Poster Presentations
Poster presentations will be in The pAVilion
12:00pm – 2:00pm
Poster: 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
When Lawrence, Kansas’s local cable access Channel 6 was purchased by a larger regional provider, The University of Kansas was asked to store and make available the now-defunct station’s content that was about to be purged. A pilot project was selected wherein the videotapes surrounding the program As Time Goes By would be digitized. This process also included the creation of metadata to be used in crafting accurate catalog records. The program selected was produced by, for and about senior citizens. Each show featured a topic that might help individuals navigate a post-retirement life. This included tips on managing finances, interviews with administrators from local senior centers and there was even a fashion show. This project illustrated the importance of providing resources to under-served communities.
Poster: Cold Storage: Icelandic Home Movies in the Archive
Sigríður Regína Sigurþórsdóttir, National Film Archive of Iceland
The National Film Archive of Iceland has (on and off, and sometimes inadvertently) collected home movies on small gauge film throughout the past three decades. These films have until now remained largely untouched in storage with only minimal cataloging. The material brought into the archive through legal deposit has been dissected by scholars, but what truths are buried in these home movie collections? Visit the poster session to find out! The poster will present the results of an ongoing project in the archive, shedding light on the collections of 8mm, Super8mm, 9.5mm and 16mm amateur and home movie films housed within the NFAI.
Poster: Cooperative Video Preservation with the Academic Libraries Video Trust
Phil Salvador, American University
Chris Lewis, American University
VHS preservation is an ongoing issue for libraries. Libraries can use Section 108(c) the Copyright Act to digitize their circulating VHS collections, yet not every library has the resources for a major digitization project. Section 108 also allows libraries to obtain digital replacement copies from other institutions, but this has been difficult to coordinate. The Academic Libraries Video Trust is a new solution to this issue. Managed by National Media Market, the ALVT is a repository for digitized AV material, contributed by libraries working collectively to preserve their collections. This is a collaborative attempt to preserve library audiovisual collections, and it enables any library, whether or not they have the resources for digitization, to help save their collections.
Poster: What’s in your Repository? Facing Legacy Data in Smithsonian DAMS
Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution has administered an enterprise Digital Asset Management System for over 10 years to care for digital collections, and the SI DAMS team has worked hard to support audio and video in the system. Of course, this means that as we grow in support, we also have to look at our own history of care to analyze and update legacy data. How good is our data? What tools are we using? What gaps exist for legacy data using legacy tools? The current project’s goal was to look at the technical and administrative data for 100k digital AV asset records to learn more about the collection, document technical data, and target legacy data issues. The poster will outline findings not only within the collection data, but also the process taken in carrying out this work and some larger findings about the benefits of analyzing legacy digital AV repository data.
Poster: Digitizing and Reassembling William Miles’ Black Champions Interviews
Tyler Bequette, Washington University in St. Louis
Jim Hone, Washington University in St. Louis
William Miles was an accomplished African America documentary filmmaker whose films focused on the cultural experiences and achievements of African Americans in such diverse realms as the military, the space program, sports, and urban culture. Through an NHPRC grant, the Washington University Libraries were able to digitize and reassemble 32 filmed interviews for Miles’ three-part PBS documentary, Black Champions (1986). The poster will lay out the procedures involved in the inspection and selection of the filmed interview and program elements; digitization of the materials at our partnering lab, Preserve South; and the workflow involved in reassembling the interviews from the digitized elements into never-before-seen primary resources. The poster will also address the problems and solutions that arose throughout the project.
Poster presentations will be in The pAVilion
12:00pm – 2:00pm
Poster: Making the Tough Choices: Sifting Through Production Elements
Ben Harry, Brigham Young University
Few people love leftovers, but when you are the last stop before the dustbin the consequence of decision-making raises the stakes. When we received legacy motion picture material from a local film studio that is not based on a creator or a specific subject content, making evaluation decisions can be painful when space is sparse. To further complicate this dilemma is the fact that these elements spawn from a process that is quite unfamiliar to a great deal of archivists. What do we keep, if any of this? particularly when a great deal of these materials are only bits and pieces of completed works. Find out what principles guided our decisions, and how we applied these principles to a collection of over a thousand production elements from a local production studio that appeared on our porch in a jumble of celluloid.
Poster: Would You be Interested in a Three Day Hands-on Workshop for Video Archivists?
Paul Klamer, NAVCC Library of Congress
The National Audio Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) of the Library of Congress is soliciting comments in hope of determining how much interest there would be in a three day Video Preservation workshop in Culpeper VA no sooner than the summer of 2020. The workshop would include both lectures and hands-on laboratory work. The registration cost per attendee will be a modest fee to cover expenses.
Poster: LA Phil Teaches the Walt Disney Concert Hall to Dream
Meredith Reese, Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Archives of the Los Angeles Philharmonic adapted a new digital archives strategy to prepare for the orchestra’s centennial season. Through the procurement of a new digital asset management system, new collection management system, and new staffing, the Archives was able to support the research and activities of the LA Phil in its 100th season celebration, and support a new work projected onto the LA Phil’s iconic home, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, WDCH Dreams. Come see a video of the WDCH Dreams experience, a demo of the LA Phil’s DAMS, and learn more about the Archives’ plans for their next centennial celebration when the Hollywood Bowl turns 100 in 2021.
Poster: Between the Wasteland and the Toaster: Engaging Local Television Programming
Ethan Thompson, Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi
This project seeks to develop a web-based visual interface to facilitate watching and working with local television programs housed in various media archives. The goal is to encourage more scholars to engage local TV as a corrective to media historiography that too often has focused on programming produced on the coasts by the big networks. Between Newton Minow’s characterization of TV as a “vast wasteland” in the early 1960s and Mark Fowler’s pronouncement it was just “a toaster with pictures” in the 1980s, there was regulatory incentive for affiliates to demonstrate they operated in the public interest. One way to do this was by producing television about issues of local and regional concern, but local TV also provided an opportunity to cater to local tastes. This project will assist scholars in discovering that programming by showcasing television produced in various formats, on various topics, by stations all over the country.
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
The Film and Media Studies Archive at the University of California, Santa Barbara holds a large repository of 16 mm film and manuscript material from the local news station KEYT, a collection being incrementally inventoried by a student workforce enrolled in film archiving classes. This poster presents the process of creating a KEYT assignment for undergraduates, a project that was designed to provide information for our database(s) while taking into account each student’s lack of archival experience, personal investment in the collection, and attentiveness towards the needs of the materials. The largely positive outcomes of the project have broader applicability for audiovisual archives in search of a less costly workforce—demonstrating the importance of project framing and strong oversight to avoid inefficiency and inaccuracy.
Poster: Optical Media Preservation Strategies for Audiovisual Content
Annie Schweikert, NYU
Optical media—that is, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and even MiniDiscs and LaserDiscs—are no longer in everyday use, but their presence in archival collections will persist well beyond their obsolescence in the consumer market. Though optical media have low storage capacities, they are accessioned in high volumes that demand attention. In New York University’s Special Collections alone, optical media represent 20% of all digital data, but 84% of all digital objects, and arrive in greater numbers every year. Optical media’s fragility puts discs at risk of failing well before they become obsolete, but proper preservation requires knowledge of logical structures. Workflows for preserving optical discs must account for both audiovisual and digital concerns, and one strategy will not be appropriate for all discs. This session will present an introduction to the diverse and unique difficulties posed by optical media, and the strategies adopted by New York University.