Program Information

Posted on September 16, 2016

The Preliminary Program is subject to change.

Tuesday . November 8
Wednesday . November 9
Thursday . November 10
Friday . November 11
Saturday . November 12

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As part of the 2016 program, the conference offers four curated streams of programming.

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In addition, there are two days of pre-conference workshops and symposium – November 8-9.

Tuesday November 8

8:30am DigiPres 101: Programming Basics and Preservation Tools [Part I]
Separate workshop registration required

Chairs

Carla Arton, IU Libraries Moving Image Archive
Ashley Blewer, New York Public Library

Speakers

Dave Rice, CUNY Television
Erwin Verbruggen, Netherlands Sound and Vision
Reto Kromer, AV Preservation by reto.ch
Kara Van Malssen, AVPreserve

Through a combination of instruction, question and answer sessions, and hands on practical experience this
workshop will give attendees a broad overview of the diverse range of open source tools used in digital
preservation. The workshop will be broken up into two parts which can be enrolled in separately or as one
full day workshop. Topics and tools covered in Part 1 include Command Line Basics, technical writing, GitHub, and MediaConch/MediaInfo. Part 2 will include FFmpeg, QCTools, and Archivematica.

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9:00am Film Handling 101
Separate workshop registration required

Chairs

Taylor McBride, Smithsonian Institution
Dino Everett, USC SCA Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive

Speakers

Jennifer Jenkins, University of Arizona
Anne Schweikert, Smithsonian Institution

The Small Gauge Amateur Film Committee hosts an intensive one-day workshop covering 16mm, 8/Super 8mm film handling skills, including film identification and inspection, rewind operation, splicing and perforation repair, and hand cleaning. Attendees will have the chance to work hands-on with the film and equipment and will leave with the knowledge of how to safely and confidently handle archival film.

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1:30pm DigiPres 101: Programming Basics and Preservation Tools [Part II]
Separate workshop registration required

Chairs

Carla Arton, IU Libraries Moving Image Archive
Ashley Blewer, New York Public Library

Speakers

Ben Turkus, Bay Area Video Coalition
Dave Rice, CUNY Television
Reto Kromer, AV Preservation by reto.ch
Sarah Romkey, artefactual

8:00am Nominating to the UNESCO ‘Memory of the World’ Register
Separate workshop registration required

Speaker

Ray Edmondson, Archive Associates Pty Ltd

The international reference point for recognising the great documents of human history is the UNESCO “Memory of the World” Register. As well as textual documents, it includes significant films and television programs. Inscription on the register is the end point of an evaluation process which begins with a written nomination in a prescribed format. Inscription is prestigious and highly sought after, and can confer benefits on the successful institution.
This workshop will cover: Choosing what to nominate; Case studies of successful nominations; The evaluation criteria; Preparing and submitting the nomination form; The evaluation process; What happens if you’re successful?; The advocacy and other benefits of inscription. On registration, participants will be emailed a copy of the Memory of the World Companion and encouraged to read it first, to get best value from the workshop.

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8:30am AMIA/DLF Hack Day
Separate registration required

In association with the annual conference, AMIA will host its fourth hack day in partnership with DLF (Digital Library Federation). The event is a unique opportunity for practitioners and managers of digital audiovisual collections to join with developers and engineers for an intense day of collaboration to develop solutions for digital audiovisual preservation and access. It will be fun and practical and a jury will award recognition to the best projects in several categories.

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9:00am Audiovisual & Preservation Technology Basics for Non-Engineers
Separate workshop registration required

Speaker

James Snyder, Library of Congress

This workshop will focus on providing a good technical basis, in plain English, for those who do not already have audiovisual engineering or technical training. It builds on the 2014 half-day seminar, and expands to a full day in response to attendee feedback. It will allow non-technical people of all types to have a good, basic grasp of the technologies, concepts and terms involved in audiovisual recording and reproduction in general, digitization of audiovisual materials, and file-based workflows, metadata and long-term data archiving. Workshop attendees will walk away with a good, operating grasp of the technologies involved, de-mystifying the terms and concepts audiovisual archivists face every day at institutions large and small so they know what materials they are looking at, how to handle their preservation, and how to plan for their digital conversion. They will have a functional knowledge of the terms and concepts required to write grants and contracts for digital conversion and storage of audiovisual materials. Demonstrations with actual equipment and signals will be featured.

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11:00am Community Archiving Workshop
Separate workshop registration required

Community Archiving provides moving image archivists the opportunity to serve the community of Pittsburgh and work with local volunteers to help an organization gain intellectual and physical control over an endangered moving image collection. The workshop provides a space for conference attendees to partner with local volunteers to conduct basic processing, cataloging and inspection of a moving image collection and, by doing so, will learn how to identify risk factors and make preservation recommendations for moving image collections. Attendees will gain experience in working with and training non-archivists to care for their collections. In the process, they will engage in hands-on processing, inspecting, and cataloging audiovisual media. Most importantly, they will build relationships and connections with the Pittsburgh community and learn about local history.

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12:30pm The Reel Thing | Hollywood Theatre
Separate symposium registration required

Chairs

Grover Crisp, Sony Pictures
Michael Friend Sony Pictures

Presenting the latest technologies in audiovisual restoration and preservation. The Reel Thing brings together a unique line up of laboratory technicians, archivists, new media technologists and preservationists. Curated by Grover Crisp and Michael Friend, all proceeds from The Reel Thing: Los Angeles support the programs of AMIA, a 501(3)c organization dedicated to the preservation and use of moving image materials.

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6:00pm Networking & First-Timer Event
Separate registration required

This event brings together students, early professionals, first-timers and seasoned AMIA veterans and leaders for pre-conference networking, meet-and-greet with AMIA leaders, mock interviews, and a resume review! This informal outreach effort helps newcomers make the most of their time at the AMIA conference and provides professional development opportunities for students and early professionals.

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7:00pm Opening Night Reception

It’s opening night in Pittsburgh! A chance to say hello to friends, meet new colleagues, and get ready for the days ahead.

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8:00pm AMIA Trivia Throwdown

Trivia master

Colleen Simpson, Prasad Corporation

Test your skills, win prizes and see if you can be the team that unseats the current AMIA Trivia Champions. Put your name on that monkey trophy! Everyone is welcome – sign up as a team or as an individual table.

Thursday November 10

8:00am AMIA 2016 Welcome

Chair

Andrea Kalas, AMIA President

Please join us for the official Conference welcome and to recognize the 2016 Scholarship and Internship recipients.

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8:30am Plenary | Action for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in AMIA

Chairs

Moriah Ulinskas, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jacqueline Stewart, University of Chicago, Cinema and Media Studies

Speakers

Brian Graney, Indiana University Bloomington
Mark A Puente, Association of Research Libraries
Janet Ceja, Simmons College, School of Library and Information Science
Carmel Curtis, United Nations

This opening plenary is an opportunity for AMIA members to learn about ambitious diversity programs at related professional associations, and ways in which moving image archivists can impact the field when issues of diversity and inclusion are prioritized in their work. Attendees will hear from recipients of the IMLS-funded Mosaic Program (ARL/SAA), and the Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship Program (ALA/University of Pittsburgh) and are intended to engage in a consideration of AMIA’s history and goals regarding diversity. This plenary seeks to catalyze actionable goals which can promote the diversification of AMIA membership, activities, and the moving image archiving and preservation field at large.

