WITNESS at Association of Moving Image Archivists Annual Conference, Nov. 2011

WITNESS staff Grace Lile and Yvonne Ng will participate in several panels and workshops at this year's AMIA conference for archivists held in Austin, Texas.

Sat Nov 19
Non-custodial Approaches to Video Archiving: Perspectives from Human Rights Collections
Chair: Grace Lile - WITNESS
Speakers: Grace Lile, WITNESS; T-Kay Sangwand - University of Texas-Austin, Human Rights Documentation Initiative; Christian Kelleher - University of Texas-Austin, Human Rights Documentation Initiative; and Virginia Raymond - Texas After Violence Project

Over the past two decades the ability to create video has been expanded to an unprecedented number of people outside of mainstream media, and beyond the global north. This proliferation of independent media production by grassroots groups and individuals calls into question the ethics and feasibility of traditional models of acquisition, ownership and custody. The term “post-custodial” applied to archives was first coined by Gerald Ham in 1981, and has since been used to describe an overarching paradigm shift in archival thinking. Simply put, a post- or non-custodial framework shifts from one predicated on physical custody and outright acquisition of inactive materials, to one in which the archive develops a continuing and interactive relationship to materials creators. This panel will share perspectives from three organizations creating and/or archiving human rights video within a non-custodial framework.

Weds Nov 16
A PBCore Cataloging Workshop
Chairs: Karan Sheldon - Northeast Historic Film and Brian Graney - Northeast Historic Flm
Speakers: Jack Brighton - Illinois Public Media; Dave Rice - The City University of New York;  Yvonne Ng - WITNESS; Kara Van Malssen - Audiovisual Preservation Solutions

“PBCore provides a level of detail useful to media archives, without being ridiculous to implement.” --Jack Brighton. PBCore is a metadata standard created for the description of analog and digital media objects. This workshop is an all-day followup to AMIA 2010 PBCore conference sessions that will enable catalogers and others to evaluate and prepare to adopt PBCore for management of their AV assets. We will include demonstrations of PBCore’s value in handling intellectual content, rights, and technical metadata and will present specific case studies. Attendees will create PBCore records in custom exercises. PBCore 2.0 was released in early 2011. The instructors will present the schema and uses in detail, from mandatory elements through newly-added attributes. PBCore can either include or reference data from other schemas; the workshop will look at its future in the semantic Web as well as practical entry-level steps to adoption. Attendees qualify for five Archival Recertification Credits through the Academy of Certified Archivists

Tuesday Nov 15
Activist Archiving Workshop: Working on the Austin History Center’s 16mm Film Library
Chair: Amy Sloper - Harvard Film Archive
Speakers: Sandra Yates; Yvonne Ng - WITNESS; Jeff Martin - Archival Moving Image Consultant; Stephen Parr - San Francisco Media Archive/Oddball Film+Video

Activist Archiving is a process whereby volunteers - in this case AMIA volunteers in the community where the AMIA conference is held - help an organization gain intellectual and physical control over an endangered moving image collection. This year, AMIA will partner with the Austin History Center to work on a 16mm film collection related to Austin from the Texas Motion Picture Service. In this workshop/work day, staff and volunteers of the Austin History Center, working alongside AMIA members, will tackle the 16mm film collection of the Texas Motion Picture Service housed in the archive. The goal is to inspect and catalog the elements, and in the process, to teach archiving skills through hands-on practice. Space is limited - enthusiasm and film handling experience are appreciated!