Join us for this keynote presentation by Chris Lacinak, placing a spotlight on AMIA's 2025 Digital Asset Symposium, where he'll explore the critical intersection of Digital Asset Management (DAM) within Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM). Chris brings a perspective based on his extensive experience working at the intersection of archives and DAM, serving in his roles as: Founder and CEO of AVP; Consultant; NYU MIAP Adjunct Professor; AMIA Board Member; DAS Conference Chair; Contributor to standards and best practices; Creator of the "DAM Right" podcast. This diversity has positioned him as both an insider and outsider, a practitioner and an entrepreneur, straddling the realms of archives, DAM, cultural heritage, and corporations. This vantage point has afforded him unique insights into the evolving relationship between archival and DAM practices, operations, and technologies. In this thought-provoking presentation, Chris will share what he has learned along the way and offer a vision for what lies ahead, consisting of both high level forecasts and pragmatic guidance.
As the Founder and CEO of digital asset management consulting firm, AVP (https://weareavp.com), Chris has spent nearly two decades partnering with and guiding over 250 organizations on how to put digital assets at the fingertips of users, making them easier to access, share, protect... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 8:30am - 9:15am CST
Keynote
Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the Pavilion! The Pavilion brings together exhibitors with demos, skill shares, and specialist spaces. Our goal is to create a hub for sharing information at the conference.
Friday December 6, 2024 9:00am - 2:00pm CST
Pavilion
This session will delve into the Autistic Voices Oral History Project (tAVOHP), an initiative challenging neuro-normative assumptions within archives and oral history, shifting the field toward a neuro-affirming framework. Launched in 2023, tAVOHP addresses the underrepresentation of Autistic lived experiences in the historic record by documenting and preserving the stories of Autistic advocates. Participants will receive an introduction to the neurodiversity paradigm, neuro-affirming frameworks, Autistic culture, and discuss the “double-empathy problem.” Emphasizing cross-neurotype communication as a core competency, this session aims to set a precedent for future memory work. Project staff will share Autistically-informed methodologies for conducting oral history, providing practical strategies for enhancing communication, creating inclusive spaces, building trust and understanding, and empowering Autistic narratives. Attendees will learn how to create supportive environments for Autistic patrons, donors, colleagues, and others, fostering a more inclusive and empathetic approach to archival practices. The session will also introduce the The Autistic Lived Experience: Community Curation and Memory Workers Fellowship funded by IMLS in partnership with AMIA and the Association for Autism and Neurodiversity (AANE). AMIA members are encouraged to apply for the fellowship, with the call for applications open through January 2025.
Sam Fleishman (they/them) is project manager for the Autistic Voices Oral History Project. Sam is a writer, researcher, and multimedia artist with a focus on disability advocacy and documentary storytelling. After being professionally identified as Autistic at 24, they began a deep... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 9:45am - 10:45am CST
Session
Nitrate film vaults are constructed very infrequently and taking on this challenge in 2024 is not for the faint of heart. The handling and storage of nitrate film requires exceptional levels of expertise, care, training, and safety precautions. Building a new nitrate film vault is, therefore, a complex endeavor. PRO-TEK Vaults is one of the few certified providers of nitrate film restoration and preservation services in the U.S. and PRO-TEK’s team regularly provides guidance and services to presidential libraries, universities, museums, news organizations, corporations, and motion picture studios. Over the last few years, industry colleagues discussed their desire for additional nitrate film storage in the greater Los Angeles area. In this session, Tim Knapp and Doug Sylvester from PRO-TEK will discuss the process they started in 2022 to scope, design, build, and operate a new nitrate film vault which will open in early 2025.
Tim Knapp is the Chief Operating Officer for PRO-TEK Vaults. Tim brings more than forty years of experience in motion picture and still photo imaging – first in film, and more recently in digital. In his nearly 30 years at Kodak, Tim's career began at the manufacturing headquarters... Read More →
Camille Townson is the Processing Archivist at South Side Home Movie Project. They began working with SSHMP in 2022 as an AMIA Pathways Fellow. Camille received their B.S. in Human-Computer Interaction and Design from UC San Diego, and specialize in user experience, digital accessibility... Read More →
Patricia Ledesma Villon is the Bentson Archivist and Assistant Curator of the Moving Image department of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she oversees the preservation of the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. She has processed audiovisual collections and... Read More →
This session examines the 16mm film collections of KUHT (Houston, TX, first aired May 25, 1953) and WKAR (East Lansing, MI, first aired January 15, 1954), two of the earliest public educational TV stations in the U.S. We will explore the historical context behind their establishment following the FCC’s freeze on new broadcast licenses, highlighting their mission to provide educational and cultural programming. The session reviews their diverse content, from academic subjects to cultural programming, showcasing innovative educational broadcasting approaches. We will also discuss the technical choices between filmed productions and kinescope recordings and their implications for preservation. Finally, we will share strategies for digitizing these collections, including securing funding and overcoming obstacles to ensure these historical materials are accessible to modern audiences.
