AMIA 2013 Conference Presentations
A number of speakers have made copies of their presentations available for download. The following sessions have provided materials:
AMIA/DLF Hack Day
This full-day event brought together audiovisual archivists with software and web developers for an intensive day of creativity and problem solving. At the start of the day, archivists presented their challenges and goals. Participants then split into teams consisting of archivists, computer programmers and interaction designers and work together to create simple applications intended to solve specific needs of the community. Read about the projects here.
Workshops
A/V Tech Basics for Archivists
Speaker: Eric Wenocur, Lab Tech Systems
Audio and video equipment is complex and specialized. There are rules and best practices for using this equipment properly, but this information is often not taught well, or at all. It’s left to the archivist in the field to learn by trial and error, or through colleagues, how equipment and systems are supposed to function. This workshop provides fundamental technical knowledge that is needed to understand, connect and operate equipment that archivists use on a daily basis–including video displays, audio mixers, VTRs and associated devices. Also discussed: proper interconnection, operation and troubleshooting, with an emphasis on practical application, plus some underlying theory.
Presentation can be found on the Lab Tech Systems website here
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Small Gauge Projection and the Art of Projector Maintenance and Repair
Chair: Taylor McBride, Smithsonian
Speakers: Brittan Dunham
Dino Everett, USC Hugh M. Hefner Archive
Siobhan Hagan, UCLA
The Small Gauge Amateur Film Committee and the Projection and Presentation Committee are teaming up for a two-day pre-conference workshop that will focus on small gauge film projection and projector maintenance and repair. The first day will focus on projection training and will cover 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8 film projection. Day two will focus on projector repair and maintenance protocol for 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8 projectors (at least one model of each), as well as how to repair VHS players and tapes. Attendees will have the chance to work hands on with the playback machinery both days and will leave with the knowledge of how to safely project small-gauge archival film as well as how to care for the projectors needed to view them.
Workshop Materials: Small Gauge_Projection Maintenance Repair_Workshop (ppt)
Conference Panels, Sessions & Posters
Vitaphone: Recent Discoveries and Preservation Efforts for Sound-on-Disc Fil
Chair: Carla Arton, Library of Congress
Speakers: Ron Hutchinson, Vitaphone Project
Ken Weissman, Library of Congress
Bob Heiber, Chace Audio
In the 1920s, Warner Bros. invested in a playback system that involved connecting a turntable to a projector motor to synchronize sound with film. While the sound-on-disc technology was successful for Warner Bros. and other studios during those early sound years, many of the films and discs were separated or damaged after their commercial run, making later preservation a combination of detective work and technological creativity. This panel will discuss the past and continuing efforts to preserve the features and shorts produced, including the research and technical challenges of creating a combined preservation print from two distinctively different formats. Case studies from recent preservation projects will be incorporated into the discussion, including a recent acquisition of 9.5mm sound-on-disc films marketed by Pathe for home use.
Vitaphone Presentation: AMIA 2013 Vitaphone Panel
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The Great DuArt Film Rescue
Chairs Ed Carter, Academy Film Archive
Brian Drischell, Academy Film Archive
Speakers: Katie Trainor, MOMA
Deborah Stoiber, George Eastman House
Sandra Schulberg, Independent Producer
DuArt, one of the oldest and most significant labs for independent film in the United States, ceased film processing work several years ago. Now the company is closing its film storage, and needs to find new homes for thousands of elements, often including the original negatives, of fiction features, documentaries, shorts, animation, student films and industrials. Beginning in April of 2013, the Academy Film Archive headed a group of American archives to work with DuArt in an effort to rescue as much of this film as possible. With the combined efforts of the Academy, George Eastman House, the UCLA Film Archive, the Museum of Modern Art, the Harvard Film Archive, the Library of Congress and Anthology Film Archives, many hundreds of films have already been moved to their vaults, with many more on the way.
Presentation: Powerpoint Slides and Notes: Ed CarterDuart Presentation Notes – First Half
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Poster: Zoink.it: BitTorrent and the Creation of Private Digital Repositories (pdf)
Presented by: Justin Mckinney, McGill University
Mark Haydn, McGill University
Student Chapter Blog: amiamontreal.wordpress.com
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Poster: Moving Image Research Collections Digital Video Repository (png)
Presented by: Ashley Blewer, University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections
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Poster: Dissertation Digitization Dilemma: Preserving the Legacy of the UC San Diego Library
Presented by: Brian Bartelt, Post Haste Digital
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New Collections and Features on WGBH Open Vault
Chair: Karen Cariani, WGBH Educational Foundation
Speakers: Michael Muraszko, WGBH Educational Foundation
Allison Pekel, WGBH Educational Foundation
Sadie Roosa, WGBH Educational Foundation
WGBH continues to expand and grow archive collections on Open Vault. This year, with funding from NEH, we added a collection of interviews from the series War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. The interviews are with world leaders and decision makers during the cold war period of 1950-1985. We hope these will be useful for scholars researching the history and policies of the arms race. Other projects include, with funding from the Open Society Institute, 60 titles from The Advocates, and with funding from the Grammy Foundation, interviews from the series Rock and Roll. Each project posed its own challenges and issues. WGBH project staff will present the collections, differing content, highlights, and challenges from each project.
