, AMIA University of Texas at Austin Student Chapter
Selena Aleman,AMIA University of Texas at Austin Student Chapter

Audiovisual archives around the world offer a plethora of content, but materials considered exploitative, violent, or harmful carry a distinct set of considerations. Videos may capture real life traumatic events that may be triggering or distasteful to those who experienced these events resulting in a reduced desire for preservation or attention. Other materials may be disturbing by design thus reducing the number of interested users. These vulnerable collections may in turn struggle to find funding or expand their use and ultimately risk deterioration and loss. Despite these limitations, many sensitive archival materials still merit safekeeping for potential future use. This presentation will include reflections both in person and through video of a local panel discussion coordinated by University of Texas at Austin AMIA student chapter held in Austin, Texas in 2017. The panel touched on the complexities of preserving, managing, and creating access to these sorts of collections. Panelists include Caroline Frick, Gabriel Solis, and Ayshea Khan, providing perspectives from students, faculty, audiovisual archivists, and local archival projects coordinators.

5:45 PM – 6:45 PM
Cocktails in the Vendor Cafe

Let the exhibitors in the Vendor Café buy you a drink as you head out for the evening at Archival Screening Night, or dinner, or a night out on the town in New Orleans!

7:00 PM- 7:15 PM
Buses leave for Archival Screening Night

7:45 PM – 10:15 PM
Awards + Archival Screening Night

Please join us to celebrate our 2017 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. The Prytania Theatre is about 5 miles from the hotel, and is accessible by trolley and bus or a short ride using shared-ride services or taxi.

9:00 PM – 2:00 PM
The Vendor Cafe

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM
The Film Archive in the University: Collaboration, Conflict, Coexistence

Chair(s) and Speakers

Brian Meacham, Yale Film Study Center
Amy Sloper, WCFTR
Andy Uhrich, IULMIA
Hannah Palin,UW Libraries

Where does a film archive fit within a university? How do the unique needs of an archive fit into, and sometimes collide with, those of the university as a whole? The work of moving image archives at universities intersect with special collections, media and technology programs, academic departments, arts programming, and more. From carving out an independent position within a library to making the most of opportunities for collaboration with faculty and students in a rich academic environment, film archivists working within a university setting are confronted with a wide variety of challenges and opportunities. Representatives of four university-based film archives will share case studies, discuss strategies for collaboration, and raise issues of importance not only to archives within a university setting, but also to any archive that is part of a larger organization.

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM
DH: Video Annotation Tools: New Pedagogical Approaches to Film + Digital Humanities

Chair(s) and Speakers

Melissa Dollman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lauren Tilton, University of Richmond
Grace Hale, University of Virginia
Dimitrios Latsis, Internet Archive/Ryerson University
Mark J. Williams,Dartmouth College
Devin Orgeron, North Carolina State University

Video annotation tools have gained increasing attention over the past decade, keeping pace with the growing amount of digital/digitized moving image content. These tools facilitate collaboration between researchers, inform the teaching of media studies and media literacy, and can integrate on-screen transcription or citation of primary sources such as archival footage. For this skillshare session we bring together several Digital Humanities practitioners and scholars to share tools they have developed (Participatory Media project, Media Ecology Project) or used (WordPress, Scalar) and lead a group discussion with attendees on collaboration with archives and special collections libraries, and pedagogical impacts of DH best practices on media scholarship from a variety of perspectives. All AMIA members will take away something, from the curious student or archivist still grappling with what DH can be to an advanced practitioner curious about what video annotation tools are out there.

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM
The Woman Behind the Camera: Uncovering an Overlooked Perspective

Chair(s) and Speakers

Karin Carlson, Northeast Historic Film
Brian Belak, Chicago Film Archives
Sharon Thompson, Lesbian Home Movie Project
Kate Dollenmayer,The Center for Home Movies

Come see some women-made films and discuss some of the challenges that arise when digitizing home movies and amateur film in the modern digital age. “The Woman Behind the Camera: Home Movies and Amateur Film by Women,” is a CLIR-funded project which will digitize, catalogue, and make accessible collections of women-made films that highlight the rich and varied experiences of women in the 20th Century. By integrating these collections with the Center for Home Movies “Home Movie Registry,” the project extends its reach without having to create a brand-new platform. Archivists from Northeast Historic Film, Chicago Film Archives, Lesbian Home Movie Project, and the Center for Home Movies will discuss the importance of this project and some of the challenges encountered, including issues of permission and exposure in LGBTQ home movies, navigation of sensitive topics/images in home movie and amateur film, and determining true authorship of home movie collections.

11:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Preservation Partners: Working to Save Australia’s Oldest Student Film Collection

Presenters

Donna Hensler, The University of Melbourne, VCAMCM Film and Television
Nick Richardson, The Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Discover the lessons learnt and outcomes from a collaborative digitisation project undertaken by The University of Melbourne’s VCA School of Film and Television and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image – Australia’s national museum of film, TV, and digital culture. The VCA Archive contains student films on celluloid and magnetic media, dating back to 1967. The collection comprises many early works of Australia’s most successful film and television makers, including Justin Kurzel (Snowtown), Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde), Gillian Armstrong (Oscar and Lucinda) and Oscar Winner Adam Elliot (Harvey Krumpet). Archivist Nick Richardson and Lead Researcher, Donna Hensler will openly discuss the issues encountered and strategies undertaken to ‘successfully’ complete the project – all done at a fraction of the price from the competitive market. The session will benefit other cultural and educational institutions who wish to embark on similar projects, as well as provide an overview of best practice standards and processes.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Amateur Movies: In the Archive, the Database (AMDB), and Online

Chair(s) and Speakers

Charles Tepperman, University of Calgary
Dino Everett, USC SCA Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive
Sheena Manabat, University of Calgary
Molly Rose Steed,University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections
Clara Sanchez-Dehesa, Elias Querejeta Zinema Eskola

This panel explores the crucial role of collaboration between scholars and archives in researching the history of amateur cinema. The Amateur Movie Database (AMDB) is a research project that brings together scholars and archivists to organize information about amateur film history via digital tools. The panel provides an overview of the AMDB’s goals, digital methods and practices before turning to specific opportunities for collaboration with archives.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
The Films of Expo 67 – 50 Years Later

Presenters

Steve Moore, Library and Archives Canada
Stéphanie Côté, Cinemathèque québécoise

Film was an integral part of the Expo 67 experience. Held in Montreal 50 years ago during Canada’s centennial year, Expo 67 is considered the most successful world’s fair of the 20th century. Some of that success can be attributed to the innovative use of moving images: experiments in presentation, projection, use of screens, and a re-thinking of the concept of watching a film including full immersion in the audiovisual. This session will include clips from some of the films shown at Expo. Panelists will discuss some of the challenges with archiving these films, of providing access to what were once-in-a-lifetime visual experiences designed in tandem with the architecture where the buildings were an integral part of the film presentation. The metadata explaining how the elements were screened is often missing and what is left are the component parts of the final experience.

11:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Data Visualization – Working with Students to Make Collections Discoverable

Presenters

Nick Richardson, Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Brad Haylock, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

In 2017, ACMI began a collaboration with RMIT University, which saw Master of Communication Design students working on different the visualisations of ACMIs datasets to more specifically reveal significant details about the collection as a whole and to begin to draw out and communicate to a general public the many and various important social and historical narratives lurking within the collection. The students’ work ranged from light-hearted cultural commentary to sobering social inquiry, including such projects as an examination of films on two of Melbourne’s foremost passions — food and coffee — to a study of the number and the distribution over time of documentaries addressing Aboriginal Australia. The students’ approaches varied from richly narrative infographics to rigorous visualisations of the quantitative data. This presentation will discuss the opportunities for a media archive in making the collection more discoverable via such a collaboration and the benefits to the students in being able to access a rich and varied dataset.

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting: Advocacy Committee

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting: International Outreach Committee

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting: Small Gauge and Amateur Film Committee

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Friday Poster Session

Visit the poster presentations – they provide valuable information and interesting insights from current initiatives and projects.