Preservation Coordinator, University of Houston Libraries
Emily Vinson is the Preservation Coordinator within the University of Houston Libraries Preservation and Reformatting Department. Prior to UH, Emily worked as an archivist at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, a project archivist preserving unique audio holdings... Read More →
Audiovisual Archivist, Michigan State University Libraries
Matthew Wilcox is the Audiovisual Archivist at the Michigan State University Libraries. Matthew has been an advocate for the WKAR and WMSB educational kinescopes and films, and he is also responsible for the management of the MSU Library's Media Preservation Lab. With the aid of a... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 9:45am - 10:45am CST
Session
In the moving image preservation community there's a lot of concern about and discussion of image quality, resolution, and formats. What about the sound? As film scanners have improved over time, they have added features and functionality. A decade ago sound film was scanned in two passes - once on a telecine to capture the picture, then again on a sound reproducer - which then required assembling the two elements together in an editing program. Now most film scanners will scan both sound and picture in one pass. Is this a good thing? Have we compromised performance for this convenience and labor/cost savings? Recently George Blood Audio/Video/Film/Data was in the market for a new film scanner. At last year's AMIA we presented on the factors impacting image capture, and showed the results from different models. This year we present our findings on the sound reproduction, both mag and optical, of three high end film scanners.
George Blood graduated from the University of Chicago (1983) with a Bachelor of Arts in Music Theory. • The only student of pianist Marc-André Hamelin. • Recorded over 4,000 live events since 1982 • Recording Engineer for The Philadelphia Orchestra for 21 years • Recorded... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 11:00am - 11:30am CST
Session
This presentation explores research on integrating AI in various organisational contexts, with a focus on audiovisual archiving. AI's potential is evident in search & exploration, preservation, artistic expression, and big-data analysis. Policies like the AI Act and Ethical Guidelines for Trustworthy AI shape strategies for responsible AI use. However, integrating AI in audiovisual domains poses challenges, such as choosing between off-the-shelf and bespoke solutions, aligning AI with legacy systems, considering public values in procurement, ensuring scalability and long-term viability, and fostering AI literacy. The audiovisual domain's specificity necessitates developing good practices. The AI4Media Network of Excellence engaged media practitioners to capture their experiences. This presentation shares these insights, offering practical guidance on sustainable, responsible AI integration into workflows and formulating policies for AI technology selection and use.
Manager Research & Heritage Services, Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision
As Head of Research and Heritage Services at the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, Johan Oomen spearheads efforts to provide access to digital heritage. Additionally, he contributes as a researcher at the User-Centric Data Science group of VU University Amsterdam. Next to... Read More →
The Al Larvick Conservation Fund granting organization celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2024. The Fund provides support for digitization and conservation of American home movies and amateur media, with a unique approach that extends to collection individuals and families. The Fund administers two annual grants: a National Grant for recipients across the country and a Regional Grant for Upper Midwestern states. Its mission goes beyond providing digitization, ensuring that the materials are actively utilized and celebrated through detailed Airtable cataloging, screening programs, and oral histories. These activities ensure that the personal media are made accessible and well-curated for future generations. The panel session will feature contributions from board members, vendors, and grant recipients, showcasing the organization's transformative impact and its role in revitalizing personal and community histories, while also addressing its limitations.
