Process

When I was nigh about 8 or 9 years old, I decided I wanted to learn Russian. This wasn’t an idea that just floated into my head out of nowhere — as a Cold War child, the Soviets were very much front and center in my consciousness. (Though that situation also may have been because I am a communist anchor baby and the brain implants I received were just doing their work.) I could pretend to a precocious nobility here and claim that this desire arose from some sort of personal glasnost. However, the fact is, I was a punk who had already supped on a steady diet of Mad and Cracked, and learning Russian sounded very anti-establishment to me.

Of course, living in a Northwest logging town, it wasn’t as if there were regular Russian classes available, so I turned to the only resource I knew — the children’s section at the County Library. Probably not surprisingly (there must have been earlier anchor babies than I), there was a Russian picture-book dictionary in the stacks, which I happily added to my pile of Mad back issues, Ray Bradbury, and Encyclopedia Brown.

When I got home, I found the prospect to be more difficult than I had imagined. Seems that Russian uses a different alphabet, don’t you know. Luckily, there was a handy transliteration chart in the back that showed what the Cyrillic letters were equated to in American. This was obviously the key I was looking for that would allow me to translate English words into Russian. If D=Д, O=О, and G=Г, then ДОГ was DOG.

I tested my new found knowledge by applying it in reverse, taking the Russian words from the picture dictionary and transforming them into English. To my frustration and confusion, it didn’t work. How could ‘собака’ be ‘dog’? I had already figured that word out. It didn’t make sense. After a few more attempts, I put the defective book aside and moved on to something more immediately satisfying, like Pixie Stix or something.

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Eventually I figured out the difference between translation and transliteration — that or I was highly skilled at buffaloing my foreign language teachers — but it wouldn’t be the last time I would have to deal with overcoming a conceptual shift in order to learn a new skill. I think about this a lot not only because the speed of changing technologies has presented a steady stream of shifts within my lifetime, but also because of the huge conceptual shifts that are a part of media archiving and preservation practices. Of course we all are quite familiar with the differences between best practices within traditional paper archiving and those required for time-based media — though we surprisingly still have to hammer away at those to be acknowledged.

Of great help along with that hammer have been other tools developed over the years to specifically address the needs of media preservation: The AD Strips and other resources developed by Image Permanence Institute, the FACET tool and guidelines out of Indiana University, optical scanning of mechanical audio carriers developed through collaboration of Library of Congress and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the development of new metadata schemas such as PBCore that better address the variability of how media is produced and used. It seems almost banal to mention them now, like writing an ode to a ratchet set, but isn’t that a whole lot better than trying to make do with a couple pairs of pliers in a space that’s too close to get very much leverage or movement in?

Which now makes me think, maybe it isn’t entirely a reconceptualization of ideology that is important here, but also a initial conceptualization of tools and processes. We are working towards the same basic goal — getting the nut off the bolt; establishing access to and maintaining existence of an object and its content — but the avenues towards that endpoint are quite different. Which now makes me think about the current major conceptual shift in archiving and preservation: the shift in practices dealing with analog media to those dealing with file-based and born digital media. Perhaps the struggle to establish standards and practices is not entirely a problem of thinking about the management of digital objects differently than physical objects, but also an issue of not having a full set of tools for inspection and management.

We make use of a number of tools such as dvgrab, ffmpeg, DATXtract, Live Capture Plus, MediaInfo, and PBCore, but most of these were not developed specifically for archiving needs. As a result, AVPS has made the development of tools and resources a major component of our work. We have been involved in developing DVAnalyzer, which allows a user to inspect and analyze the quality of a DV stream captured over firewire from DVCam; BWF MetaEdit, which allows a user to view and edit the embedded metadata in a Broadcast WAV file; PBCore Instantiationizer, which automates the creation of PBCore instantiation elements based on the embedded metadata in file-based assets; and a number of other internal tools or resources in development that can be used to assess or manage file-based collections.

