2018 Conference Presentations

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Revisiting Chemical Reconditioning of Acetate Films for Improved Digital Reformatting
Diana Little, The MediaPreserve, A Division of Preservation Technologies, L.P.

Cellulose acetate motion picture films can be subject to brittleness and dimensional problems due to polymer degradation and plasticizer loss.  Despite advances in film scanning technology, these problems continue to diminish digital reformatting quality or preclude reformatting at all.  Chemical reconditioning, developed to de-shrink for reprinting, restores mechanical and dimensional properties and must be evaluated as a compliment to scanning for optimum reformatting.  In a proof-of-concept study of degraded 16mm films, we observed a statistically significant improvement in objective physical (thickness) and mechanical (MIT Folding Endurance) criteria in two of six films following chemical reconditioning. We also commenced a production team survey of a 116-film collection for key scanning criteria before and after chemical reconditioning to determine how it may best compliment scanning.

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SaveFile: Towards a Games Archive at New York University
Annie Schweikert, New York University
Sigridur Regina Sigurthorsdottir, New York University

This poster addresses an initiative to establish a formal archive of video games designed by MFA students in the Game Design program at New York University. In this process, we gathered information about previous efforts to archive student work; interviewed students and faculty to gauge interest, hopes, and concerns; designed an accession form and workflow for accession; and ingested a test accession to a set of hard drives and backups, made accessible to students at a station in the Game Center Library. The poster will explain our implementation tiers and how they address the goals of preservation, access, and longevity.    The project was sponsored by a Tisch School of the Arts Interdepartmental Grant, administered by Tisch’s Office of the Dean and Graduate Student Organization.

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FIAF and Latin America: Towards a Global Film Preservation Movement
Rielle Navitski, University of Georgia

Upon its creation in 1938, the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) announced its global ambitions in its choice of name. Yet only American and European institutions participated in its founding, and under a third of current member archives are based in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Seeking to deepen our historical understanding of moving-image archiving and the geopolitical factors that continue to shape it today, this presentation charts efforts to build an international film preservation movement in the post-WWII period. Focusing on Latin America, which witnessed the first widespread expansion of film archiving outside the US and Europe, the presentation draws on institutional documents recently made available by FIAF to outline the opportunities and challenges represented by Latin American film archives during FIAF’s early years and their implications for film preservation efforts eighty years after FIAF’s founding.

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Ten Years of Success: The Nitrate Committee’s Flickr Page
Rachel Del Gaudio, Library of Congress

In 2008 the Nitrate Film Interest Group (now Nitrate Committee) created a Flickr page dedicated to identifying unknown films. Providing anonymity for archives and collectors alike, the page accepts images and videos of anything that needs to be identified. With a 40% success rate from the over 800 different unknown films that have been submitted, the page is proof that crowdsourcing works. This report will be given by Nitrate Committee co-chair Rachel Del Gaudio, who has run the Flickr page since the beginning. She will cover the history and successes of the Flickr page as well as the pitfalls it has experienced in its ten years. A great example of how an idea expressed in a committee meeting can lead to an actual continuing project, this report will be helpful for anyone in the field from students to heads of archives.

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Sharing (The Workload) Is Caring (for The Work): Ethical and Effective Strategies for Preserving Magnetic Media Collections of Community-Engaged Archives
Rachel L Mattson, University of Minnesota Libraries
Jesse Hocking, University of Wisconsin
Amy Sloper, University of Wisconsin
Morgan Morel, Bay Area Video Coalition
Sophie Glidden-Lyon, La MaMa Archives

This panel explores the possibilities that collaborative, cross-institutional, post-custodial partnerships can offer community-engaged archives in their efforts to steward their audiovisual collections. Panelists will present a case study in which a small, community-run archives (The Archives of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club) partnered with a digitization vendor (Bay Area Video Coalition) and a university-based archives (The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research) to digitize, preserve, and expand access to a collection of unique, half-inch open reel videos documenting 1970s-era experimental theater and performance. Funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the project uses a post-custodial model to support effective, affordable digital preservation, discoverability, and access.

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Poster:  ISAN:  Identifying Audiovisual Content in a Digitally Disrupted World
Rose St. Pierre, ISAN Canada

This poster presentation will inform delegates about the benefits of adopting the International Standard Audiovisual Number (ISAN), an ISO approved standard which allows stakeholders to track, manage, and identify audiovisual works of all formats, digital or analogue.  Find out why your colleagues around the world are registering their catalogues in the state-of-the-art ISAN database.

