Hapy Holidays!
22 December 2014
So late late late late Friday, we got our annual holiday cards in the post (Ain’t no staff meeting like an envelope stuffing meeting…). For those of you unlucky enough to not be on our mailing list (lines are open — contact us now!) we have been designing and sending out cards since our founding in 2006. At some point in the autumn, Chris comes up with a concept, often tied to the anniversary of a particular media type or format. After running the idea past our team, he begs and pleads with the supremely talented Stephanie Housley to illustrate the design of the card — but don’t tell anyone that because she Alan Smithees the whole effort to protect her reputation.
AVPreserve Holiday Cards
22 December 2014
Our annual Holiday Cards, designed by Stephanie Housley and signed with cheer by the entire AVPreserve crew!
Open Reel Audio Duration Calculator
11 December 2014
A simple Excel spreadsheet that shows the total capacity for 1/4 inch open reel audio, using variable for Track Configuration, Sound Field Configuration, Tape Thickness, and Reel Size. Assumes full tape reels and full use of capacity. Look for an online app version coming soon.
Estimating Duration of Open Reel Audio
10 December 2014
UPDATE: Find a simple Excel spreadsheet Duration Calculator here.
Another Fowl Thanksgiving
25 November 2014
Growing up, my most memorable Thanksgiving was a non-Thanksgiving. 90% of my extended family lived in the Portland area, so all family events took place there, but we lived 3-4 hours away in southern Oregon.
Maybe It Should Be Living Dead Media
19 November 2014
I’ve been a long time fan of zombie movies. And I’m old. I’m letting you know this so you know that I’m not some Johnny-rise-from-the-dead-lately who jumped on the zombie bandwagon with World War Z or The Walking Dead.
Digital Preservation Is People
14 November 2014
Preservation is a resource heavy endeavor. People. Time. Equipment. Infrastructure. Facilities. Space. Training. And, I suppose, some cash-ola.
AVPreserve Upcoming Events – Not Slowing Down for November
10 November 2014
Just as we’re catching our collective breaths after the intense conference month of October, AVPreserve is setting off again for a number of November events with our passports in hand. Senior Consultant Kara Van Malssen is currently in Mexico City as part of the instructional team for SOIMA-LATAM 2014: Safeguarding Sound and Image Collections. Part of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), SOIMA brings together archivists from across the globe to provide an intensive course over several weeks in order to train them on the care and preservation of audiovisual materials. Kara’s instruction will largely focus on metadata. She has been an instructor in the SOIMA program for several years and always looks forward to meeting new international colleagues.
Fear and Planning in the Archives
27 October 2014
If you’re reading this today, and if today is October 27th, then it’s the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage! WDAVH (say that five times fast) is an international celebration of the importance of audio and moving image archives, both for the significance of their collections as well as critical need for preservation, hence this year’s theme “Archives at Risk – Much More to Do!”
An Introduction To Using The Command Line Interface To Work With Files And Directories
25 October 2014
With the increasing ingest of born digital and digitized collections, we are at the point (perhaps well past the point) of admitting that almost all archives are digital archives, and as a profession we must identify and gain training on the tools that will help us describe, store, and manage file-based collections in the same ways we do with physical collections.
The Command Line Interface (CLI) is a critical tool here, both for managing files from ingest to storage directly or being able to access certain applications that only have a CLI option for running. These introductions to CLI (both for Mac and Windows OS) provide a basic understanding of managing directories and files with the command line, skills which can be expanded from managing individual files to ingesting and caring for large sets of files in batches in order to save time and address the realities of file-based acquisition.