Diana Little directs the Film Department at The MediaPreserve, a laboratory outside of Pittsburgh, PA that specializes in the digitization of archival audiovisual materials. Prior to her time at The MediaPreserve, Diana spent most of a decade working on film restorations at Cineric... Read More →
Brian Belak is a Film Preservationist for the UCLA Film & Television Archive, where he works on preservation and restoration projects that range from the silent era to independent and LGBTQ+ cinema. Brian previously worked as Collections Manager for Chicago Film Archives, and while... Read More →
Kirsten Larvick is the Director of Special Projects at IndieCollect, where she helps filmmakers develop strategies for preserving their work through the Legacy Services initiative. Since 2009, she has co-chaired the Women's Film Preservation Fund (WFPF), which is dedicated to protecting... Read More →
Jim Hubbard has been making films since 1974. Among his many films are Nostalgia, United in Anger, Elegy in the Streets, Two Marches, The Dance and Memento Mori, which won the Ursula for Best Short Film at the Hamburg Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. He co-founded MIX - the New York Lesbian... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 11:00am - 12:00pm CST
Session
With the project “Expanding Film Culture’s Field of Vision,” the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WCFTR) is processing and sharing collections from individuals and institutions that helped push American film culture beyond the mainstream, across different regions and time periods. The project, funded by a National Historical Publications and Records Commission grant, includes four collections: Amos Vogel (Cinema 16 founder, New York Film Festival co-founder, Annenberg Center director of film), Chuck Kleinhans (Jump Cut co-founder/editor, Northwestern University professor, experimental filmmaker), Elfrieda Abbe (film critic, Angles: Women Working in Film and Video editor), and the Wisconsin Film Festival. Speakers from WCFTR and Chicago Film Archives will discuss collaborations between the two Midwestern archives and other film organizations that produced screenings, film scans, and digital exhibits for this project, increasing access to the rare avant-garde and independent films represented in these collections.
Olivia Babler manages film digitization operations at Chicago Film Archives, a non-profit dedicated to preserving films from the Midwestern U.S. She is active in all stages of collections processing at CFA, including inspection, digitization, curation, and cataloging. Prior to joining... Read More →
Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
Eric Hoyt is the Kahl Family Professor of Media Production in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on the intersections between media history and the digital humanities. He is the Director of the Wisconsin Center for Film... Read More →
Mary Huelsbeck has been the Assistant Director of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since March 2012. She has over twenty-five years of experience managing film, videotape, audio, photograph, manuscript and three dimensional... Read More →
Matt St. John is a manuscript archivist at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, where he leads processing and digitization for the “Expanding Film Culture’s Field of Vision” project. He holds a PhD in film from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Friday December 6, 2024 11:00am - 12:00pm CST
Session
LTO data tape is used by archives as a stable solution for backing up digital files. The current generation, LTO-9, has also introduced some challenges when there are differences in the physical environment of the writing location vs. that of the reading location. One of the noted features of the format since LTO-5, the LTFS open file system used for writing data to LTO tape, will no longer be supported by IBM past version 2.4.5 on PCs running Windows 10 or 11. Additionally, there is a trend by LTO tape library and software manufacturers to ignore LTFS and incorporate object storage technologies into LTO tape libraries, resulting in data on tape being locked into proprietary systems. This session will explain the implications of these changes in the LTO format as related to digital preservation, to help guide attendees’ future use of LTO data storage in their digital preservation planning.
Larry Blake is a supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer of feature films. He has mixed more than 65 narrative features since 1989, and was also the supervising sound editor on 55 of them. Included in this number are 33 features and four television seasons with Steven Soderbergh... Read More →
Linda Tadic is Founder/CEO of Digital Bedrock, a managed digital preservation service. Her over 35 years’ experience includes positions at HBO, the Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, ARTstor, and Pacific Film Archive. She has also taught as... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 11:30am - 12:00pm CST
Session
In this session, we will explore the cutting-edge applications of machine learning in film restoration, addressing not only color recovery and frame replacement but also the intricate processes of colorization, source/gauge matching, and nitrate decay recovery. Through a series of detailed case studies, I will demonstrate how AI tools are revolutionizing the field, making advanced restoration techniques more accessible. Drawing from a rich background in digital intermediates and a history of international collaboration, I will guide attendees through the ethical and practical considerations of integrating AI into film preservation workflows. The session is designed for those with an intermediate understanding of the field, but beginners will also find the discussions enlightening and informative. Participants will leave with a deeper appreciation of the capabilities of machine learning in film restoration. We will delve into how these tools can be leveraged to overcome traditional challenges, ensuring the longevity and integrity of our cinematic heritage.