Digital Recreation of Calligraphic Intertitles
Cab Calloway: Hi De Ho (Multi-Media) Miracle Man!
Design for Context: Cataloging and Linked Data for Exposing National Educational Television (NET) Content
Finding a “Cine-Voice”: Material Realism and the Auricon
Preserving the Archives of Experimental Communities: Digitizing Synanon
Audiovisual Conservation at the Nashville Public Library
“Several sides of every story”: Preserving KUHT’s Local News Magazines

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Meeting: Nitrate Committee

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Meeting: Election Committee

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Meeting: Copyright Committee

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Resume Review Table

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Nontheatrical Film & Race: Recent Archival-Scholarly Collaborations

Chair(s) and Speakers

Allyson Nadia Field, University of Chicago
Walter Forsberg, National Museum of African American History and Culture
Marsha Gordon, North Carolina State University
Martin L. Johnson,The Catholic University of America
Todd Wiener, UCLA Film & Television Archive

In this panel archivists and scholars present recent collaborative work surrounding nontheatrical film and race. As models for future projects, emphasis is on strategies for successful archival-scholarly collaboration. Martin Johnson will present on the archival strategies of three collections of African American filmmakers from the 20s and 30s, Walter Forsberg will discuss the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Hortense Beveridge collection, Todd Wiener will present on the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project and the preservation efforts around a film about an African American trans woman in mid-1960s Los Angeles, and Marsha Gordon will discuss student films made at USC in the 60s and 70s about race in Los Angeles.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
An Audiovisual Metadata Platform to Support Mass Description

Chair(s) and Speakers

Jon W. Dunn, Indiana University
Chris Lacinak, AVPreserve
Tanya Clement, University of Texas at Austin

In recent years, concern over the longevity of physical AV formats due to media degradation and obsolescence, combined with decreasing cost of digital storage, have led libraries and archives to embark on projects to digitize recordings for purposes of long-term preservation and improved access. Beyond digitization, in order to facilitate discovery, AV materials must also be described, but many items and collections lack sufficient metadata. Indiana University is partnering with experts from the University of Texas at Austin and AVPreserve to explore the design of a software platform to support the incremental application of automated and human-based processes to create and augment metadata for AV collections. In this session, we will describe the proposed technical architecture for this system, dubbed the Audiovisual Metadata Platform (or AMP), discuss the use cases and technical considerations that informed its design, and discuss next steps toward implementation.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Harassment in the Workplace: A Facilitated Forum

Chair(s) and Speakers

DeEtta Jones, DJA Associates

A facilitated and collaborative discussion to explore ways that our organization can address abuses of power in the workplace. AMIA first began planning this forum more than six months ago and recent news has clearly emphasized the need. The discussion will grapple with questions such as: How does the employment status of women — who often earn less, are more likely to be underemployed, have greater caregiving responsibilities outside of the workplace, and may have less access to the highest levels of managerial authority — make women more vulnerable to unwanted sexual attention, harassment, and even assault? How are these vulnerabilities amplified for employees who may also be targeted on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, disability, age, ethnicity/national origin, and religion? How can we go beyond harassment “training” to create safer work environments? Can bystander intervention training, civility training, solutions-based training shift workplace culture and protect all employees? This facilitated forum is intended to provide information and assist in strategies that members can take back to their own organizations as well as help to create a support system within our organization that will empower and protect all our members, whether they work for large or small institutions.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
AV Archiving in the Cultural Heritage Sector: Defining Core Competencies

Chair(s) and Speakers

Edward Benoit, III, School of Library and Information Science, Louisiana State University
Karen F. Gracy, School of Information, Kent State University
Janet Ceja, School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College
Snowden Becker,Department of Information Studies, UCLA
Adam Schutzman, School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College

Archives that hold A/V materials are at a critical point, with many cultural heritage institutions needing to take immediate action to safeguard at-risk media formats before the content they contain is lost forever. Yet, many in the cultural heritage communities do not have sufficient education and training in how to handle the special needs that A/V archive materials present. In the summer of 2015, a handful of archive educators and students formed a pan-institutional group to help foster “educational opportunities in audiovisual archiving for those engaged in the cultural heritage sector.” The AV Competency Framework Working Group is developing a set of competencies for audiovisual archive training of students in graduate level education programs and in continuing education settings. In this panel, core members of the working group will discuss the main goals of the project and the progress that has been made on it thus far.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Let the Computer and the Public do the Metadata Work!