Presentation: Available via Slideshare
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Magnetic Media Stream:The End of Analog Media: The Cost of Inaction and What You Can Do About It
Chair and Speakers
Chris Lacinak, AudioVisual Preservation Solutions
Mike Casey, Indiana University
Marius Snyder, Presto Centre
Topics included: – Why Media Preservation Can’t Wait: The Gathering Storm, – COI: Analyzing the Cost of Inaction, and – How to Digitize Now: Building the Case and Making it Happen This session formulates, articulates and empowers participants with unprecedented information, concepts and tools to help overcome one of the most critical issues facing the entire AMIA community today.
Presentation:
Chris Lacinak, AudioVisual Preservation Solutions (pdf)Mike Casey, Indiana University (pdf)
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Locational Metadata – How to use Geography to Make Assets Discoverable
Speaker: Colin Mills, Skyworks Ltd
Many collections would benefit from having their footage searchable by location. An obvious example is a collection of news footage or anything geographically related. However actually doing this can be daunting and present some major (and expensive!) pitfalls. In this presentation, Skyworks Ltd will draw on their experience in tackling this issue – a project that ultimately led to them creating a completely new product with the help of UK Government funding. In this session, Skyworks will discuss the use and benefit of locational metadata (in simple language!) and share the key findings in developing the MetaLoc product.
Presentation: Meta Loc Presentation (ppt)
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From Zero to DAM!
Chair: Kara Van Malssen, AudioVisual Preservation Solutions
Speakers: Miwa Yokoyama, Carnegie Hall
Eva Radding, Facing History and Ourselves
Got thousands of tapes on shelves? Little to no metadata management? Ever wonder how you will go from that to a fully fledged digital archive? This session will present two case studies from institutions that have done just that in the past 18 months: Carnegie Hall and Facing History and Ourselves. Speakers will present strategies for selecting vendors and systems, implementing new technologies, developing effective metadata models, and navigating change management at their institutions.
Eva Radding: From Zero to DAM!(ppt) and From Zero to DAM Notes
Miwa Yokoyama: From Zero to Dam – Yokoyama (pdf)
Kara Van Malssen: From Zero to DAM – Van Malssen (pdf)
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Poster: AVID: A New Audio Visual Content Management Tool (ppt)
Presented by: Cathy Martyniak, University of Florida
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Presented by: Max Inui, JVC Advanced Media USA Inc
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Video Games: Selection, Preservation, Access
Chair: David Gibson, The Library of Congress
Speakers: Rachel Donahue, University of Maryland Institute For Technology In The Humanities
Chris Melissinos, PastPixels
Jon-Paul Dyson, International Center for the History of Electronic Games at The Strong
The panel will focus on the unique challenges faced when working with born digital materials in an archival setting, focusing specifically on video games as a test subject. The panelists have worked closely with video games at a variety of institutions: David Gibson of the Library of Congress has been involved with the Moving Image Section’s video game collection since 2006, Rachel Donahue of the Maryland Institute For Technology In The Humanities (MITH) has participated in projects related to video game preservation as part of the Preserving Virtual Worlds project, Chris Melissinos is the curator of the Smithsonian’s recent Art of Video Games exhibit, and Jon-Paul Dyson is the Director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at The Strong. Through focused case studies related to three specific archival functions related to video games, the panel will serve as a tremendous learning experience for those attendees who are engaged with born digital materials at their own institutions.
Jon-Paul Dyson: Dyson — AMIA Power Point – JP
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Magnetic Media Stream: The Monster in the Closet: Grappling with Videotape Collections
Chair: Madeline Moya, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
Speakers: Siobhan Hagan, UCLA Library
Walter Forsberg, Audiovisual Conservator, XFR STN
Richard Steele, Home Box Office, Inc.
Everyone loves to talk about film, and dealing with the digital age is obviously a pressing topic, but what about the media formats in between, the red-headed stepchild of moving images archives – videotape. Video, VHS, Betamax, Video8, U-matic, Open-Reel . . . these formats represent a significant portion of moving image history, and they are lurking in collections in high quantities. How do we begin to grapple with the challenges of videotape? This panel brings together professionals who work with a broad range of materials, representing various sectors of our field. Using the examples of Special Collections at the UCLA Library, the XFR STN project at the New Museum, commercial video at HBO, and home movies on VHS at TAMI, we will examine how to approach collection assessment, prioritizing materials for digitization, tackling cataloging these very large collections, format challenges, playback capability, new means of access, workflows, and best practices. We hope to use this panel to begin a conversation among our colleagues on finding real solutions to challenges in videotape preservation.