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9:45am From Mass Digitization to Description: Indiana University’s Strategy to Overcome the Next Great Challenge

Chair

Chris Lacinak, AVPreserve

Speaker

Jon Dunn, Indiana University

Over the past decade much focus has been placed on mass digitization of legacy audiovisual collections. With progress on this front, today there is a new focus emerging: mass description. In 2014 Indiana University (IU) began an effort to digitize hundreds of thousands of hours of audiovisual materials from across campus, leading to the challenge of describing this extraordinarily diverse set of materials both at scale and at a sufficient level of granularity to enable meaningful and effective discovery. In 2015, with the support of AVPreserve, IU began a strategic planning project to research, analyze and report on technologies, workflows, staffing, timeline and budgets to address this challenge. With presentations from Jon Dunn and Chris Lacinak this session will offer insights into the leading-edge work occurring at IU and present some of the newest technologies and workflows available for rich description of, and improved access to audiovisual collections.

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9:45am EIA: Acknowledge: Energy Resources Status Check

Chair

Caroline Yeager, George Eastman Museum

Speaker

Eric Hittinger, Rochester Institute of Technology

Human dependency on non-renewable fossil fuels has reached a critical point. Moving image archivists need to consider how to preserve moving image collections with lower dependence on fossil fuels or their derivative products by considering alternative energy solutions. This panel will address current understandings of the availability of fossil fuels, their negative effect on our environment, and discuss the emerging alternative technologies that are a critical part of our energy transition.

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9:45am Traumatic Archives: Ethics & Accessibility

Speakers

Rebecca Dillmeier, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Lindsay Zarwell, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Traumatic Archives: Ethics and Accessibility looks at why United States Holocaust Memorial Museum makes its digitized oral history and films collections available on the web. Much of the collection contains sensitive material that can be difficult to watch.The Museum is unique in how accessible it has made its oral testimony and historic films, particularly in the field of Holocaust history. Film archivist Lindsay Zarwell brings years of experience collecting and cataloging this traumatic material. Rebecca Dillmeier is the digital collections manager for oral history and historic film and has been involved in discussions regarding why certain oral testimony collections should be accessible onsite only as well as helping to audit release forms and donor records. They have helped shape the institution’s policies regarding accessibility. This discussion allows for the audience to grapple with issues of institutional loss of control over a narrative and what role an institution plays in mediating graphic material.

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9:45am – 10:45am
Plenary Discussion: Taking Action for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity

Following the morning’s plenary “Action for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in AMIA” this facilitated discussion will bring together committees, task force/working groups, and anyone else who wants to jump in, to brainstorm ideas to incorporate an articulated commitment to diversity and inclusion into their work as reasonable action items- as well as what might be needed from the wider organization (board, membership, resources) to make these ideas edge closer to reality.

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10:15am Automated QC Tools Analysis For a Better and Brighter Future

Speakers

Morgan Oscar Morel, George Blood Audio/Video/Film
Brendan Coates University of California Santa Barbara

The Dave Rice/BAVC QCTools software has provided the A/V preservation community with an invaluable tool for analyzing digitized media. This presentation discusses open-source, python-based tools have been built to read and analyze QCTools reports in order to help automate and streamline the process of video analysis for digitization workflows. This panel will introduce tools that may provide an open-source alternative to QC software systems that are too costly or difficult to implement for smaller institutions, as well as provide an opportunity to advance the discussion of what it means to control for quality when digitizing archival AV materials. The panel is made up of two digitization/ preservation professionals, one from a university library and one from a vendor. The target audience is anybody looking to integrate QCTools into their video workflows, as well as anyone interested in advancing the art of quality control.

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11:00am Black Films & Blu-ray: Strategies for Producing Home Video Packages

Chair

Jacqueline Stewart, University of Chicago

Speakers

Ron Magliozzi, Museum of Modern Art
Jan-Christopher Horak, UCLA Film & Television Archive
Amy Heller, Milestone Films

Home video packages offer exciting opportunities to provide wide access to archival collections. This panel features presentations by archivists, curators, distributors and scholars who have worked on recent DVD and Blu-ray projects. Panelists will describe every step of the process: what it takes to fund, research, curate, package, release and market home video packages. They will describe the technical issues involved in “restoring” and digitizing film elements for the purposes of disc and streaming presentation, and explain issues such as remastering and frame rate adjusting. They will also talk about the “extras” these packages enable, from music and commentary soundtracks to interviews, still images, and other primary documents. The panel’s focus on African American film packages will open up the conversation to consider the benefits and challenges of working with materials that have received scant archival, scholarly and public attention, and strategies for reaching diverse audiences.

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11:00am EIA: Acknowledge: Global Climate Change

Chair

Gloria Diez, ASAECA (Argentine Association of Film and Audiovisual Studies)

Speakers

Casey Davis, WGBH, Project ARCC
Raymond G. Najjar, Jr., Pennsylvania State University, Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science

Global climate change is producing rising tides, disastrous and increasingly extreme weather patterns, and placing moving image collections at risk. What can we as moving image archivists, do about it? This panel will address the global climate change issue from both a scientific standpoint as well as how it directly affects the archiving of films and digital media.

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11:00am Digitization and Reassembly of Eyes on the Prize Interviews

Chair

Nadia Ghasedi, Washington University

Speakers

Emily Halevy, Crawford Media Services, Inc.
Jim Hone, Washington University
Irene Taylor, Washington University

Regarded as the definitive work on the Civil Rights Movement, the documentary series, Eyes on the Prize, has been seen by millions since its PBS debut in 1987. However, what remains unseen is the nearly 85 hours of interview outtakes that provide further insight into the series’ original stories of struggle, resistance, and perseverance. Through the Eyes on the Prize Digitization and Reassembly project, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Washington University Libraries is making the complete, never-before-seen interviews and synchronized transcripts freely accessible through its newly developed Hydra digital repository. Crawford Media Services, Inc. completed the digitization and the digital reassembly was completed in-house. This session will provide both archivist and vendor insights into planning, workflow management, and the related challenges of implementing large-scale digitization projects.

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12:00pm Thursday Poster Session

Poster: International Cooperation in the Archives: Audiovisual Archiving at the UN

Antonio Carlos da Silva, United Nations. DPI
Carmel Curtis United Nations. DPI

Poster: Capturing Campus-Wide Born Digital Moving Images: A Collaboration

Chrystal Carpenter, Elon University
Linda Lashendock Elon University

Poster: Moving Image Social Tagging Professional vs. Amateur Production Comparison

Edward Benoit, III, School of Library & Information Science

Poster: Baby Steps: How Digitization Projects Help Community Archives Measure Resource Needs

Itza Carbajal, University of Texas at Austin School of Information

Poster: Mobile Archivists: Archival Outreach on the Go

Jennifer Barth, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Catherine Hannula University of Wisconsin-Madison

Poster: Discovering the Inner World of Edward and Naomi Feil

Robert Anen, New York University
Lydia Creech Indiana University

Poster: A/V Geeks 24 Hour Watch-a-thon Post Mortem

Skip Elsheimer, AV Geeks LLC
K Sean Finch A/V Geeks

Poster: Out of the Classroom and Into the Archive

Tyler Bequette, Washington University Film & Media Archive

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2:00pm DAS: The MTV Vault Project – Archiving the History of Music Television

Speaker

Jamie DiVenere, Viacom

The MTV Vault project, started in 2013, is the initiative to transform the footage tape library, which consists of production source tapes, master tapes and audio source tapes, into a curated digital library. The MTV Vault project allows Viacom the ability to better leverage the value of their content for reuse and provides the opportunity to increase revenue while preserving the Music Group legacy. The project is broken out into 3 tracks: 1. Researching and Discovery of the Most Valued Tapes for Digitization. 2. Encoding Tapes Externally. Tapes 3. Metadata- Standardization and Logging at Clip Level. In this case study we would like to present the steps that were taken in order for Viacom to support the digitization and preservation of these assets and look at the logistical, operational and technical strategies we employed to get us to where we are today. We’ll outline processes, the teams, the technologies. In addition, we’ll recognize our successes combined with project challenges both present and past.