Chair(s) and Speakers

Karen Cariani, WGBH Educational Foundation
Tali Singer, Pop Up Archive
Tanya Clement, University of Texas at Austin, School of Information

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting, with Pop Up Archive, has created more than 71,000 transcripts of historic public broadcasting recordings using the open source Kaldi speech-to-text software. WGBH will share a game called FixIt to crowdsource correction of speech-to-text generated transcripts. Panelists will discuss potential computational linguistic tools and methodologies to enhance discoverability of digital media collections. The session will demonstrate the results of 1) work with HiPSTAS at University of Texas-Austin, who have conducted soundwave analysis and pattern recognition on a sampling of content in the archive, 2) the output and of the speech-to-text tools including name, topic and location recognition, as well as the implementation of this data to aid in search and discovery 3) methodologies and workflows around crowdsourcing the correction of transcripts and 4) Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision use of automatic speaker labeling and thesaurus label extraction from subtitles to achieve fine-grained access.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
It’s 10 PM. Do you Know Who’s Handling your Print?

Chair(s) and Speakers

Genevieve Havemeyer-King, New York Public Library
Elena Rossi-Snook, New York Public Library
Katie Trainor, Museum of Modern Art
Andrew Oran,Fotokem
Julian Antos, Chicago Film Society

The generation gap between eras of film and digital projection has created challenges for exhibition venues and archives. Film preservation is costly – a single new print could represent years of grant writing, research, and advocacy, and the thought of it being damaged during exhibition leaves many archives reluctant to circulate their collections. Likewise, a theater’s reputation and ability to screen archival films depends on adherence to strict technical specifications, the ability of their staff to treat materials in an archival manner, and the availability of equipment and supplies that are harder to find every year. The AMIA Projection and Technical Presentation Committee wishes to facilitate a discussion between speakers and the audience about what knowledge can be shared between film labs, distributors, archivists, venues, and projectionists, and how this exchange and partnership can support the continued preservation and access of film collections and the industries that enable our work.

4:45 PM – 5:15 PM
Get ‘Em While They’re Young: We Save 2 Film Workshop Overview

Presenters

Elena Rossi-Snook, The New York Public Library
Alex Whelan, Pratt Institute Libraries

In the Fall of 2017, the AMIA Film Advocacy Task Force in collaboration with The New York Public Library produced a three-day film workshop designed to engage middle-school children in a consideration of motion pictures as an academic exercise, as a science and technology, as a tactile art-making enterprise and as an archival medium. The goal was to inspire young people from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds at a critical time in their development to think about careers in film-associated fields which are, at this point, challenged by a lack of diversity and inclusion while also serving formal curricular goals in Science Technology Engineering Art Mathematics (S.T.E.A.M.). Come find out how the workshop went and offer input on how to modify the structure and curriculum so that it can be reproduced in a variety of locations throughout the U.S.

4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
Streamlining Metadata Integration Using Curated Content Identifiers

Chair(s) and Speakers

Andrea Leigh, Library of Congress
Stephen McConnachie, British Film Institute
Raymond Drewry, EIDR

A continuing challenge across moving image archives is identifying content so that resources can be shared in a networked environment. The Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) accommodates work identification to benefit internal and external operations through the use of global curated content identifiers that assist in automating workflows, thereby managing metadata identifying works and variants. EIDR promotes the easy exchange of content and metadata and elimination of manual heavy workflows, reconciliation of items received from multiple sources, and a pathway towards the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud through querying online resources like Wikidata, IMDb, and other datasets to harvest descriptive metadata. This session will begin with the Library of Congress introducing the role of content identifiers in reconciling titles across multiple locations, outlining the ambition to expose National Film Registry titles. The British Film Institute will describe the role of EIDR registration in their UK national filmography project and their first steps towards LOD integration using EIDR. Finally, MovieLabs will demonstrate their own prototype LOD web application to aggregate metadata from multiple sources.

4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
Good Enough to Best: Tiered Born-Digital AV Processing

Chair(s) and Speakers

Julia Kim, Library of Congress
Erica Titkemeyer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Rebecca Fraimow, WGBH

Born-Digital audiovisual files continue to present a conundrum to archivists in the field today: should they be accepted as-is, transcoded, or migrated? Is transcoding to a recommended preservation format always worth the potential extra storage space and staff time? If so, what are the ideal target specifications? In this presentation, individuals working closely with born-digital audiovisual content from the University of North Carolina, WGBH, and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Conference will present their own use cases involving collections processing practices, from “best practice” to the practical reality of “good enough”. These use cases will highlight situations wherein video quality, subject matter, file size and stakeholder expectations end up playing important roles in directing the steps taken for preservation. From these experiences, the panel will put forth suggestions for tiered preservation decision making, recognizing that not all files should necessarily be treated alike.

