Society of American Archivists Selects WITNESS for Preservation Publication Award

WITNESS is honored to receive the Society of American Archivists Preservation Publication Award for The Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video.

Yvonne Ng, WITNESS’ Senior Archivist, explains the Guide and its usage over on the WITNESS Blog:

We created The Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video to respond to the critical gaps in knowledge and resources. Available in English, Spanish, and Arabic web and PDF versions, the Guide provides practical steps for managing, storing, sharing, and preserving your videos…

…Since its release in 2013 the Guide has been accessed by thousands of human rights activists, NGOs, media collectives, and citizen journalists. Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive, reflecting the critical importance of authentication and preservation to video created for advocacy, documentation and evidence.

The Society of American Archivists describes why it issued the award:

Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video, published by WITNESS, a nonprofit organization that uses video to expose human rights abuses, is the 2014 recipient of the Preservation Publication Award. Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video focuses on preserving digital video, an area in which there is still little published guidance. Available freely online in three languages, the guide is organized into eight sections that focus on stages in a video archiving workflow: create, transfer, acquire, organize, store, catalog, preserve, and share. Unlike other resources, it is aimed at content creators rather than archivists, enabling interventions that support preservation early in the digital lifecycle. The guide also uses easy-to-understand language and low-cost recommendations that empower individuals and grassroots organizations with fewer resources to take action to safeguard their own valuable collections. To date, the guide has found enthusiastic users among nonarchivists, including independent media producers and archives educators, as well as archivists who are new to managing digital video content.

The Award Committee noted that the guide was a “valuable contribution to the field of digital preservation” and an “example of what a good online resource should be.”

Join Us For An Online Archiving Q&A

Join WITNESS’ resident archivist Yvonne Ng on Facebook as she hosts an online Q&A between video producers and video archivists. Sign up and ask questions here. The Q&A will run August 11-15.