Fabio Bedoya is a Film Restoration Technician and Colorist with extensive experience in digital intermediates. His work spans a range of restoration projects, from preserving Peru’s cinematic heritage to collaborating with major studios and independent filmmakers. As a master trainer... Read More →
This poster shares lessons learned from a remastering of a news segment from a WTMJ TV newsreel on Alcoholism in Milwaukee using the kinescope copy of the original broadcast as a reference. This project was part of a graduate fieldwork project performed in the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee's Archives Department on the WTMJ TV News Collection. The poster will cover the approach to matching the cuts in Adobe Premiere, the difference between optical and digital titles, the process for recreating the titles, and the use of noise reduction tools In Adobe Audition. Reflections will also be provided on the unique challenges of this project, such as the loss of experience-based knowledge on older broadcast television technologies.
Come learn how NPR’s Research, Archives & Data Strategy (RAD) team tackles iterative change while maintaining an active production pipeline. NPR’s production archives rely on automated ingest and export of data from various sources, including internal story and content APIs, XML from transcript vendors, and internal publishing APIs. This poster will walk through the current digital transformation taking place both within and outside of the archives to optimize and strengthen these connections, move away from legacy system architectures, and reduce manual processing steps for information specialists. Learn about our previous technical solutions, current infrastructure decisions and changes, and RAD’s necessary future work. We would love to chat about NPR’s archives and transcripts data processing workflows, how technical changes are made within organizations, and how other archives are managing their descriptive records and audiovisual data!
OpenArchive is a nonprofit organization that co-develops/creates responsive, secure, verifiable, and ethical archiving tools - like our free, open-source secure archiving app Save - and resources with human rights defenders and NGOs to advance justice and accountability. In this poster presentation, Nicole Martin, Teague Schneiter, and Natalie Cadranel discuss OpenArchive’s new research and novel development using the Decentralized Web (DWeb) as a backend offers a more robust, distributed, verifiable, secure way to archive media. DWeb as a backend enables: community control of collections, preservation of data as evidence, circumvention of content takedowns or censorship, and the verification and protection of sensitive information. In environments that prioritize data integrity, authenticity and security, decentralized alternatives can provide archives a way to build community-based infrastructure, transition away from big tech, and securely store human rights data. This presentation will also cover some of the emergent threats and challenges when working with decentralized storage technology.
Crown Point, Indiana April 1934. The last moving images of gangster John Dillinger, taken at the Crown Point County Jail 33 days before he was shot and killed.
It is estimated that approximately 80% of archival footage from the American Civil Rights Movement is held by local US television news stations (Frick, 2023). Unfortunately, this footage is unaccounted for and/or has not been properly preserved. This poster highlights the contributions and impact of Dr. Grace McFadden’s oral history project, The Quest for Civil Rights: Oral Recollections of Black South Carolinians, which aired on South Carolina’s WIS-TV. In this project, Dr. McFadden interviewed African-American activists and professionals who were influential in the fight for American civil rights, especially in South Carolina. This footage centers African-American voices in South Carolinian history and makes space for African-American women to tell their stories, which were often overlooked when documenting the Civil Rights Movement. The Quest for Civil Rights footage has been preserved by the University of South Carolina’s Moving Image Research Collection (MIRC) and Dr. McFadden’s interviews can be viewed on their website.
Discover the journey of WQED Multimedia, the nation’s first community-supported public media station, as they launch their first archival program. This poster delves into WQED’s rich history and efforts to preserve its Black history collections. Learn the foundational steps for building a new archive and how the collaborative spirit within the archival community supports that work. Share your thoughts on establishing a new program through an interactive survey and help shape the future of media archives.
AI companies are eager to amass collections of content to train both large language and niche models. In some cases, companies turn to archives and pay handsomely for what, for them, is valuable and unique raw material. Only the largest and most well-resourced archives have been able to take advantage of this opportunity. We are exploring models that better highlight the value of archival content, give institutions more opportunity for partnerships, and try to give more balance in negotiations. We outline how rights issues can be resolved with more technical knowledge and better understanding of intended use of archival material. Importantly, we propose how, working collectively, archives can foster a new revenue stream for digitization, preservation, and improved access to their collections.