5:15 PM – 5:45 PM
Making for Audiovisual Archives

Presenter

John Passmore, New York Public Radio

In this presentation, archivist John Passmore will talk about his experiences applying maker technologies to workflows specific to audiovisual archiving and preservation. Archivists will learn how to plan, design, and build a maker-type project using available knowledge bases. John will cover how to procure materials, produce and test parts, and leverage knowledge bases from standards bodies, maker communities, hobbyists, and other archivists. This is panel is appropriate for enthusiastic beginners and experienced archivists alike.

5:45 PM – 6:45 PM
Meeting: American Archive of Public Broadcasting

5:45 PM – 6:45 PM
Meeting: Projection and Technical Presentation Committee

7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Screening: Reel Bad Arabs: Stereotypes and the Moving Image

Presenters

Greta Scharnweber, New York University/Kevorkian
Brendan Allen, Democracy Now!
Pooja Desai, Asian/Pacific American Institute, New York University
Amita Manghani,Asian/Pacific American Institute, New York University

“Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People” (50 minutes, 2006, Directed by Sut Jhally and Produced by the Media Education Foundation) Featuring Jack Shaheen, this groundbreaking documentary film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs–from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding “terrorists”–along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in U.S. history, and why they matter so much today. The screening will be followed by an airing of samples from the off-air VHS recordings unearthed in the Shaheen archive, and an after-film discussion with Jack G. Shaheen, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, New York University, and the researchers and archivists who have reinvented Shaheen’s archive in its new home at NYU.

8:35 PM – 9:35 PM
Screening: The New Orleans Case for Moving Image-Written History in the Classroom

Presenter

Blaine Dunlap, Motion History Lab

Teaching the modern history (1950-2000) of the city/town/community where the classroom is located is of the most demanding challenges in the humanities. Until recently, there was no technical means for access to the moving image-written history of their place, nor a clue that such existed. This session will present clips works from the New Orleans-specific body of moving history (1959- 2007) curated for curricula development for high-school and college teachers. We will look at three topics: the November, 1960 desegregation of William Franz school, including “The Children Were Watching,” by Robert Drew/Richard Leacock; the theft of Charity Hospital after Hurricane Katrina; and two musical geniuses, Henry Roeland Byrd (“Professor Longhair”) and composer Roger Dickerson. Works are provided courtesy of Robert Drew Associates; UGA Special Libraries, Brown Media Archive/Peabody Awards Collection; Harvard Film Archive; BBC Motion Gallery; MIRC; and Video Veracity, Inc.

9:40 PM – 10:40 PM
Screening: Can Animation Help Develop New Audiences?
Screening-Animation-Program

Presenter

Angela Saward, Wellcome Collection

This is a curated tour of Wellcome’s film archive looking at a century (or thereabouts) of animation in medical filmmaking introduced by Angela Saward, Research Development Specialist in Broadcast, Media and Film. The aim is to show how this medium has been used in the service of medicine and science historically – and more perhaps more pertinently in the service of the archive for advocacy for the collection and increased visibility. Animation is an engaging medium and has been deployed by filmmakers to reach many different types of audiences over the course of time. Three strands of filmmaking are included in the programme; science modelling and making the conceptual visual, behaviour change and the joy of animation where the medium has been used for quite esoteric or artistic reasons – being enjoyable (or disturbing) in its own right.

8:00am – 9:30am

7:30 AM – 8:00AM
Continental Breakfast

8:00 AM – 8:45 AM
Lightning Talks: Outreach & Collaboration

8:45 AM – 9:45 AM
AMIA Membership Meeting

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 2017/2018 Board of Directors will take office as we thank departing President Andrea Kalas and departing Board Members Chris Lacinak, Jacqueline Stewart, and Siobhan Hagan for their service.

9:45 AM – 10:45 AM
Skill Share in Asia & Africa: Case Studies in Cambodia, Philippines, Japan, and Malawi

Chair(s) and Speakers

Ann Adachi-Tasch, Collaborative Cataloging Japan
Marie Lascu, XFR Collective
Nobukazu Suzuki, Tokyo Koon

Formal institutional training programs for moving image archiving may not exist in certain countries, creating difficulty for some to obtain knowledge and technical skills to take care of valuable collections. The models of Community Archiving Workshop and others, in which experienced archivists partner with collection caretakers to provide hands-on training are welcomed method for certain collections that seek proper maintenance by their own community volunteers. This session presents case studies of initiatives that have aimed to share skills to document and maintain independent moving image archives in Japan, Malawi, Cambodia, and the Philippines, including Community Archiving Workshops in Japan and the Philippines, and other methods.