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2:00pm Re-Envisioning Japan: Ephemeral Film Recuperation, Restoration, and Digital Curation

Chair

Joanne Bernardi, University of Rochester

Speakers

Nora Dimmock, University of Rochester
Josh Romphf, University of Rochester

“Re-Envisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in Visual and Material Culture” (REJ) is a multimedia digital archive of tourism, travel and educational ephemera documenting changing images of Japan and its place in the world in the early to mid 20th century. The recuperation and digital presentation of small gauge ephemeral films in context is a key objective of this collaborative project between faculty and library staff at the University of Rochester. Now in its 5th year as a large-scale, ongoing project, REJ had humble beginnings. It is a useful case study for colleagues similarly working at the intersection of academic and archival practice. Topics include the creative digital curation of ephemeral films for research, teaching, and general interest, the innovative use of open-source tools for digitally restoring and presenting films, and solutions for successfully planning and developing similar projects in the context of a library digital humanities center.

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2:00pm EIA: Acknowledge/Adapt: Environmental Impact of Archiving

Speaker

Linda Tadic, Digital Bedrock

The materials and products we use to preserve moving image and digital collections may seem benign, but they may also have unintended and detrimental effects on our environment. This panel looks at current practices, products, and technologies in moving image and digital archiving that are, or can be, potentially dangerous to humans and the environment. What alternatives are there?

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2:00pm Claiming Tech: Women, Technology, and the Spotlight

Chair

Liz Coffey, Harvard

Speakers

Lauren O’Connor , Bay Area Video Coalition
Kara Van Malssen , AV Preserve
Diana Little, The Media Preserve
Lauren Sorensen, UCLA

While a large number of AMIA members are women, and many do “techie” work, we do not often see them leading the discussion, or being deferred to as experts. Female faces are often absent from the presentation side of our technological symposia. We want to find ways to encourage women in our field to become leaders, through presenting at technology-oriented events, writing for our periodicals, organizing events at our conference, or speaking up on the list-serv and in public. This open discussion is an opportunity to investigate the problems we are facing, and to identify solutions. Why are women underrepresented? What can we do to change that? We believe an open forum will lead to creative thinking and problem solving, possibly a new network of support, and will shine the light of personal experience on a neglected topic. We hope the issues raised in this session will flavor conversations during the conference.

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3:30pm Alternative Archives: Inserting African-American Stories back into the Narrative

Chair

Candace Ming, University of Chicago

Speakers

Rhea Combs, The National Museum of African American History and Culture
Karida Johnson, University of California-Los Angeles
Zun Lee

Alternative Archives will explore the intersection of personal narrative and moving image archiving. African-Americans are often written out of the narrative of history, but renewed interest in oral histories and home movies have provided a platform for an important conversation on the role archives play in documenting and preserving the personal histories of African-Americans. Inherently structured differently than traditional moving image archives, archives that collect home movies or oral histories develop more personal relationships with their donors and their communities. We also face different challenges in preserving and sharing our material. This panel will examine the great benefits and rewards of collecting personal histories, but also tackle the challenges and roadblocks that housing such rich material activates.

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3:30pm EIA: Adapt/Survive: Outside the Box Energy & Conservation Policies, Practices and Methods

Chair

Caroline Yeager, George Eastman Museum

Speakers

Jeremy Linden, Image Permanence Institute
Reto Kromer, AV Preservation by reto.ch
Mick Newnham, NFSA

New solutions to old problems is the focus of this panel. It looks at sustainable building design for archives and conservation centers, and seeks inventive ideas to re-think film and digital conservation to make it truly sustainable.

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3:30pm Hidden Cinema: Beyond Medicine

Chair

Angela Saward, Wellcome Library

Speakers

Timothy Wisniewski, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Sarah Eilers, National Library of Medicine

This session will examine the shared experiences of three major repositories in the health field (Johns Hopkins, National Library of Medicine, and Wellcome Library) in managing material one might not expect to find in medical archives. Unique materials such as home movies, travel, ethnographic, archeological, and research films are often created or collected during the course of clinical, epidemiological, or other work. These films present challenges for curators, who must decide whether and how to prioritize, catalog, and digitize this unusual material within established workflows, and how to develop and engage new audiences for it. The session will be enlivened and evidenced with examples of unusual films from the three archival film collections.

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4:45pm DAS: Case Study: Creating a Trove of Digital Assets

Speakers

Eva Radding, Facing History and Ourselves
Kara Van Malsen, AVPreserve

In 2012 Facing History and Ourselves set out to fundamentally change its management and use of its media collections. In the past four years, this educational non-profit has done just that. Starting with inaccessible legacy media, inconsistent distribution mechanisms, and media management challenges, Facing History has successfully digitized its legacy media, established policies for born digital production, implemented and rolled out a DAM, established a taxonomy, and integrated with a web content management system and an online video platform. This case study will outline the process, challenges and value of this transformation and what it has meant to Facing History.

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4:45pm Preserving Nairobi Heritage Through Audio Visual Archiving: The UNH Project

Speaker

Susan Kibaara, Nairobi City County

Preserving Nairobi heritage through audio visual archiving: The UNH Project. The Unlocking Nairobi Heritage (UNH) project is aimed at giving the key to the world, it will help unlock the Nairobi they don’t know, the Nairobi they know and the Nairobi they would like to remember. The Audio visual collection at the Nairobi City County Government has not been given the deserved attention. Currently, the audio visual records are decentralized and some might be lost for lack of knowledge on how to handle them for the purposes of preservation and continuation of the County’s heritage. The County has records that span from the Council era 1950 till 2012 before the County Government was formed, hence the dire need to properly preserve them as they form the rich history of Nairobi City. A virtual Archive link has been created in the Official Website where all the relevant images and video recordings are being uploaded. The presenters, as they make their presentation, will communicate the efforts being put in place at Nairobi County in the preservation of AV records for posterity.

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4:45pm EIA: Adapt/Survive: Advocating for the Survival of Moving Image Collections

Speakers

Ray Edmondson, Archive Associates
Eira Tansey, University of Cincinnati

Environmental disasters extract enormous tolls on any community: we are devastated emotionally, physically, and financially. This panel seeks to address ways in which moving image archivists can speak to their institutions, communities and governments to ensure that the collections they care for – repositories of our cultural memory – remain open and active for the common good.

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4:45pm Magnascope: Researching & Recreating Early Widescreen Cinema

Chairs

Anthony L’Abbate, George Eastman Museum
Kyle Westphal, Northwest Chicago Film Society

Speaker

David Pierce, Media History Digital Library

The forerunner of today’s IMAX system, the Magnascope process provided silent-era audiences with a greatly enlarged picture during select sequences through the use of a short focal length lens. Unlike later widescreen systems that used new film gauges, modified projector gates, or anamorphic lens attachments, the Magnascope system was relatively cheap and could be used in conjunction with existing 35mm prints. Introduced by Paramount Pictures with the 1926 release of “Old Ironsides,” Magnascope was long assumed to have petered out after a handful of releases. New research indicates that the process lingered on for two decades, with Magnascope-branded presentations continuing at the discretion of individual exhibitors. Renewed interest in this variated and localized exhibition history brings together scholars, archivists, and repertory programmers. Many archives already possess titles that were originally exhibited in Magnascope and can recreate the Magnascope experience for modern audiences without undertaking additional preservation or digitization initiatives.