Jimi Jones is the archivist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States. He is also adjunct instructor at the School of Information Sciences at Illinois. For the past decade Jimi has been studying standards for moving image digitization—the social aspects... Read More →
A decade into the magnetic media crisis, video’s obsolescence means that playback equipment is getting harder to maintain, making digital reformatting efforts more difficult. Expert knowledge of how to repair and maintain VCRs and VTRs is becoming rarer, and the supply of original parts is decreasing. Without access to industrial manufacturing processes, new parts can’t be made. Or can they? This presentation will explore 3D printing’s current and potential applications for repairing VCRs and VTRs and give an overview of the technologies and software involved in workflows for 3D Printing for Repair (3DPfR). The presenter will also discuss their own experiences with a 3DPfR project for a Sony SLV-740HF consumer VHS player, including their successes, failures and areas for future research. This presentation will cover how 3D printing can be used to repair legacy video equipment and the work that still needs to be done to reach this goal.
AMIA members are among the leading professional and scholarly voices worldwide on issues surrounding the preservation, archiving, and restoration of film, video, and digital moving images. They write not only for AMIA’s journal, The Moving Image, but also author books and articles for a wide variety of publications. This session offers a sneak peek at a few upcoming publications, with time for Q&A with the authors / editors. Have something you’re working on and want to figure out how to get it in the world? Curious about publishing? Want to make folks aware of something you’ve just published? Join us for a mostly informal chat. Let’s get our work out there!
Karen F. Gracy, Ph.D., is an associate professor with tenure at the School of Library and Information Science of Kent State University. She possesses an MLIS and PhD in Library and Information Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MA in critical studies of... Read More →
Jimi Jones is the archivist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States. He is also adjunct instructor at the School of Information Sciences at Illinois. For the past decade Jimi has been studying standards for moving image digitization—the social aspects... Read More →
Brian Real (he/him) is an assistant professor in the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky. He holds a PhD in information studies and a master of library science from the University of Maryland. His primary research areas are the historical impact of federal... Read More →
Liza Palmer, librarian, is managing editor for the Association of Moving Image Archivists’ The Moving Image; co-editor-in-chief of the magazine Film Matters; and contributing editor for Film International. She is an academic publishing specialist in Film Studies at the University... Read More →
Devin Orgeron is emeritus professor of film and Media studies at North Carolina State University where he taught and researched for nearly two decades. Along with numerous articles in the field’s leading journals, he is the author of ROAD MOVIES, co-editor of LEARNING WITH THE LIGHTS... Read More →
Anthony Silvestri is journals manager at the University of Minnesota Press. Prior to joining the Press, he received his Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from Indiana University. His research has been published in the Moving Image, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television... Read More →
Michael Marlatt (he/him) is a disabled film archivist, archival accessibility consultant, and archival producer based in New Brunswick, Canada. Michael received his PhD at York University in the Communication & Culture program where he examined accessibility gaps in moving image archival... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 2:00pm - 4:00pm CST
Session
Join us for an insightful discussion on the transformative impact of AI on audiovisual archiving. Traditional methods of transcription, indexing, and cataloguing have been laborious and costly, yet essential for enhancing the usability of collections. Over the past decade, AI has promised a revolution in these processes, though its effectiveness has been debated. Recent advancements, including OpenAI's Whisper and ChatGPT, have significantly enhanced AI transcription accuracy and mainstreamed AI technologies. Concurrent developments in AI Named Entity Recognition (NER) further facilitate the automatic extraction of key entities. Organizations like the USC Shoah Foundation, University of Kentucky's Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, and the TheirStory oral history platform have embraced these innovations, integrating them with tools. Join Sandra Aguilar (USC), Doug Boyd (University of Kentucky), and Zack Ellis (TheirStory) as they share their experiences, explore the benefits and challenges, and discuss the ethical considerations shaping the future of audiovisual archiving.
Sandra oversees metadata and indexing at University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, an online educational resource which showcases over 56,000 video life histories of individuals who survived the Holocaust or other genocides... Read More →
In this session, TAMI seeks to provide archivists with insight into how to implement a lab build-out at a fraction of the cost. In 2023, the organization was able to complete a digitization lab build-out for $4,700 by using tactics such as crowdsourcing donations through a successful "Equipment Round-Up" campaign on social media, purchasing consumer-grade equipment, and gleaning second-hand sales. In the spirit of knowledge-sharing, our presentation offers a down-to-earth approach that will reveal "imperfections" in our workflow and destigmatize affordable solutions to solve costly problems. We'll also cover the merits of an apprenticeship model, which has become integral to the lab's daily operations. By de-centering the emphasis on advanced degrees to work in the moving image archiving field, we have increased our capacity while simultaneously breaking down barriers to entering this elusive field by encouraging those with no formal archival training or degrees to join Team TAMI.
