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Looking Ahead on the 25th Anniversary of AMIA
19 November 2015
On the 25th anniversary of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), I was asked to share some thoughts this morning about the future of AMIA. There are many ways to run with this thought. I have chosen to pose and respond to the question: What do we need to do as a community in order to thrive as an organization?
AVPreserve Accepting Applications for the Role of Consultant
2 November 2015
We are excited to announce that we are currently accepting applications for a Consultant position at AVPreserve!
World Day for Audiovisual Heritage: AVPreserve and NEDCC Present A Report on Existing Sound Recordings in Collections Across the US
27 October 2015
In honor of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, AVPreserve and NEDCC are proud to present their report, Quantifying the Need: A Survey of Existing Sound Recordings in Collections in the United States.
New York AV Archives Party for NY Archives Week
5 October 2015
Your Inaccessible, Undocumented Collection Is Not Used & Therefore Has No Value
28 September 2015
Earlier this year OCLC published some summary results from a survey on the challenges of digitization, identifying nine categories of common challenges. Most of these categories are associated with file and metadata management or access. The one category that sticks out is Audio/Visual Materials. Just that — audio/visual materials as a single challenge.
Though A/V and other complex media actually represent a broad swath of issues and decision points in their handling and preservation, the only challenges identified within this survey grouping by respondents are a complaint that outside of filmmakers, patrons are not interested in audio/visual materials… and that the cost of digitization is very high.
I can’t disagree with this second point. The digitization of certain formats and of large collections can be very expensive. But there are also certain formats and smaller collections that can be more affordable to approach. But that point is actually moot in the larger picture, as the cost is just an unavoidable factor of collection care. Either one chooses to accept the costs as a fact and work to do as much as possible, or one gives up before trying and lets their collections fade.
To be sure, reformatting is an absolute necessity for the access and preservation of audiovisual materials. It must be done or else obsolescence and decay will cause collections to become inaccessible or much much much more costly to reformat.
But I respectfully disagree. No, A/V digitization is not (currently) a challenge. There are a number of oddball or highly obsolete formats that are problematic, but the equipment and expertise for the most common formats are (for the time being) widely available. Even for difficult formats there are pockets of expertise where at least a portion of such materials can be preserved through digitization.
No, the media type is not the challenge… or at least the direct cause of the challenge. The challenge is how A/V materials have been managed in archives. The challenges are not entirely inherent in the media type. The challenges have been embedded and have arisen from the longterm neglect of A/V in archival collections, which has lead to massive backlogs in processing and reformatting/digitization. This has been exacerbated by a prior lack of attention to A/V within professional training, education, and related professional organizations, as well as the lack of development of tools, processes, and other resources for archival activities that are specific to A/V and not just applied and forced to fit (or exasperatedly given up on) from the resources developed around paper-based collections.
The challenges and costs we see in regards to A/V are a result of this history. Massive backlogs in processing and reformatting are going to be overwhelming time-consuming and costly because those activities were put off until a crisis moment. Access is not going to occur and users are not going to request access to A/V materials in archives if the content is inaccessible and/or not documented well (or at all) in finding aids or catalogs. And if people are not requesting access, digitization will not be a prioritized investment of resources or there will be no user prompted requests for digitization.
The report is correct, that filmmakers will more likely take the chance to dig through under-described content or pay for digitization because the material is essential to their work, the same way as writers will spend days digging through boxes and boxes of manuscripts or documents for their research in hope of finding that one letter or diary entry that is just what they need. The difference here, of course, is that those boxes of manuscripts and photos are easily accessible, but the A/V materials are not if there is not equipment to play them or they have not been reformatted. However, though, as we see from the growing creation, consumption, and use of media online and in our personal lives, we cannot deny that there is a vast unfed hunger for access to audio and video content from the public…and we cannot deny that that public is generally frustrated by the lack of access they see (or the amount of potential access available that they are missing).
There is more training available regarding the care for A/V materials, and new tools & resources are being developed in the community. We also see many organizations taking the small steps or, in some cases, the very large steps (Indiana University, New York Public Library, The American Archive of Public Broadcasting, Jerusalem Cinematheque, etc.) towards addressing the preservation of and access to their A/V collections, but the weight of the backlogs (and the realities of our limited timeline for reformatting) are major challenges. The work to inventory, assess, plan, budget, prioritize, and implement reformatting projects needs to be an institutional and a national priority if we want to save any portion of our audio/visual heritage.
Just do me a favor and don’t mention our file-based collection and digital preservation needs for another couple of years until we get this sorted out…
— Joshua Ranger
New York AV Archives Week Party
4 September 2015
New York Archives Week is set to take place October 14th-21st, with special planning from the Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York (NYART) here in the City, including the annual awards ceremony to take place on October 15th.
AVPreserve Accepting Applications for the Role of Senior Consultant
7 July 2015
We’re growing! And AVPreserve is looking for people to grow with us in the role of Senior Consultant.
Reading In: Analyzing Embedded Metadata in Digital Images
6 July 2015
When the news came out about accused South Carolina church shooter Dylann Roof’s website and the photographs that had been posted there, I visited the site and downloaded the package of digital images out of curiosity, as an archivist, to take a look inside the images. I was interested to see the metadata, to break open the files — so to speak — and evaluate the bytes themselves. As archivists, that is exactly what we do with any collection of digital objects. We look under the hood. We look for patterns and information that will help us understand the context in which the files were created, and to help us identify any evidence that might inform us of the provenance, the originality, the history of the documentary resources we have acquired.
A Comparison Of Inventory & Assessment Tools
30 June 2015
AVP has developed or contributed to the development of several tools for the inventory, assessment, and preservation prioritization of physical audiovisual materials, ranging in approach from collection level or format level analysis down to item level cataloging and selection. Primary among these are three tools: MediaScore and MediaRivers from Indiana University, our Catalyst inventory tool, and the AVCC inventory and planning tool.
The approach one takes in such preservation efforts and the tools one might use depends on the scope of collections, the budgets and staffing available, and the end goals of the project. This spreadsheet presents a comparative analysis of the tools available on our site to help you determine which one might be right for your collection. Visit our tools page to access the applications themselves.
Announcing the Release of AVCC Inventory & Collection Management Tool
29 June 2015
We are pleased to announce the release of AVCC, an open-source web application for the rapid inventory of physical film, video, and audio materials. Developed with funding from the Library of Congress’ National Recording Preservation Board – in addition to funding support from the Metropolitan New York Library Resource Council and New York State Documentary Heritage Program for previous versions of the tool – AVCC provides a series of inventory templates and quantitative reports that promote simple and fast documentation and analysis of collections of audiovisual materials.