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5:45pm Cocktails in the Vendor Cafe
Come out and have a drink in the Vendor Cafe before heading off to Archival Screening Night! The drink ticket is in your registration envelope.

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6:00pm Student Mixer | Bakersfield
Students! Come join us for free drinks and lite refreshments at the 2^nd annual Student Mixer. We will have working professionals on hand to discuss their experience in the field. This is a great opportunity to meet other students from various backgrounds in the field and of course make new friends and colleagues! The event is organized by the Education Committee and sponsored by Memnon a Sony Company.Please RSVP as soon as possible to amia@amianet.org or in person when you check in at the conference.

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7:45pm Awards & Archival Screening Night | The Hollywood Theatre

Friday November 11

8:30am Plenary | Discussion into Action:
Ideas for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity within AMIA

Representatives from Thursday’s plenary and session discussions will share proposals for action items with the wider membership.

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9:15am Vendor Café

Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the vendor exhibits! The Vendor Cafe is a great way to learn what is new, what is working, and what is on the horizon. Whether or not you are a buyer, the Cafe is an opportunity to meet colleagues who provide the products and services we all rely on.

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9:30am DigiPres: Building Digital Preservation Initiatives

Chair

Shira Peltzman, UCLA Library

Speakers

Hannah Frost, Stanford University Libraries
Anne Grant, EYE Filmmuseum
Erica Titkemeyer, Southern Folklife Collection

This panel focuses on exposing participants to strategies for expanding or scaling up digital preservation initiatives. Speakers will present case studies focusing on how they have successfully improved, ramped up, or built digital preservation programs from scratch at their respective organizations.

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9:30am Archiving Between Studios – Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek

Chair

Chuck Woodfill, Paramount Pictures

Speakers

Charlotte Johnson, Paramount Pictures
Jeffrey Osmer, Paramount Pictures

The panel will delve into the history of Star Trek on both television and screen, along with the history of its elements from an archival standpoint. Perspectives will come from both the Paramount and CBS archives and how each archive has handled splitting the catalog between the two studios. Attendees will gain an understanding of the challenges faced with a shared rights catalog. They will also journey through several case studies, including the remastering of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and behind the scenes of the collaboration between CBS & Paramount as they prepare to celebrate the iconic series – sharing marketing, interviews and special features.

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9:30am DIY&CA: Building Regional AV Preservation Coalitions Using the Community Archiving Model

Chair

Mona Jimenez, NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program

Speakers

Yvonne Ng, Witness
Marie Lascu, XFR Collective
Kelli Hix, Smithsonian Institution
Sandra Yates, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Library

The Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) model is growing, and the CAW Organizing Committee needs to know: what tools and training will help you organize CAWs and promote the CAW model? Now going into our 7th year, we propose to use CAWs to help catalyze the organization of regional coalitions which can serve as anchors for local AV preservation efforts. The CAW proposes to meet increasing demand for local CAW events with the establishment of Training of Trainers curriculum that can be disseminated widely in partnership with regional archives and organizations. Next steps for the CAW include the development of a Training of Trainers curriculum, an enhanced Organizer’s Toolkit and support to strengthen regional networks for AV preservation. We welcome feedback and suggestions from AMIA members who have participated in past workshops and / or who are interested in delivering workshops in their own regional communities. The primary purpose of the discussion is to provide information about the history and future of CAW and to solicit active feedback and participation from attendees. Documentation and data collected from this day will play an essential role to the further development of the CAW model and subsequent toolkit and training.

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9:30am Quad at 60: Preserving Local 2” Videotape,”Launched in April 1956

Chair

Jeff Martin, Archival Moving Image Consulting

Speakers

Mark Quigley, UCLA Film and Television Archive

Launched in April 1956, 2” quad videotape became the dominant broadcast format for more than two decades. Networks were the first adopters, but as early as 1958 local stations were taping their own programming—everything from documentaries to breaking news to performances by local musicians. The economics of 2” tape, however, meant that tapes were frequently re-used by local producers, and thus are now relatively rare. This session, marking the 60th Anniversary of videotape, will give a technical and historical overview of the format, but more importantly, showcase a diverse array of newly-discovered and preserved local programming that originated on 2”, from stations across the country.

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11:00am DigiPres: Digital Preservation for the Rest of Us — Adapting Best Practices on a Shoestring Budget

Chair

Rachel Mattson, La MaMa Archives

Speakers

Tim Babcock, Penn State University
Dorothea Salo, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This presentation provides a path forward for organizations or individuals who are pursuing digital preservation with limited resources. Speakers provide context for their decisions regarding preservation and provide attendees with an idea of how to move forward with preservation initiatives in manageable ways.

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11:00am From Virtual to Reality: Dissecting Jennifer Steinkamp’s Software-Based Installation

Speaker

Shu-Wen Lin, NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation

Time-based and digital art combines media and technology that challenges traditional conservation practices while requiring dedicated care. As a pioneer in media art, contemporary artist Jennifer Steinkamp is critically acclaimed for her abilities to weave digital media into large-scale installations that envelop the audience vis-a-vis streams of moving images. In this paper, I use Steinkamp’s animated installation Botanic that was exhibited in Times Square Arts: Midnight Moment as a case study. Through carefully disassembling the artist’s creation process, I attempt to focus on the internal structure and relationship between Maya, After Effects, scripts, and final deliverables. I strive to provide a risk assessment that will enable museum professionals as well as the artist herself to identify sustainability and compatibility of digital elements in order to build a documentation that can collect and preserve the whole spectrum of digital objects related to the piece.

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11:00am DIY&CA: Real Talk: Archiving Independent Media and Community Collections

Chair

Molly Fair

Speakers

Kelly Haydon, Bay Area Video Coalition
Keith Wilson , People’s Archive of Police Violence
Carol Steiner , People’s Archive of Police Violence
Caroline Gil, Independent Archivist
Skyla Hearn, DuSable Museum of African American History

Accepted standards and best practices for audiovisual archiving usually emerge from institutional contexts (e.g. libraries, universities, professional organizations), and are not always applicable or sufficient when working with community-based groups or alternative media-makers. How do archivists working in traditional institutions foster more reciprocal and collaborative relationships with communities to preserve their histories? What are the affective, emotional, or other social dynamics involved with archiving documentation of police violence? What are some lessons learned from participatory approaches to archiving the work of independent artists and the collections of grassroots media distributors? This panel will examine the particular challenges of working in these contexts, and the practices that emerge from them.

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11:00am Overcoming Rights Paralysis: Practical Approaches to Providing Access

Chair

Chris Lacinak, AVPreserve

Speakers

Greg Cram, New York Public Library
Jay Fialkov, WGBH

This session will provide insights from rights experts working within two leading organizations digitizing many thousands of hours of audiovisual content with accessibility as a primary goal. Presenters will include Greg Cram, Associate Director of Copyright and Information Policy at New York Public Library and Jay Fialkov, Deputy General Counsel at WGBH. Each speaker will offer an overview on the relevant history and context within their organization, and the philosophy and realities that guide their approach to providing access in a responsible way. This will be followed by the specific challenges, strategies, practices and systems being used within each organization to navigate and manage their determinations on rights, permissions and access. This session will provide a refreshingly pragmatic look at this topic, offering three different perspectives from organizations on the path to making large quantities of content in their collections accessible.