Ari Negovschi Regalado (CalArts '14, UIUC MS/LIS '22) is the Technical Director for the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. As the Technical Director, she oversees the lifecycle of audiovisual media digitization and has formed partnerships with Entre Film Center, Project Row Houses... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 2:30pm - 4:00pm CST
Session
How do collaborations between artists, community members and archives push forward archival methodologies and practices? This session will present strategies of curatorial and artistic modes of collaboration within the archive, using Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) as a case study. Artist/filmmaker and curator Tara Merenda Nelson and curator, scholar, and archivist, Almudena Escobar López will co-present on the central role of the archives within VSW’s public programming initiatives. Merenda Nelson will present on VSW’s Community Curator Program and the seasonal Salon series that directly connect members of the community with VSW archives, as well as the media transfer laboratory. Escobar López will discuss VSW’s artistic residencies and their use of archives as an example of archival intervention and inquiry.
Almudena Escobar López is a scholar, curator, and archivist based in Tkaronto. She is Assistant Professor on Film History, Film Preservation and Collection Management at the School of Image Arts of the Toronto Metropolitan University. She holds a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies... Read More →
Tara Merenda Nelson is the Curator and Director of Public Programs at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY, where she oversees a collection of over 10,000 16mm film and early video titles. Tara is the lead programmer for the VSW Salon series, and is the Managing Editor for VSW... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 3:15pm - 3:45pm CST
Session
This presentation will introduce video content summarization (VCS) and its real-world applications. We'll explore how artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs) and large vision-language models (LVLMs), can be used to understand and summarize video content, and then we will show how pipelined approaches with proper pre- and post-processing elements can improve the results. Additionally, we'll cover the effectiveness of AI in video summarization and the challenges that remain. Our goal is to provide the audience with a broad understanding of VCS and how AI is transforming this field. We'll also showcase a practical implementation of VCS pipelines in the CLAMS project, an open-source AI-assisted metadata extraction platform developed via collaboration between Brandeis University and AAPB (GBH MLA).
Kyeongmin Rim is a PhD student working on computational semantics. After working at an industry-leading NLP company in Korea, he returned to academia pursuing Computational Linguistics at Brandeis University. As a doctoral research assistant, he’s been working on various projects... Read More →
Earlier in the week practitioners and managers of digital audiovisual collections joined with developers and engineers for an intense day of collaboration to develop and refine simple tools for digital audiovisual preservation and access. Today we’ll review their work and hear the results of some of these collaborations.
Tim joined BAVC Media in 2019 as a Preservation Technician, following audiovisual archiving internships with the DC Punk Archive and Smithsonian Archives of American Art. He studied Archive Science at University of Maryland and Audio Engineering at American University. He is now the... Read More →
Annie Schweikert (she/her/hers) is a digital archivist at Stanford Libraries, where she processes, preserves, and makes accessible born-digital archival collections. She is a graduate of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program at New York University. Annie is also... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 3:15pm - 4:15pm CST
Session
Since 2021 the Federal Agency Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) Audio-Visual Working Group has maintained an active Accessibility Subgroup focused on documenting accessibility guidelines and processes for cultural heritage institutions and supporting accessibility features in AV archives tools. At this session FADGI and project partners will present lightning talks on the subgroup’s initiatives and related work. Improvements and feature enhancements to embARC, vrecord, BWF MetaEdit, and ffmpeg will be discussed, as will four recent FADGI publications: Definitions for Key Accessibility Features for Digital Audiovisual Collections Content, Software Accessibility for Open Source Digital Preservation Applications, Guidelines: Embedded Metadata in WebVTT Files, and The Current State of Accessibility Features for Audiovisual Collections Content in Five FADGI Institutions. The subgroup’s products assist archives and libraries to serve users who are blind, have low vision, are deaf or hard of hearing, prefer to read transcripts and subtitles, or prefer sign language.
Charlie Hosale is an archivist at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, where he processes multi-format archival collections. He has participated in the Federal Agency Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) since 2018. He regularly contributes to the Library’s... Read More →
As the Founder and CEO of digital asset management consulting firm, AVP (https://weareavp.com), Chris has spent nearly two decades partnering with and guiding over 250 organizations on how to put digital assets at the fingertips of users, making them easier to access, share, protect... Read More →
Bertram has over 20 years of experience leading consultants and development teams to create innovative, flexible, and user-center software for clients where digital assets are a core function of their organization. Before founding Medex Forensics, Bert served as Managing Director... Read More →
Crystal Sanchez is a media archivist at the Smithsonian Institution on the Digital Asset Management team (DAMS), working with digital audiovisual collections from across the Smithsonian’s diverse Museums, Archives, Libraries, Research Centers, and the Zoo. As a moving image archivist... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 3:15pm - 4:15pm CST
Session
Throughout the 1970s, video artists were studying, deconstructing, and recomposing surplus scientific and consumer video equipment in pursuit of new technological languages. What emerged from this period of invention were hand built video tools such as the PaikAbe synthesizer and the Jones analog/digital synthesizers - machines that had been custom crafted (or ‘hacked’) by artists who were pushing the boundaries of existing technologies to create instruments that could serve a purpose beyond that which was deemed commercially desirable. Fifty years later, the work made by these innovators requires equally inventive workflows and technologies in order to be preserved. This session will explore archivist Nilson Carroll’s (Visual Studies Workshop) preservation of works made by video artist Peer Bode (Experimental Television Center, Institute for Electronic Arts) in the 1970s. Carroll has been working closely with Bode to preserve the artist’s early experiments recorded on ½” videotape, many of which feature “glitches” that push the video signal to its limits or display the signal in new ways. Examples of Bode’s tapes will be shown and the problem solving that went into the preservation of those tapes will be discussed.
Nilson Carroll is the Assistant Curator and Preservation Specialist at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York. At VSW, Nilson manages the Media Transfer Lab and specializes in the preservation of videotapes. Nilson has worked to preserve and make accessible large portions... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 3:45pm - 4:15pm CST
Session
This presentation discusses the National Archives of Singapore’s experience using ICA’s new archival description standard, Records-in-Contexts (RiC) to integrate archival descriptions for audio-visual (AV) and paper-based archives. With a specific focus on broadcast and sound archives, the presentation will assess how RiC addresses perennial integration and data modelling challenges for AV resources, evaluate how other AV-centric ontologies may be used to complement and/or extend RiC, and propose design patterns that may be referenced by other institutions seeking to use RiC for archival description of AV materials.
Film was the best and only choice shooting, finishing, exhibition, and archiving of theatrical motion pictures for over a century, and has been eclipsed in the past 25 years by digital technologies. However, in spite of the near-obliteration of film infrastructure at every step of the process, that long history has led many to believe that film remains that best choice for long-term archiving, This paper will detail the “before” (the starting points of restorations and contemporary movies) and the “after” (what deliverables will be needed in 100 years). Focus will also be given to three often-overlooked factors: the long-term cost of film and its migration problems; the inability of film to archive sound; and the reliability of digital archiving, including how common mistakes can be avoided. The goal remains to make, finish, and archive motion pictures in a truly future-proof, and not a past-proof, manner.
Larry Blake is a supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer of feature films. He has mixed more than 65 narrative features since 1989, and was also the supervising sound editor on 55 of them. Included in this number are 33 features and four television seasons with Steven Soderbergh... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 4:30pm - 5:00pm CST
Session
Nitrate film is often one of the oldest materials held in audiovisual collections. It is a challenging format; stable when stored in good conditions but potentially dangerous when poorly managed. With the development of scanning technology that captures the unique tints and tones of nitrate many archives are pursuing active programs of digitisation and access. This raises some interesting challenges with the movement and handling of nitrate materials and whether our current procedures accurately reflect the actual risks of the format. Do we really understand when nitrate is dangerous? Should we reconsider storage conditions when building new facilities? Do we have the right information available to determine and manage the risks AND to ensure that beautiful nitrate film content is available to our audiences.