9:45 AM – 10:45 AM
Put it on your Bucket List: Navigating Copyright to Expose Digital AV Collections at Scale

Chair(s) and Speakers

Casey Davis Kaufman, WGBH Educational Foundation
Jay Fialkov, WGBH Educational Foundation
Hope O’Keeffe, Library of Congress

Digitized collections often remain almost as inaccessible as they were on their original analog carriers, primarily due to institutional concerns about copyright infringement and privacy. The American Archive of Public Broadcasting has taken steps to overcome these challenges, making available online more than 22,000 historic programs with zero take-down notices since the 2015 launch. This copyright session will highlight practical and successful strategies for making collections available online. The panel will share strategies for: 1) developing template forms with standard terms to maximize use and access, 2) developing a rights assessment framework with limited resources (an institutional “Bucket Policy”), 3) providing limited access to remote researchers for content not available in the Online Reading Room, and 4) promoting access through online crowdsourcing initiatives.

9:45 AM – 10:45 AM
DIYCA: Copy-it-Right: Historicizing and Preserving Video Processing Tools

Chair(s) and Speakers

Molly Fair, University of Richmond
Lauren Sorenson, UCLA
Mona Jimenez, NYU
Joey Heinen, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Kathy High,Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Carolyn Tennant, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

This panel aims to examine the histories and topics explored in the seminal new book, The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued. Panelists will discuss the multifaceted issues of preserving video works and image processing tools, methods for documentation, and how conservators and preservationists can benefit from exploring the relationship between technological histories and do-it-yourself culture. Video artists in both analog and digital modes of production have a rich tradition of technological innovation and invention. In concert with engineers, artists historically have pioneered video processing tools to alter and manipulate video signals in order to create complex works. The panelists will discuss how to best document and pass along the knowledge of artists/engineers, and whether it is feasible or integral to maintain the function of the original video processing tools.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
The Great Migration: A Public Digitization Workflow

Chair(s) and Speakers

Blake McDowell, Smithsonian NMAAHC
Jasmyn Castro, Smithsonian NMAAHC
Walter Forsberg, Smithsonian NMAAHC
Candace Ming, University of Chicago/The South Side Home Movie Project
Lorena Ramirez-Lopez,NDSR/WHUT

The Great Migration is a public digitization program initiated by the media preservation department of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. This public digitization program invites visitors to bring their home movies, on a variety of film and video formats, to the museum and have them inspected and digitally scanned by NMAAHC media preservation staff. The program will not only highlight our ongoing film preservation efforts at the museum; but, also educate the public on the importance and basic steps of personal digital archiving, while building the nation’s largest research collection of African American home movies. Through our efforts, we hope to expose the public to the various experiences of the African American community, while simultaneously communicating how these films provide a valuable historical resource for reexamining and understanding the African American experience.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Building the AAPB: Inter-Institutional Preservation and Access Workflows

Chair(s) and Speakers

Charles Hosale, WGBH
Leslie Bourgeois, Louisiana Public Broadcasting
Ann Wilkens, Wisconsin Public Television
Rachel Curtis,Library of Congress

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting seeks to preserve and make accessible significant historical public media content, and to coordinate a national effort to save at-risk public media recordings. In the four years since WGBH and the Library of Congress began stewardship of the project, significant steps have been taken towards accomplishing these goals. The effort has inspired workflows that function constructively, beginning with preservation at local stations and building to national accessibility on the AAPB. Archivists from two contributing public broadcasters will present their institutions’ local preservation and access workflows. Representatives from WGBH and the Library of Congress will discuss collaborating with contributors and the AAPB’s digital preservation and access workflows. By sharing their institutions’ roles and how collaborators participate, the speakers will present a full picture of the AAPB’s constructive inter-institutional work. Attendees will gain knowledge of practical workflows that facilitate both local and national AV preservation and access.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
New Approaches to Digital Film Preservation

Chair(s) and Speakers

Jim Lindner, Media Matters
Pamela Vizner-Oyarce, AVPreserve
Tyler van Drell, CINEQUAL
Mike Mashon,Library of Congress

Current preservation methodologies capture only a narrow slice of the data contained on film. The properties of the film carrier (color information, physical condition, chemistry) are disregarded to produce a viewable image. In the absence of robust physical copies, future generations will be limited by the data currently captured. In transitioning to a fully digital model, we must ensure that adequate information is captured to allow faithful preservation without reliance on film-based storage. Technologies exist to capture this rich data, but the lack of a standardized data model hinders our ability to effectively store and use it. The FILMIC project is an extensible, collaborative, scalable framework to integrate multispectral scanning and physical condition analysis into current workflows. Supported by archivists, researchers, and stakeholders, FILMIC aims to develop a deeper, richer representation of film in a strictly digital format, allowing meaningful preservation work to continue long after the film is gone.