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11:30am Competency-Based Frameworks for Moving Image Archiving Education: A Progress Report

Speaker

Karen F. Gracy, School of Library and Information Science, Kent State University

This session will report on progress made by the AV Competency Framework Working Group (AVCFWG) to develop competencies for education in moving image image archiving. Its scope includes graduate level program programs, specializations, and certificates, as well as continuing education offerings for archivists, librarians, academics, and others working in cultural heritage environments. Karen Gracy, chair of the AVCFWG, will summarize recent research on pedagogical environments and employer needs conducted via literature reviews, analysis of employment advertisements, and other data collection methods. She will also provide opportunity for audience questions and reflection on ways in which competency-based education can inform curriculum development and revision, as well as fostering good relations with the various constituencies that employ and consult with moving image archiving professionals.

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12:00pm Friday Poster Session | The Vendor Cafe

FADGI DPX Embedded Metadata Project

Bleakley McDowell, National Museum of African American History & Culture
Christina Kovac NARA

Poster: CUNY TV QC Workflows

Catriona Schlosser, CUNY TV

Poster: PREFORMA and MediaConch: Open Source Tools for Long-term Preservation

Erwin Verbruggen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Poster: Smithsonian Institution Pan-Institutional Audiovisual Survey

Kelli Hix, Smithsonian Institution

Poster: Data Visualisation – How Can We Make the Most of What We Have?

Nick D Richardson, Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)

Poster: Archivematica-MediaConch Integration

Sarah Romkey, Artefactual Systems

Poster: “Building With Service”: The Audiovisual Content of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company

Shani Miller, UCLA Library

Poster: From Analog to Digital: A VHS Digitization Workflow

Treshani Perera, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Poster: Uncovering Nazi Germany in a Deteriorating Home Movie Collection

Jen O’Leary, UCLA MIAS Student

Poster: The Cable Bible: A Guide to Connecting Audiovisual Equipment

Ethan Gates, New York University

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12:45pm DigiPres: Lightning Talks

Chair

Kathryn Gronsbell, Carnegie Hall

This will be a bonus round of lightning talks over the lunch break in which all interested participants could sign up on the day to give lightning talks about any issue germane to the stream’s theme. Lightning talks will be capped at 5 minutes to encourage a wide variety of presentations that are not selected in the general AMIA call for presentations.

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2:00pm DigiPres: Managing Bodycam Video: Challenges, Needs and New Approaches

Speakers

Snowden Becker, UCLA Department of Information Studies
Clarence Trapp, Pittsburgh Police Department

This session will share preliminary results from a summer 2016 IMLS funded National Forum meeting focused on data management needs arising from large scale video recording programs, and explore how those needs manifest in the Pittsburgh Police Department’s own recently launched bodyworn camera program.

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2:00pm Don’t Sell Shorts Short: Preserving and Curating Shorts Collections

Chair

Laura Thornburg, Paramount Pictures

Speakers

Helen Edmunds, BFI National Archive
Mike Mashon, Library of Congress
Todd Wiener, UCLA Film & Television Archive

Short subject collections represent a tremendous range of eras, genres, subjects, technologies…and challenges. The panel will delve into both historical context and practical issues of managing a large collection of short features. Perspectives will come both from private/corporate archives and larger public archives, and will cover cataloging, rights issues, preservation, access and programming. Specific case studies will be included, as will examples of rare, preserved titles.

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2:00pm DIY&CA: : Documenting A Changing Pittsburgh: East of Liberty Films and the Impact of Gentrification

Chair

Robin Margolis, UCLA

Speaker

Chris Ivey , East of Liberty film Series and Hypeboy Media

This session will feature director Chris Ivey speaking and sharing clips from his ongoing documentary project East of Liberty. Entering its fourth installment, the East of Liberty series explores the hopes and fears of community members in a neighborhood experiencing rapid redevelopment, aiming to “create a historical record that captures the essence of community change and exposes taboos in frank conversation-from displacement to neighborhood violence to discussions of race and class.” Ivey will speak to the challenges of working responsibly with community members to portray a changing neighborhood, as well as share segments from previous films and a preview of the newest chapter, Youth Rising. He will be joined by East Liberty residents connected to the films.

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2:00pm Capturing Captioning: Problems in Preservation and Presentation of Timed Text

Chair

Kimberly Tarr, New York University Libraries

Speakers

Michael Grant, New York University Libraries
Lauren Alberque , RIT Libraries
Carleton L. Jackson, UMD Libraries

Developed in the 1970s as a method for providing expanded access to television programming for the hearing-impaired, closed captions (CC) are carried in line 21 of the NTSC video signal. When analog video is converted to an uncompressed digital file, closed captions are preserved. They can, however, become scrambled when compression is introduced, which presents a key challenge to institutions interested in preserving CC functionality in access copies of preserved video. This panel explores three institutions’ CC struggles and solutions in preserving video collections, serving a large base of deaf and blind users, and handling CC in library streaming. This session will focus on the technical issues including transfer workflows, hardware and software considerations, and creating access copies both in-house and with a vendor. Lastly, the session aims to broaden the moving image archival community’s interpretation of access.

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3:30pm DigiPres: Pushing Preservation in a Production Environment

Chair

Rebecca Fraimrow, WGBH

Speakers

Nicole Martin, Human Rights Watch
Genevieve Havemeyer-King, NDSR-NY: Wildlife Conservation Society

This panel explores the possibilities of integrating digital preservation as a critical aspect of the media production process.

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3:30pm Documenting Provenance: Out of Our Heads and into the Database

Chair

Mike Brostoff, Academy Film Archive

Speakers

Stephen Danley, Academy Film Archive
Stephanie Sapienza, Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanitites

Provenance is one of the primary tenets of the archival profession. Yet when cataloging moving images, the focus tends to be on item and content level description, while the collections’ provenance and significance remains in staff members’ heads, personal filing systems or as unasked questions. Often paper resources accompanying a moving image collection remain segregated without any attempt to intellectually integrate them. In this panel discussion, Mike Brostoff and Stephen Danley will discuss the structure and workflows the Academy Film Archive developed to organize staff into collection teams with the goal of documenting collection level provenance and other related contextual information. Stephanie Sapienza will then lead a demonstration about how contextual paper documentation can enhance understanding of related media collections, using some examples from current and developing projects.

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3:30pm DIY&CA: Tech in Community, Community in Tech: Digital Collections in the Real World

Chair

Lauren Sorensen, UCLA

Speakers

Rachel Mattson , La MaMa Archives
Nicole Martin , Human Rights Watch
Dinah Handel , New York Public Library
Kristin Lipska California Audiovisual Preservation Project (CAVPP)

From receiving digitized video files back from vendors, to bash shell scripting, archivists are frequently finding themselves as the technology leads of their underfunded departments, or newly managing contractors for technology projects. This session will introduce some software programs that archivists have used to make their lives easier, and discuss strategies for taking the fear out of technology in the archives. Panelists will introduce a handful of tools and scripts that help facilitate different areas of a digital collections’ lifecycle, as well as discussing workplace matters and experiences in the field.

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3:30pm The National Archives, Historypin, and WWI: Anniversaries, Apps, and Audiences

Chair

Christina Kovac, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

Speaker

Kerri Young, Historypin

Almost two years ago, NARA and Historypin launched a project to digitize the largest this content to multiple audiences, NARA is launching an app to deliver moving images and photos to museums, teachers, and coders. Come learn about the process we followed and the app we’ve built!