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Born-Digital Camera-Original Video: Practices and Risks
Taylor McBride, Smithsonian Institution
Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution

In the Spring of 2018, a survey was conducted of video production practices at the Smithsonian. The survey asked staff to describe their current production tools and practices and pressing archival needs. Survey results highlighted the need to develop a risk-assessment approach to analyze specific, common, born-digital, camera original video formats and make decisions on which formats to retain and support as an Institution. We believe that current file format sustainability factors and risk analysis/mitigation documentation in the field of video preservation falls short when it comes to born-digital formats, and this talk aims to begin bridging that gap. Our talk will open analysis of these formats to the field, encouraging others to participate in documentation of format specifics through shared and open documentation. Through this project, we hope to create a tool that allows us to be proactive in planning for archival and preservation actions for these files.

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Poster: Vinegar Syndrome: Coming out of the Closet
Robin Zalben, Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive

The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive recently completed a review of our vinegar vault.  Vinegar syndrome is a horrible end to a film, and we have some recommendations about checking your films, how to keep track of what is deteriorating and what can be done with the films before they are lost.

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Strategies and Outcomes for Public Digitization Events: A Case Study
Andrew Weaver, Washington State University
John Vallier, University of Washington Libraries
Libby Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound
Ari Lavigne, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound
Dylan Flesch, KEXP

In July of 2018 a diverse group of institutions including KEXP, University of Washington Libraries, Washington State University Libraries, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound (MIPoPS) and Seattle Public Libraries will pool resources and expertise to hold a public audiovisual digitization fair. This fair will invite members of the Seattle area community to bring a wide range of personal audiovisual materials and have them inspected and digitized, with the option of granting permission for broadcast via KEXP and/or deposit into the University of Washington Archives.   This presentation will use this event as a case study for holding public digitization days and for coordinating events of this nature across a large group of institutions with varying sizes, strengths and mandates. Concrete examples will be shown from every phase of the process (planning, execution and aftermath) with explanations of decisions made, the logic behind decisions and their success (or lack thereof).

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Enhancing Exploration of Audiovisual Collections with Computer-based Annotation Techniques
Johan Oomen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Giovanna Fossati, EYE Filmmuseum
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University
Christian Gosvig Olesen, University of Amsterdam

Automatic annotation techniques for metadata extraction enable fundamentally new uses, comprising (1) “Distant reading” approaches, meaning studying trends and latency across entire collections rather than one specific item (2) radically new exploratory interface and interaction designs (3) new ways of linking collections. As such methods enter our community and open new perspectives, this panel reflects on their opportunities for exploring archival content in novel ways. To do so, this session’s panelists present four cases from the US and the Netherlands that facilitate discussion about possibilities for audiovisual archives, focusing on how four different user groups may benefit; the general public, archivists, artists and scholars – while providing practical insights.

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Workshop:  Archivist’s Guide to QuickTime
Dave Rice, CUNY
Annie Schweikert, NYU MIAP

QuickTime can refer to a video encoding, a proprietary Apple file format, a profile of an ISO file format, or a video player. You can actually use QuickTime to put QuickTime into your QuickTime. This workshop provides a technical tour of all things QuickTime with an emphasis on QuickTime, the audiovisual container.    This workshop will review the architecture of QuickTime and demonstrate many features relevant to archival work, such as how significant characteristics such as interlacement, edit lists, color data, user metadata, timecode, and aspect ratio are stored (or not) within the format. We’ll cover QuickTime policies such as TN2162 that add additional requirements for the usage of uncompressed video with QuickTime. Join us to review how to inspect, validate, respond to, and manipulation QuickTime files.

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Case Study: Quality Control for Media Digitization
Darrell Myers, Indiana University
Mike Casey, Indiana University

Quality control is a critical part of media digitization projects that requires the same diligence and consideration as digitization and other preservation system functions to achieve accurate long-term preservation. Small mistakes can have large consequences for future access and research. This presentation will explore the types of QC used for audio, video and film by Indiana University’s Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative, which will digitally preserve over 300,000 AV items by 2020. It will detail the comprehensive, machine-based, automated QC system built in-house as well as approaches to human-intensive QC. Software (open-source and proprietary) that enables review of 37TB of content daily will be explored. Finally, the presentation will cast quality control as an exercise in risk management, examining areas where IU has chosen to reduce, avoid, transfer or accept risk. The basic principles and approach utilized are relevant to any institution undertaking media digitization, regardless of size.

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Everything in Your Archive is Now Fake
John Tariot, Film Video Digital
Gaurav Oberoi, Allen Institute for AI
Yvonne Ng, Witness

“It’s been a little bit of a fluke, historically, that we’re able to rely on videos as evidence that something really happened.” Ian Goodfellow, Google Brain. In early 2018 users of a simple new program, harnessing advances in AI and graphics processing, began creating alarming, inexpensively-produced and eerily-realistic pornography of celebrities- created by face-swapping their likenesses onto pornographic actors. This was the dawn of “deepfakes.” Today, with just a pool of pictures and a click of a mouse, it is easier than ever to concoct increasingly believable deepfake videos of anyone. Deepfakes sow doubt and undermine the credibility of all moving images. New deepfakes will include revenge-video and fake news of politicians, law enforcement, and the military, but also hybrid-reality experiences with actors and avatars both real and not, living or dead. This session will introduce deepfakes, show how they’re made, recent examples, and discuss both their impact and opportunity.