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting: Regional Audiovisual Archives

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting: Education Committee

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting: Conference Committee

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Meeting: Student Chapters

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Resume Review Table

2:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Automation and Similarity: An Introduction to Perceptual Hashing

Presenter

Andrew Weaver, Washington State University

Perceptual hashing is a method of identifying related content using computer analysis; the goal being to eliminate the (often impossible) necessity of having a person look at every item one-by-one to make comparisons. Perceptual hashes function in a similar sense to standard checksums, except instead of comparing hashes to establish exact matches between files at the bit level, they establish similarity of content as would be perceived by a viewer or listener. I will present an overview of the concepts of perceptual hashing, with a particular focus on the hashing contained in the MPEG-7 standard, as well as ongoing research into the integration of perceptual hashing in archival workflows being conducted at a medium sized broadcast archive. Topics addressed will include how perceptual hashing was implemented, why certain decisions were made, successes and failures of the research and potential benefits.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Collaboration in the Aesthetic Zone: Trisha Brown and Robert Rauschenberg

Chair(s) and Speakers

Shu-Wen Lin, National Library of Medicine
Bill Brand, BB Optics, Inc.
Cori Olinghouse, Trisha Brown Dance Co.
Francine Snyder,Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

Set and Reset is a masterpiece of American postmodern dance, establishing Trisha Brown’s role as the leader of abstract choreography. The performance is a collaborative project between Trisha Brown (choreography), Laurie Anderson (music), and Robert Rauschenberg (set and costumes.) To assure the longevity of Set and Reset, preserving the set’s film elements has become a collaborative effort between two of the artists’ estates, demonstrating a new preservation strategy for the exchange of information, histories, funding, storage, and clarification of rights. Given the collaborative nature, we carefully address a number of generally unresolved issues including who is responsible to preserve a moving image work that is part of a performance? This panel aims to share the continuing conversation among estates and foundations, and to shed light on issues and principles surrounding the preservation of moving images in performative artworks.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Digital pH Probe Research for Cost Effective Vinegar Syndrome Detection

Chair(s) and Speakers

Tyler van Drell, Cinequal
Kenneth Weissman, Library of Congress
Mick Newnham, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
Karin Carlson,Northeast Historic Film

The work of the Image Permanence Institute (IPI) established that the monitoring of film pH is very effective in determining the advance of vinegar syndrome in film carriers. The tools currently used to detect vinegar syndrome, pH-sensitive strips, change color over time when exposed to acidity. This approach not only is costly and time intensive but also does not allow for measuring change over time or ease of integration with other data models. Because acid level is such an important proven indicator of carrier condition, new ways to collect that information are being explored. This fourth and last panel of the FILMIC stream will focus on the use of digital pH probes for obtaining instant and accurate pH levels to determine the advance of vinegar syndrome. Ken Weissman (Library of Congress) and Karin Carlson (Northeast Historic Film) will present the findings of tests performed at their respective institutions.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
DIYCA: Recipes for Disaster: Helen Hill and Post-Katrina Media Advocacy

Presenters

Devin Orgeron, NCSU
Dan Streible, NYU

A “no-table” (but facilitated) discussion of post-Katrina efforts and challenges, this session is designed to get everyone talking. Local archivists, collectors, programmers, scholars and friends will be in attendance to offer fist-hand anecdotes and experiences and may screen brief segments of relevant materials. Special attention will be given to efforts made to preserve and make accessible Helen Hill’s work.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Preservation is Painless: A Guide to Outsourced AV Digitization Project Management

Chair(s) and Speakers

Biz Maher Gallo, George Blood Audio/Video/Film/Data
Robin Pike, University of Maryland Libraries
Emily Vinson, University of Houston Libraries
Rebecca Holte, New York Public Library
Charles Hosale,WGBH Media Library & Archives
Erica Titkemeyer, UNC Chapel Hill Libraries
Kimbery Tarr, New York University Libraries