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4:45pm DigiPres: Theory vs. Practice

Speakers

Tom De Smet, Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision
Dinah Handel, New York Public Library
Travis Wagner, University of South Carolina
Jana Grazley City of Vancouver Archives
Mary Kidd New York Public Library

This presentation addresses the sometimes stark divide between the theory and practice of digital preservation. Panelists will speak about the often vast distance between standards and reality of enacting those standards.

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4:45pm Ongoing Intermediations: Preserving Jud Yalkut and Nam June Paik

Chair

Tom Colley, Butcher Shop

Speakers

John Klacsmann, Anthology Film Archives
Jon Dieringer , Electronic Arts Intermix
Gregory Zinman, Georgia Institute of Technology

How do we best make sense of past hybrid media forms in the present? This panel, investigates theoretical and practical approaches to understanding and preserving the moving image through the work of pioneering media artists and frequent collaborators Jud Yalkut (1938-2013) and Nam June Paik (1932-2006).

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4:45pm DIY&CA: Think-For-Yourself, Do-It-Yourself: Revealing Independent Media from Behind the Iron Curtain

Speaker

Allie Whalen

Artists, activists, and archivists embrace do-it-yourself strategies at times of political and social unrest for free expression, communication, and survival of marginalized voices. Between 1950 and 1990, political suppression paradoxically sparked creative action across the underground arts scene of Eastern Europe from secret concerts, actions, and happenings to self-published zines and media. This presentation explores salvaged collections hidden behind the Iron Curtain, how artists became accidental archivists, and where collections once concealed in basements or confiscated by secret police have ended up today and how they are being preserved. Case studies describe the methodologies of archives throughout Europe where independent and community archiving actions are taking place despite limited environments to safeguard these collections, and how prominent figures from the underground scene are active in archiving. This presentation stems from on-site research for my 2015 MIAP thesis “I Will Counterrevolution / I Will Stop All The Motion: Archiving Exile, Samizdat, and Underground Audio from the Eastern Bloc”.

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4:45pm Archiving In A Production Environment Is An Ever-Changing Process

Chair

Karma Foley, Smithsonian Channel

Speakers

Mette Charis Buchman , Danish Broadcasting Corporation

Working as an archivist in a production/media environment is in many ways a different experience and requires a somewhat different skill set than working as an archivist in a cultural heritage setting. It is an ever-changing process. Archival conventions and traditional standards often do not apply. A production archive must be adaptable, flexible, and inclusive in order to fulfill its mission and meet the needs of its users. Mette Charis Buchman, Senior Manager at The Archive at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation and Karma Foley, Director of Library & Archives at Smithsonian Channel will elaborate on the particular challenges and opportunities of archiving in a production/media environment. The session will allow for information sharing among production archives and may spark ideas for archivists working in other environments.

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6:15pm DIY&CA: Evening Screening: Filmmaking as Community Activism

Chair

Amy Sloper, Wisconsin Center for FIlm & Theater Research

Speakers

Tony Buba

This program will present a screening of LIGHTNING OVER BRADDOCK: A RUSTBOWL FANTASY (1988, 80 mins) followed by a discussion with Tony Buba, an independent filmmaker who uses documentary as a form of community activism in the Pittsburgh area. As president of Braddock Films, Tony Buba has been producing documentaries since 1972 in both long and short formats. In addition to producing personal work, Braddock Films has been involved in producing award-winning documentaries in the Pittsburgh area. He has focused his energies on the crumbling landscape of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a once-thriving steel town, whose people and environments have been directly affected by the age of post-industrial decline.

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7:30pm It Happened in 16mm: A Night of Regional Film

Chair

Taylor McBride, Smithsonian Institution
Siobhan C. Hagan, Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive (MARMIA)

Speakers

Kelly Haydon, BAVC
Emily Davis, Carnegie Museum of Art; Three Rivers Archivists
Amy Ciesielsk, University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collection

The Small Gauge Amateur Film Committee (SGAFC) and the Regional Audiovisual Archives Committee (RAVA), together with Three Rivers Archivists, invite you to the third annual small gauge regional film screening. The program will be curated from the collections of RAVA’s institutional members and local regional archives and will feature 16mm film highlighting content of the Mid-Atlantic region.

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8:00pm Special Screening for AMIA Attendees: George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead
Seating is limited.

The quintessential zombie movie, George A. Romero’s first film gave rise to myriad imitators, sequels, and remakes, and reanimated the horror genre. The 28-year-old Romero and a group of friends and colleagues shot Night of the Living Dead in Evans City, PA, outside of Pittsburgh, on a shoestring budget of $114,000. Recently restored by MoMA and The Film Foundation. Funded by the George Lucas Family Fund. Thank you to our friends at Bonded for hosting the evening,

Tickets are on a first come/first served basis. Pick up your ticket at the Conference Registration desk. The Hollywood Theatre Dormont is about five miles from the hotel, but is just 20 minutes on the Light Rail (Red Line to Potomac Station), or a short ride using Uber/Lyft ride share services, or a taxi.

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8:35pm The Eames Film Collection at the Library of Congress

Speaker

Amy Gallick, Library of Congress

Charles and Ray Eames’ contribution to furniture design and architecture are legendary, and some of their films — often sponsored by corporations like IBM — were distributed for educational and industrial audiences. The Library of Congress has undertaken film and digital preservation of the Eames Collection, from some of their well-known titles like Powers of Ten to their unpublished titles and their multiscreen presentations. Amy Gallick, Preservation Specialist, and Mike Mashon, Head of the Moving Image Section, from LoC will discuss the collection, its acquisition and preservation challenges.

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9:40pm Envisioning Pittsburgh

Chair

Stephen Parr, Oddball Films / San Francisco Media Archive
Timothy Wisniewski Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

Speakers

Miriam Meislik, University of Pittsburgh
Greg Pierce, Orgone Archive / Andy Warhol Museum

This screening will showcase the rich collections and creativity of the conference’s host city, highlighting archival film rarities that imagine Pittsburgh from a multitude of cinematic genres, presented with live scores by local musicians. The films present Pittsburgh’s industrial legacy, its unique neighborhoods and people, and embody the region’s rich tradition of documentary and experimental filmmaking. The program will be culled from collections as diverse as the University of Pittsburgh, including their KDKA and WTAE news film collections and the Pitt Parade collection; and the private Orgone Archive, including a remarkable 1957 Kodachrome sponsored film Gateway to the Future, created for the Pittsburgh centennial. Historical figures Lyndon B. Johnson and Eleanor Roosevelt are among the featured luminaries. Live scores to the films will be provided by composers and multi-instrumentalists Ben Opie and Colter Harper.

Saturday November 12

8:00am Lignting Talks: Projects We’re Working On

8:50am AMIA Membership Meeting

Chair

Andrea Kalas, President

Members and guests are welcome and encouraged to attend the Membership Meeting to hear the annual “State of the Association” report, updates about current projects, and offer special recognition to AMIA members who have gone above and beyond in their service. The open forum provides an opportunity to raise questions not addressed elsewhere in the conference. At the end of the meeting the 2016/7 Board of Directors will take office as we thank departing Board members for their great service to AMIA.

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9:45am Where Is My Digital Original Negative?