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Nazi Propaganda as Linked Open Data: A Case Study
Julia Vytopil, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Tom de Smet, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Lizzy Jongma, Dutch Network for War Collections WWII (NOB)

There are over 400 World War 2 collections in the Netherlands, many of them digitized. Online publication however lags behind, due to the complexity of copyright and privacy matters. To stimulate open access to World War 2 collections, the Network War Resources was founded in 2016. The Network pushes its 73 partners to publish metadata and content on their thematic online portal.  When NWR asked the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision for WW2 collections to publish online, the National Socialist propaganda collection surfaced. Copyright research suggests a public domain status. Ethical questions arise, however. What about the privacy of people shown in these films as part of the national socialist movement? How ethical is it to “give away” propaganda films for free re-use?  In our presentation we will discuss the role of a thematic network like Network War Resources and present the outcomes of the National Socialist propaganda case.

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Poster Presentation:
Audiovisual Accessibility: Evaluating Workflows for Closed Captioning and Transcripts
Molly Rose Steed, University of Utah
Jeremy Myntti, University of Utah

The University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library is working on a grant funded project to explore methods for generating and displaying closed captions and transcripts for digital audiovisual resources.  Building upon the work of other archivists determined to achieve full accessibility for their audiovisual collections, this poster outlines the parameters of the University of Utah’s ongoing project. This poster will include information about the project timeline, the variety of archival media being transcribed, and the methods, workflows, and technologies being examined by the project team.  A full report on the completed project, including staff-time and cost analyses and the systems adopted by the University of Utah will be forthcoming in Summer 2019.

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In-House Digitization With the Lossless FFV1 Codec at the University of Notre Dame Archives
Angela Fritz, University of Notre Dame
Erik Dix, University of Notre Dame

This poster will illustrate how the University of Notre Dame Archives has developed and implemented analog reformatting workflows to digitize over 4000 video tapes in its holdings. The presentation will provide an overview of analog to digital reformatting workflows for both preservation and access purposes, as well as outline the implementation of FFV1 as an archiving codec.  Additionally, this poster will provide an overview of how digitization can be integrated into managing large AV collections and outline various stages of the process including: pre-accession assessment, rights management, accessioning, preservation assessment and conservation treatment, metadata creation/finding aid integration, bit-level preservation and associated digital storage strategies.

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Open Source:  vrecord: An Open Source Case Study
Annie Schweikert, NYU MIAP
Savannah Campbell, Whitney Museum of American Art
Libby Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound
Andrew Weaver, Washington State University

The open source process doesn’t end once a tool is sent out into the world. Many tools represent the ongoing work of multiple authors engaged in a collaborative process of maintenance and improvement. vrecord, free and open source software that captures a video signal and turns it into a digital file, is one such tool. With 13 developers and many more users who have contributed through feedback and testing, it is an example of cooperation and support across the AMIA community.  In this case study of open source development, four presenters will discuss their work with vrecord at different points on the contribution chain. Whether early-stage coding, later-stage refinement, testing, use, feedback, or (often) all of the above, there is space for everyone to contribute to open source tools. This panel will demystify the open source contribution process through the lens of vrecord, and address practical steps towards getting involved.

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The Bob Baker Marionette Theater: Archiving with Oral Histories
Brianna Toth, Bob Baker Marionette Theater/UCLA MLIS MAS
Adam Foster, Bob Baker Marionette Theater/UCLA MLIS MAS
Kate Papageorge-Schneiderman, UCLA MLIS / The Walt Disney Company

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is a high functioning volunteer run space with a rich history of supporting the underrepresented artistry of puppetry and the allied arts within the entertainment industry. As volunteers, we were tasked with creating an inventory of the theater’s vast and eclectic multimedia archive. However, with Bob Baker’s passing, much of the archive’s organizational structure has been lost. To understand the creative efforts of this community space we have had to rely on a collection of oral histories, television interviews, and experimental test footage. It was with these materials that we believe a historical context can be understood, and used to describe the paratextual records in the collection. For this reason, the project is a compelling model for how the preservation of moving image materials can give agency to community spaces. It also provides examples of ethical dilemmas archivists should recognize when reviewing such personal material.