As an increasing number of audiovisual formats become obsolete and the available hours remaining on deteriorating playback machines decrease, it is essential for institutions to digitize their AV holdings to ensure long-term preservation and access. With an estimated hundreds of millions of items to digitize, it is impractical, even impossible, that institutions would be able to perform all of this work in-house before time runs out. While this can seem like a daunting process, why learn the hard way when you can benefit from the experiences of others? From those embarking on their first outsourced AV digitization project to those who have completed successful projects but are looking for ways to refine and scale up their process, everyone has something to learn from these speakers about managing AV digitization projects from start to finish.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Sizing Up MDPI Phase 2, We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Tote!

Chair(s) and Speakers

Rachael Stoeltje, Indiana Uiversity
Dennis Cromwell, Indiana University, Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative
Brett Scheuermann,Memnon Archiving Services, Inc
Naz Pantaloni, Indiana University Libraries

MDPI 2, the motion picture film phase of Indiana University’s Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative (MDPI) started in June 2017 and is currently digitizing 12,500 hours of film in three years. This panel will give an overview of this mass film digitization project, including the planning and implementation stages, how it fits within the structure of the MDPI phase 1 (mass audio and video digitization) and how it fits within the priorities of the university. Specifically, speakers will present a project overview, the IT specifics required to handle the movement and storage of massive files, all of the IT structure needed to implement the project, all parts of planning and preparation, the technical specifications of the digitization, working with a vendor who has built an in-house facility and what to make sure to include in a project –cataloging, metadata, selection, making the digitized films accessible and copyright.

4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
Navigating the USIA Archive with the Media Ecology Project

Chair(s) and Speakers

Bret Vukoder, Carnegie Mellon University
Mark Williams, Dartmouth College
Regina Longo, The Albanian Cinema Project; Film Quarterly
Hadi Gharabaghi, New York University

From 1953 to 1999, the United States Information Agency (USIA) produced or distributed roughly 18,000 motion pictures throughout the world. Ostensibly working within the framework of propaganda, the USIA motion picture collection covers an eclectic range of subjects made in a variety of filmic idioms. Through an emerging partnership with NARA, The Media Ecology Project has begun to provide wider access to this relatively unexplored archive, encouraging a more rigorous systematic study of this massive corpus of films. Such networked research can foster interdisciplinary and inter-national scholarship that may help disentangle the cultural and political hegemonies of the Cold War period, illuminating distinct and autonomous voices among the agency’s constituent posts. This panel therefore seeks to both situate the significance of the global USIA archive and articulate multiple frameworks by which it may be engaged.

4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
Collaborative Conversion: Open Tools and Workflows in AV Preservation

Presenters

Libby Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound
Andrew Weaver, Washington State University

Preservation of audiovisual collections can be daunting and expensive, especially for archives not equipped to handle these materials. Fortunately, a growing community is working to address this problem. This session will cover specific examples of collaborative tools, spaces and workflows with a focus on the open source community and ethos. It will give an overview of various open tools and projects available to aid institutions with AV preservation, presented as a specific case study from Seattle’s Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound (MIPoPS) showcasing how they are simultaneously benefiting from and contributing to this collaborative approach.

MIPoPS will describe the tailored tools and techniques utilized to support their participants, ensuring affordability, sustainability, demystifying the digitization process and empowering them to succeed. By freely sharing their experiences and tools, they support awareness, preservation and access of other regions’ moving image collections. This presentation seeks to further this effort to provide support and resources to institutions with similar needs.

5:45 PM – 6:45 PM
Closing Night Reception

7:00 PM
DIYCA: Friends of Helen Hill: A Live Anthology of Work by/inspired by/responding to/of a piece with…

Hosts

Devin Orgeron, NCSU
Dan Streible, NYU

Join us for an evening of film and media made in and around the city of New Orleans. Come celebrate the legacy of Helen Hill through screenings of her work and the work of other NOLA film and media makers. Sample delicious New Orleans fare and explore the legendary Zeitgeist Multidisciplinary Arts Center. You will need to arrange your own transportation. The Center is a short shared ride/cab/streetcar ride away from the conference hotel at 1618 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd, New Orleans, LA. Locals suggest public transportation is best.

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