Media Management & Cataloging

How We Archive

When partners and producers submit video footage to the WITNESS Media Archive, it must go through a process to ensure that the content is sufficiently documented and traceable to its source, maintained in a format that allows for long-term usability, protected from alteration, and locatable within the archives.

The Media Archive must also ensure that the rights and security restrictions required by the creators and subjects of the video are maintained throughout the lifespan of the content.

To manage the approximately 5,000 video titles and over 12,000 still images in the Media Archive, we use a custom-built FileMaker database in combination with shell scripts that automate certain archive tasks such as file verification, proxy creation and metadata extraction. We began developing our media management system in 2004, and have worked with the superb team at Audiovisual Preservation Solutions since 2007.

The WITNESS Catalog is a key component of the media management system. It contains structured descriptive, technical, administrative, rights and security, and preservation information about the collection. Catalog records are continuously reviewed and updated for correctness and context. The structure of our catalog is documented in our Cataloging Manual and Data Dictionary.

The Catalog is designed to comply with PBCore, a metadata standard designed to describe audiovisual media in production contexts. We also use in-house thesauri of human-rights specific subject terms, names, and geographic locations to index each record.

As of May 2011 approximately 95% of the collection has been fully or partially cataloged in the database. Shotlists, transcripts, or scripts are available for approximately 60% of the cataloged titles.

This video (14 mins), from a recent Association of Moving Image Archivists’ conference, discusses some of the considerations for WITNESS archivists: