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 →