Courtney Holschuh is an Archives Technician in the nitrate film vaults at The Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center where she has been caring for the Library's vast collection of 145,000 nitrate film reels since 2023. From 2018 to 2023, she was a Senior Film... Read More →
Prue Castles is the Conservation Manager at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA). Graduating with a Masters in Conservation of Cultural Materials from the University of Canberra and working in the museum sector she now oversees the conservation activities at the... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 4:30pm - 5:30pm CST
Session
This panel aims to guide archivists on the critical process of negotiating rights before accepting audiovisual donations. Our goal is to empower attendees with the necessary knowledge and tools to establish clear rights agreements and ensure ethical usage of donated materials, thus enhancing their collections' value and accessibility. The panel will emphasize best practices for acquiring news and documentary collections, highlighting the importance of addressing rights at the point of acquisition.
Karen Cariani, is the David O. Ives Executive Director of the GBH Archives and GBH Project Director for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a collaboration with the Library of Congress to preserve and provide a centralized on-line access to content created by public media... Read More →
Director, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia/Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection
Ruta Abolins is Director of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries. She has worked in moving image archives for the past 30 years. She currently manages a collection of over 350,000 analog audiovisual items and over 200,000... Read More →
Director of Copyright, Permissions and Information Policy, New York Public Library
Greg Cram is the Director of Copyright, Permissions and Information Policy at The New York Public Library. Greg endeavors to make the Library’s collections broadly available to researchers and the public. He is responsible for developing and implementing policies and practices around... Read More →
Lance Watsky is a seasoned Motion Picture Archivist with nearly thirty years of experience in preserving, digitizing, and licensing film collections for museums, libraries, archives, and companies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from the University of South Florida and a... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 4:30pm - 5:30pm CST
Session
This panel will focus on community engagement and participation in the DVRescue Project. Since 2019, MIPoPS and RiceCapades has worked on the NEH funded DVRescue project, developing the procedures, tools and documentation to assist audiovisual archivists with preserving their DV videotapes. Through this work, we have developed, tested and modified a variety of tools and documentation that encompass a set of best practices we recommend to the greater archival community for all aspects of DV videotape preservation, including capturing, troubleshooting, analyzing, and quality control. The DVRescue team will provide some updates on the project and demonstrate the latest builds. Members of the archival community participating in the DVRescue project will describe their experience and practical application of the tools.
Morgan Morel is the Video Lab Supervisor at the Library of Congress National Audiovisual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA USA. He has worked in various video preservation labs across the Unites States, including George Blood LP and BAVC Media. He is focused on deploying open source... Read More →
Dave Rice is an audiovisual archivist and technologist and a graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. Dave’s work focuses on the application of open source technology for audiovisual preservation as well as facilitating coordination and collaboration between... Read More →
Preservation Archivist, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
Brianna works as a Preservation Archivist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Film Archive on the Blackhawk Films Collection where she oversees a large-scale digitization project—the primary aim of which is to scan to protect rare and under-represented titles within... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 4:30pm - 5:30pm CST
Session
Cinema’s First Nasty Women is a multi-part research, curation, and outreach project focused on expanding critical engagement with long-overlooked feminist films and filmmakers of the silent period. This session will present the results of the project’s most recent study: a demographics and attitudes survey of contemporary silent cinema audiences. The anonymous online survey was issued in spring of 2024, and received more than 3,000 responses. Survey questions covered basic demographic data, film viewing habits, exposure to silent cinema, familiarity with silent cinema organizations, and interest in feminist film scholarship. Presentation attendees can expect to come away with a more accurate understanding of the silent film community’s social profile in terms of gender, race, sexuality, age, and class. Analysis and discussion will explore practical takeaways for marketing, outreach, and advocacy decisions--but also raise questions about the purpose and impact of public programming.
Maggie Hennefeld is Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the author of Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema (Columbia UP, 2024) and co-curator of the 4-disc DVD/Blu-ray set Cinema’s First Nasty... Read More →
Laura Horak is Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab and Transgender Media Portal. She investigates the history of transgender and queer film and media in the United States, Canada, and Sweden. She is co-curator of the 99-film Bluray... Read More →
Russell Zych currently serves as a Media Preservation Technician at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Russell is also a Research Assistant for the Cinema's First Nasty Women project and a volunteer admin for TAPE Los Angeles, a nonprofit that provides low-cost video digitization... Read More →
Friday December 6, 2024 5:00pm - 5:30pm CST
Session
Archival Screening Night is a showcase for AMIA members’ recent acquisitions, discoveries and preservation efforts. The program represents the magnificent spectrum of media formats, works, and collections protected and preserved by the AMIA community.
Friday December 6, 2024 7:30pm - 9:30pm CST
Screening