Of course we aren’t the only ones working on this. For example, METRO’s new book Digitization in the Real World is full of strategies and methodologies for digital collection management, and the Dance Heritage Coalition has been doing innovative work on the development of online cataloging utilities and access. What is needed is a greater allocation of efforts and resources directed towards developing these new tools before too much is lost. The make up of digital media will not allow us to wait 50 years before addressing persistence and continuing access. Мы должны подействовать теперь, comrade.

— Joshua Ranger

METRO And Archivists Roundtable Co-Host “Born Digital AV” Workshop With Chris Lacinak

Continuing the AVPS commitment to education and community participation, Chris Lacinak will be conducting the workshop “Born Digital AV: A Primer for Archivists and Caretakers of Moving Image and Sound Collections” on Wednesday, October 6, 2010. The event is co-hosted by METRO and the New York Archivists Roundtable and will take place at the METRO training center at 57 East 11th Street in Manhattan.

The deluge of born digital audiovisual materials will be hitting archives soon if it hasn’t started already, presenting new challenges to asset management and preservation combined with accelerated obsolescence and degradation factors which will not allow a passive approach to archiving. From the description:

“This hands-on primer will introduce archivists and caretakers of digital file-based moving image and sound collections to utilities and processes that will help them perform routine archival tasks in the file-based domain. Activities will include creating and validating checksums; entering, editing, reviewing, parsing and using embedded metadata; identifying file characteristics and attributes; discussion of wrappers and codecs; and discussion of obsolescence monitoring and normalization.

By the end of this program, participants will:
• Know how to perform routine archival tasks in the digital file-based domain
• Gain a basic working knowledge of digital files to enable better communication with other stakeholders in the digital object’s lifecycle”

So come learn the basics of what you need to know to be prepared for the changing media landscape and to be a leader in the preservation and integration of digital materials within your organization. More registration information is available on the METRO website at http://bit.ly/azoc4n or in their September Digitech Newsletter. While you’re there, also check out the information on Gawain Weaver’s upcoming Care and Identification of Photographic Materials workshop as well as METRO’s great new book Digitization in the Real World.

Metafun And Metagames

We here at AVPS work hard but, because we really enjoy our work, we find a lot of fun in it to. Like with metadata. Sure, in some ways metadata is just a tool — it does a lot of heavy lifting and is seen as blandly compartmentalizing what is of real value, the content of the object described.

Par example, this image was posted as NARA’s Historical Document of the Day:

“…Leathernecks use scaling ladders to storm ashore at Inchon in amphibious invasion September 15, 1950…”

Of course one thinks beautiful black and white photo, important historical documentation, etc., but the content considered from a wider view also prompts thoughts about how amazing it is that material like this is recorded in the midst of such circumstances. Whatever your feelings about the actions involved, it’s pretty impressive that there are people trained by the military (and has been a tradition of doing such) to go out with the troops and document what is happening on film or video (or digital capture card). This reminds me of some ideas I’ve been playing around with about the roots of independent cinema in military training from the World Wars, but that’s another post.

Like any good archivist, however, after looking at the content I began to look at the associated catalog record. Part of the record description states “General Photograph File of the U.S. Marine Corps, 1927 – 1981; Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, 1775 – 9999 ; Record Group 127; National Archives.” (my emphasis). Records of the U.S. Marine Corps, 1775 – 9999…That means the records date back to 1775, but also that the expectation is for the records to continue on for some time into the future (or maybe just that 9999 is the new 2012).

Digging around some more, the creator is listed as “Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. U.S. Marine Corps. (09/18/1947 – )”, which points to the period when around WWII the various services began to develop centralized media production and distribution departments. This also suggests an organizational realignment within the Marine Corps but also within the structure of the government. You can see, via NARA’s great online catalog, that associated creator names include Department of the Navy. U.S. Marine Corps. (1834 – 09/18/1947), U.S. Marine Corps. (1798 – 1834), and Continental Marines. (11/10/1775 – 1798). A little research shows that 9/18/47 is actually the date that the Department of Defense was officially established (partly as a way to decrease inter-service rivalry), and thus the name change. Makes one wonder what the other naming changes relate to historically and how they came about…

A short history lesson and an urge to learn more — Thank you, metadata!

Oh jeeze I’m a nerd.

— Joshua Ranger