Chair

Sean Vilbert, Paramount Pictures

Speakers

Josh Haynie, eFilm
Marcie Jastrow , Technicolor
John Nicolard, Fotokem

The original digital intermediate was defined and used as a tool to aid in the creative color and visual effects processes for features shot on 35mm film. It was commonly delivered in 2K resolution in 10bit LOG DPX format representing film density in order to create film outs for theatrical exhibition. For these titles, this deliverable represented the highest quality picture asset and can be used to support future distribution needs. Today, production is a mix of digital and film based capture and commonly includes advanced visual effects. With the transition to digital cinema, the Digital Intermediate has skewed towards delivery in P3 color space, which may not preserve the highest resolution, color or dynamic range of the production sources. This limitation could impact the ability to service higher quality standards in the future.

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9:45am FTH: Building an Infrastructure for Audiovisual Archiving and Preservation Education in the Americas

Chair

Rachel E Beattie, University of Toronto

Speakers

Janet Ceja, Simmons College
Gloria Diez, ASAECA (Argentine Association of Film and Audiovisual Studies)
Pamela Vizner, Second Run Media Preservation / Universidad de Chile
Paolo Tosini, Independent Film Restorer
Julieta Keldjian, Universidad Catolica del Uruguay
Isabel Wschebor, Universidad de la Republica del Uruguay

Examinations of the development of moving image archival and preservation educational programs have been dominated by the United States and Europe, and historically educational efforts outside of the aforementioned areas haven’t been included in these discussions. This session will focus on diversity in educational methodologies and environments being used in the field, featuring participants from Latin America, Canada, and the U.S, and including topics such as academic instruction in audio-visual and digital preservation, collection management, inclusive pedagogy, and oral history, experience with online classes and instructional technology, plus opportunities provided by independent courses, institutional partnerships, workshop series, fellowships, and residencies. The session will also explore assessment of educational efforts, development of measurable outcomes, and leveraging of the profession’s multidisciplinary background, and focus on future needs of the profession and current gaps in educational access and approaches.

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9:45am A Screening of La Belle at the Movies, and Salon-Stye Conversation

Speaker

Kate Pourshariati, Penn Museum

This is a special film screening session. The film La Belle at the Cinema is about the lack of any remaining cinemas in Kinshasa, capitol of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The filmmaker takes a wider view of filmmaking in this central African country, interviewing filmmakers from the Congo and visiting several film libraries languishing in poor storage in national television stations. This is a great film for archivists; it addresses the meaning of cinema in culture and considers the loss of the collective viewing experience, which is fairly common in Africa today and increasingly common in the USA.

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9:45am Reclaiming Indigenous Sacred Moving Images in Public Collections

Speakers

Jennifer Jenkins, University of Arizona
Hanni Nabahe, University of Arizona

We explore handling and access issues surrounding historical moving image records of Native sacred ceremonies. The Yaqui Easter ceremonies in Southern Arizona and Northern Mexico were recorded by tribal invitation by ethnographic filmmaker Tad Nichols in the 1940s. Those films entered into University general collections and have been reproduced as new formats came available. Since NAGPRA (1996) and the issuance of the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials (2008), tribal peoples have sought to reclaim sacred images, both moving and still, as a matter of sovereignty. A larger collection of educational, industrial, and amateur films, the American Indian Film Gallery, also contains footage of sacred ceremonies, many filmed without permission or in direct defiance of tribal wishes. We examine contemporary best practices documents and compare content management systems as means of reclaiming image sovereignty.

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10:15am Project Update: Richard E. Norman and Early Race Filmmaking

Speakers

Brian Graney, Black Film Center/Archive, Indiana University
Megan MacDonald Black Film Center/Archive, Indiana University

In this session, archivists from the Black Film Center/Archive (BFC/A) at Indiana University will report on the progress of the Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking: Reprocessing and Digitization project, initiated in 2015 with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Preservation and Access. Following the reintegration of Norman’s dispersed holdings and the publication of a new finding aid in 2015, work is underway on a collection-wide digital access project, making the collection available freely online, including personal and business correspondence, distribution records, censorship reports, photographs, production documentation, and promotional and exhibition materials created between 1912 and 1954. In addition to reporting on the current digitization project, the BFC/A aims to open discussion with session attendees of how this new body of digital raw material might provide a foundation for building new inter-institutional collaborations to facilitate advanced digital scholarship on early African American cinema and movie-going.

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11:00am Opportunity, Law, and Ethics: Researching, Contextualizing, and Recirculating Nontheatrical Films

Chairs

Marsha Gordon, North Carolina State University
Allyson Nadia,Field, The University of Chicago

Speakers

Skip Elsheimer, A/V Geeks
Brian L. Frye, University of Kentucky College of Law
Mark Quigley, UCLA Film & Television Archive
Mark Williams, Dartmouth College

This panel brings together archivists and scholars to discuss the process of identifying, finding, working with, and documenting the filmmakers, subjects, and other personnel involved in producing nontheatrical films. Through specific cases and representative anecdotes, panelists will focus on the opportunities, challenges, legal issues, and ethics involved in such work. We will also explore the use of technological tools (such as the Media Ecology Project and other database systems) in working with nontheatrical film and how we might best go about the labor of documenting hitherto undocumented films, which often suffer from a unique form of neglect and a lack of context that differentiates them from most of their their theatrical counterparts. More of a discussion session than a series of formal presentations, each panelists will briefly share some experiences regarding the overarching panel topic and will then take place in a discussion, including participation from attendees, with regard to best practices for archivists and scholars working with undocumented nontheatrical film history.

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11:00am Planning for Preservation in Public Media: An AAPB NDSR Update

Chair

Rebecca Fraimow, WGBH

Speakers

Selena Chau, Pacifica Radio Archives
Lorena Ramirez-Lopez, Howard University Television (WHUT)
Eddy Colloton, Louisiana Public Radio
Tressa Graves, WYSO
Andrew Weaver, CUNY TV
Adam Lott, Wisconsin Public Library

In this session, a panel of American Archive of Public Broadcasting National Digital Stewardship residents will present on their work developing preservation infrastructures at seven public media stations around the country. The residents will use their experiences working on distinct public media projects to discuss the common challenges that public media stations are facing and the resources that they have discovered to be most effective in addressing those challenges. From developing workflows, to auditing metadata standards, to querying file-based collections, this session will cover a number of important areas and exciting projects in audiovisual stewardship from the perspective of nonprofit organizations working to integrate preservation best practices into a broader mission.

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11:00am FTH: AMIA Student Chapter Roundtable

Chair

Hanna Soltys, Simmons College

Speakers

Cate Henderson, McGill University
Ayshea Khan, University of Texas, Austin
Nicolette Khan, University of Texas, Austin
Jen O’Leary, University of California, Los Angeles
Harry Eskin, University of California, Los Angeles
Luke Moses, New York University
E Molly Seegers, Pratt University
Bryce Roe, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

This lightning panel will provide student chapter members an opportunity to share experiences in forming chapters and membership recruitment, conversations on programming, pitfalls, professional development, mentorships, promoting conference involvement and research, and more.

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2:00pm Opening the Archive: Mobile Media Preservation and Collection Strategies

Speaker

Natalie Cadranel, OpenArchive

A presentation for moving image archivists interested in collecting, preserving, and amplifying audiovisual mobile media. Citizens armed with mobile devices are becoming history’s first responders, amassing rich, contextualized, and crucial historical documentation. However, the media they create is incredibly fragile and difficult to verify, often disappearing as a result of privacy concerns, data loss, or a lack of affordable, secure cloud storage; if shared, the most common destination for this media is on social media platforms that can chill free speech and are not committed to privacy, authentication, or long-term preservation. Attendees will learn about the mobile application OpenArchive, which aims to foster a virtual commons where civil liberties are protected, and media retains its provenance once shared online.