Richard Steele: HBO Video Collections (ppt)
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Mastering Your Data: Tools for Metadata Management in AV Archives
Speaker: Seth Anderson, AudioVisual Preservation Solutions
Metadata exists in a wide variety of sources: databases, in catalogs, embedded in files, and, even still, scrawled on paper. Whether you work for a large multinational corporation or a small archive, managing metadata has likely been a headache for years. Disparate data sources, schemas, and terminologies complicate operations and potentially hinder access to audiovisual assets. And segmentation between departments and collections can lead to wide variance in metadata quality across an organization. This presentation provides an overview of available software in the field of master data management; tools built for the creation, normalization, and distribution of a unified organization data set. Master data management encompasses the processes, governance policies, business rules, and tools that define a set of unified “best data” for an organization. Attendees will be introduced to the core concepts of master data management and recommended workflows for applying these principles in their organization.
Presentation: Seth Anderson, AVPS (pdf)
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Digitization Prospects in Developing Countries: Case of Zimbabwe National Archives
Speaker: Felizarda Kutsakatika, National Archives of Zimbabwe
The future of traditional audiovisual archives lies in their ability to adopt digital solutions. This paper discusses digitization prospects in developing countries with particular emphasis on the National Archives of Zimbabwe. Despite technological advances, African countries fail to start digitization projects. This presentation attempts to uncover problems that impede wide adoption of digital solutions in Zimbabwe. There is need to overcome these obstacles before setting up meaningful digital systems. It discusses the implications of key audiovisual archiving philosophical and ethical issues on digitization projects in developing countries in East and Southern Africa. The presentation will also suggest realistic, low cost and applicable digitization solutions that do not strain institutional resources while respecting the authenticity and inherent values of audiovisual heritage and also considering the constraints in which some institutions are currently operating. Finally, emphasis is placed on manageable and applicable digital solutions for developing countries.
Presentation: Paper – Zimbabwe National Archive and Powerpoint Presentation
http://www.avpreserve.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/amia_anderson_know.pdf
Reinventing ‘Digital’ for Collections, Archiving and Access
Speaker: David Sanderson, Archives New Zealand
This session aims to challenge the traditional thinking about archiving collections as we face the task of bridging the divide between physical and digital collections. In an ever-tightening fiscal environment Archives New Zealand, the country’s national archive, is having to re-address its approach and introduce innovative thinking and problem solving ideas – addressing problems the Kiwi way. Senior Advisor, Archives Online David Sanderson advocates for the need to spilt our collections into the physical originals, the digital originals or master replacements and the digital access copies, but to only keep two of those three, not to store everything and every version and he explains how the internet liberates this approach. He will demonstrate some of the purpose built tools designed to aid this process and how they fit alongside doing things the old-fashioned way. This session questions the long held belief that archives and archivists need to keep everything.
Presentation: AMIA Presentation – NZ Archives
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Implementing a Preservation Strategy for Audiovisual Archives – the Singapore Experience
Speaker: Dr Lai-Tee Phang, National Archives of Singapore
The Audio Visual Archives Department of the National Archives of Singapore (NAS) is empowered by the National Library Board Act to appraise, acquire, preserve and provide access to audiovisual records created by public offices and private organisations and individuals. Since its set up in 1997, NAS has amassed rich holdings of over 120,000 broadcast and non-broadcast audiovisual recordings covering about 60 years of Singapore’s broadcasting history. About 65% of the recordings are captured in analog formats ranging from film to video to sound. As the Singapore broadcast industry is moving into full HD transmission by 2015, and public agencies are increasingly creating audiovisual records digitally, NAS has to address the dual challenge of migrating analog formats in a timely manner and preserving born-digital audiovisual records. This presentation gives an overview of the migration paths taken by NAS since 2005, the challenges it encountered and its progress in implementing a preservation strategy and digital audiovisual archive to facilitate long-term access.
Presentation: The Singapore Experience
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Navigating the Digital Archive: First, Know Thyself
Chair and Speakers
Andrea Kalas, Paramount
Sally Hubbard, HBO Co-Chair
James Snyder, Library of Congress
Seth Anderson, AVPS
In a rapidly changing technological context and with so many methods and tools to navigate and decipher, how do you choose? This panel will look at strategies for making intelligent decisions on digital archive development and implementation. First, look further than timeline and budget and interrogate what your archive is for; define who the stakeholders and constituents are; and how it aligns with your institutional strategy and goals. While some archiving principles are constant, setting a baseline identity will give context to more detailed requirements gathering and the assessment of potential tools and architectures. Panelists with experience in a range of institutional types – corporate, academic, government, non-profit – and a wide range of budgets will share their experience and expertise in navigating this terrain. The audience will receive both an update on the latest technologies and most relevant standards, and criteria by which to assess their usefulness and applicability.
Presentation: Seth Anderson, AVPS (pdf)
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