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Open Source:  Reduce the Noise: Synchronizing Newbies, Admins and Open Source Tools
Michael Campos-Quinn, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Susan Barrett, Arizona State University Library

This panel discussion contrasts the viewpoints of a staff member and an administrator when evaluating open source software. Michael Campos-Quinn will present the subjective experience of a novice coder navigating recent open source digital preservation projects at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). We will explore the decisions that have led BAMPFA to a combination of open source, proprietary, and DIY software and give an overview of some key open source tools used at BAMPFA. Some practical details will include a rousing exhortation to get under the hood of your favorite tools (even/especially if you are not a seasoned programmer). What is a Pull Request and will it hurt? How do you know when you need to ask your archival community for help (and how do you do it)? What physical and staff resources can be repurposed when migrating systems? Susan Barrett will present a basic framework for selecting open source tools and how to prepare a proposal for administration. Software selection in archives and libraries is unique to each institution — some have formal proposal and project management processes, others not-so-much. Susan will share strategies to convince your administrator to commit time, people or financial resources to your new and exciting software project.

 

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Nazi Propaganda as Linked Open Data: A Case Study
Julia Vytopil, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Tom de Smet, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Lizzy Jongma, Dutch Network for War Collections WWII (NOB)

There are over 400 World War 2 collections in the Netherlands, many of them digitized. Online publication however lags behind, due to the complexity of copyright and privacy matters. To stimulate open access to World War 2 collections, the Network War Resources was founded in 2016. The Network pushes its 73 partners to publish metadata and content on their thematic online portal.  When NWR asked the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision for WW2 collections to publish online, the National Socialist propaganda collection surfaced. Copyright research suggests a public domain status. Ethical questions arise, however. What about the privacy of people shown in these films as part of the national socialist movement? How ethical is it to “give away” propaganda films for free re-use?  In our presentation we will discuss the role of a thematic network like Network War Resources and present the outcomes of the National Socialist propaganda case.

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Building, Moving, and Managing Audiovisual Preservation Facilities
Dinah Handel, Stanford University
Tre Berney, Cornell University
Michael Angeletti, Stanford University
Lorena Ramirez-Lopez, Consultant
Siobhan Hagan, DCPL/MARMIA

In this session, panelists will share their experiences planning and preparing for an audio-visual facilities move, expanding digitization labs, coordinating and sharing space with people and equipment outside of audio-visual preservation, and building audio-visual labs in temporary or mobile spaces. Attendees can expect concrete advice from those that have built and moved a/v preservation labs of all shapes and sizes, including hard lessons learned along the way and what could have been done differently in hindsight. The intention for this panel is for all session participants to: feel empowered in managing their physical lab space; walk away with new insights into facilities-related issues; and encourage conversation and strategizing around audio-visual preservation infrastructure.

 

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Open Source Lightening Talk:  Case Study – Digitizing One in Ten People
Nathan Avant

Presentation Slides (link)

 

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Community & Regional Archives: What’s Use Got to Do, Got to Do With It?: Developing a Scholarly User base for Regional AV Archives
Laura Treat, University of North Texas
Casey Davis Kaufman, American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Johan Oomen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
Mary Miller, University of Georgia

To increase support for and use of regional moving image collections, archivists must develop programs that reflect the needs and behaviors of a multi-disciplinary scholarly community. Panelists will present proactive strategies for engaging this user group. Johan Oomen will discuss CLARIAH Media Suite, a research environment for digital humanities and social sciences that serves the needs of scholars using audiovisual media by providing access to collections and their contextual data, as well as the EUscreen network, which supports scholarly research in pan-European television history. Casey Davis Kaufman will discuss how the American Archive of Public Broadcasting is engaging scholars, including their Scholarly and Education Advisory committees, exhibit curation, student collaborations, and tailored access policies. Mary Miller will describe how the University of Georgia’s Brown Media Archives supports teaching learning, and scholarship centered on their media archives collections through their Special Collections Library Faculty Teaching Fellowship.

Johan Oomen presentation (link)
Session recording (from livestream)

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Permanencia Voluntaria: Mexico’s Underdog Archive of Popular Cinema
Viviana Garcia Besne, Permanencia Voluntaria
Peter Conheim, Cinema Preservation Alliance
Sean Savage, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

On the fringes of Mexico’s rich cinematic history are the exploitation and monster movies best described as “popular cinema,” the most enduring of these are the films featuring the masked wrestler, El Santo. Despite their undeniable cultural impact such films are typically held in contempt by Mexico’s film establishment. Permanencia Voluntaria, in the small town of Tepoztlan, has set out to preserve and restore these neglected gems in unique partnerships with the Academy Film Archive, UCLA Film and Television Archive and director Nicolas Winding Refn. In the midst of these efforts, a massive earthquake struck the region in September 2017, sending the archive of original elements into complete disarray and exposing the collection to flooding. This presentation will detail the international disaster response, describe the restoration of the first two Santo films (both Cuba-Mexico co-productions released in 1961), and address the ongoing sustainability challenges of this regional archive.

Video (Link)

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