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2:00pm FTH: The Listening Room: A Conversation on Diversity

Chair

Ariel Schudson, Independent Archivist

Speakers

Victoria Johnson, Simmons College
Treshani Perara, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Ricardo Iamuuri, Educator/Artist
Juana Suarez, Second Run Media Preservation

This session will attempt an honest look at promoting diversity and inclusion in moving image archival education, and the connection of such efforts to decolonizing moving image archives. The session is intended as a community discussion, aimed at maximizing audience involvement and open conversation. Discussions may explore efforts to engage students early on in their careers, the role of social media outreach, assessment and critique of tenure track system impact, economic realities of low or unpaid internships, and the implications of identity categories such as race, gender, and class on moving image archives and archival work, etc.

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2:00pm FAIL: Learning from Past Mistakes in Ingest Workflows

Chair

Julia Kim, Library of Congress

Speakers

Blake McDowell, National Museum of African American History and Culture
Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution
Walter Forsberg, National Museum of African American History and Culture

This panel presentation looks at the Smithsonian’s NMAAHC and the Library of Congress to discuss real-world challenges in maintaining fixity across a large-scale, multi-year, cross-institutional, oral history video production project. It considers the example of 8TB (+800 files) of born-digital video content from 2012 wherein major data portions were discovered in 2016 to be corrupted. While digital preservation practices change rapidly, this “FAIL” case study highlights the need for mature repositories to revisit previously ingested content to ensure quality control protocol that includes navigating changes in staff. In analyzing the successful file recovery, the panelists will detail the variety of quality control tools and practical workflows used by each institution to ingest and recover corrupt files. Lack of documentation regarding file provenance along with their workflow history made locating the point of failures a very challenging process, requiring a variety of ivestigative methods, both technical and manual. In analyzing the points of failures, both institutions gained a greater understanding of how their respective repositories manage and care for files, leading to broader knowledge of the different approaches and micro-systems that digital collection ecosystems employed at various institutions.

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2:00pm Thinking Broadly/Digging Locally: Pittsburgh’s Hidden Media History

Chair

Devin Orgeron, NCSU
Melissa Dollman, UNC-CH

Speakers

Stephen Parr, Oddball Films
Greg Pierce, Warhol Museum/Orgone
Emily Davis, CMOA
James Lewis, The MediaPreserve

Focused on materials from the greater Pittsburgh region, this panel urges us to think about the hidden media histories of any locality. This will be screening-intensive with an aim towards getting audience members to think more carefully about their own region and the complex nexus of media at the heart of every locality.

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2:30pm Standards, AXF & Designing Data for Long Term Survival

Speaker

James Snyder, Library of Congress

Standards created the physical and file-based media whose content we preserve. Standards are now taming the wild west which exists with the vendor-specific technology-based data sets of digitized content now being created, from audiovisual files to metadata, to cataloging records. But what about the data as a whole? How you plan, select and implement data storage hardware and software determines your data set’s long term survivability. This session will cover: How to design a data set for the long-term survival both of the content itself and other data set being stored over time; The new data archiving standard AXF (the Archive eXchange Format, SMPTE standard 2034-1), how its designed for long-term data survival, the current & future hardware & software problems it’s designed to solve, and how it is being implemented; How to design workflows and choose technologies and/or data set vendors wisely.

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3:30pm Collecting “Community Copies” of Orphan Works: Technology, Archives, and Access

Chair

Martin Johnson, The Catholic University of America

Speakers

Molly Rose Steed, University of Utah
Emily Vinson, University of Houston Libraries Special Collections

Starting in the late 1990s, scholars, archivists, and, most importantly, grant makers became interested in preserving orphan films. But the national movement to preserve orphan works missed the fact that many of the films they made prominent, including local films, homes movies, and amateur films, were already circulating, as VHS tapes and, later, DVDs, in the communities where they were made. In this panel, we will explore strategies for identifying, processing, and preserving these “community copies,” and the lessons they impart for making these films legible to present and future audiences.

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3:30pm FTH: Tomorrow’s Moving Image Archivists

Chair

Mike Mashon, Library of Congress

Speakers

Siobhan Hagan, National Aquarium
Massimo Petrozi, Computer History Museum
John Campopiano, Frontline

This session will engage recent graduates, new professionals, and those in hiring positions in a lively conversation that addresses the following questions: Are education programs adequately preparing students for moving image archival work? Are employers connecting with appropriately skilled candidates? How can partnerships with educational institutions and programs of study help to better equip outgoing students with those skills? How can students and new professionals best leverage professional development opportunities? How is the prevalence of unpaid internships and skyrocketing student loan debt impacting the profession? What is the employment outlook for job seekers? What continuing education opportunities are available to moving image archivists? What is the professional growth climate for those looking to eventually move to higher-level positions?

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3:30pm Further Freaky Film Formats: Mad Scientists Edition

Chair

Snowden Becker, UCLA Dept. of Information Studies

Speakers

Dino Everett, USC Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive
Marsha Gordon, NCSU
Susan Etheridge, UCLA Film & Television Archive

Join us for another #FFFF panel, where we explore the forgotten (and misbegotten) formats of yesteryear! In this edition, we’ll focus on the Dr. Frankenstein types who recombined film production technologies and formats in surprising new ways. SEE John Cunningham’s 9.5mm Kinemacolor process, with separate 16mm mag soundtrack! HEAR Martin Harper’s two-films-in-one process, with 35mm soundtracks on 16mm film! MARVEL at the 8mm Cinemascope achievements of Richard Orton, Paul Grenadier, and their Erector set anamorphic antics! Endorsed by the Small Gauge and Amateur Film Committee.

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4:45pm Kartemquin and Media Burn: A Case Study in Filmmaker/Archive Collaboration

Chair

Sara Chapman, Media Burn Archive

Speakers

Carolyn Faber, Kartemquin Films
Nancy McDonald, Kartemquin Films

Throughout 2015 and 2016, Media Burn Archive collaborated with Kartemquin Films to create the first public access to collections of camera-original footage from KTQ’s archive. Since 1966, KTQ has been making documentaries that examine and critique society through the stories of real people. Their films, such as The Interrupters and Hoop Dreams, are among the most acclaimed of all time, leaving a lasting impact on millions of viewers. The panelists will discuss the rationale for prioritizing the preservation of camera-original footage and ways to engage the public with the digital access, the risk factors specific to the long-term survival of independently produced work from the videotape era, the complexities of creating and sustaining a formal archive at an active production company, as well as how to frame a mutually beneficial structure for an archive to create access to a collection held by an outside organization.

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4:45pm FTH: The New Old Curriculum: Why 20th Century Archiving Techniques Matter in the 21st Century

Chair

Lily Troia, College of William and Mary

Speakers

Dino Everett, University of Southern California
Tara Kelley, Rutgers University
Alexander Whelan, Pratt Institute
Jennifer Jenkins Arizona University

This session addresses the need to incorporate film-related skills and best practices into formal archive education curricula. These skills, rather than being minor or specialist in nature, are crucial to success in professional moving image archiving: every archive has or works with film! By developing skills in film handling, preservation, conservation and appreciation, students, as emerging professionals, can confidently address the needs of an archive’s film holdings without having to secure an outside vendor. Sponsored by the AMIA Film Advocacy Task Force.

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5:45pm Closing Night Cocktails

A chance to say goodbye to colleagues , and maybe catch a picture or two in the photo booth!

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