Personal Archivist For Hire

Sometimes I feel like a personal archivist-for-hire.

When I was starting along this path and joked with my family "If you need something preserved, you know who to ask!" they laughed. Okay, not the same as "Now that I'm an accountant, I'll do your taxes for free," but I meant well.

Now I've taken on a project for each side of my family--a photo preservation project from my mom's side and a mixed material collection (cloth, medals, documents, tin-types, etc.) of Civil War era from my dad's side (from Peter Pike, who served in the war).

Recently, my boyfriend has realized the potential of my tech side ("Can you look at my printer?" "Why doesn't this file work on this computer?"). I de-acidified and housed his newspaper from the Red Sox World Series win for a gift. We've been packing his stuff since he's moving next week, and he found a few magazines from the same time, and he wants those preserved, too. He also has quite the collection of movies on VHS, DVD, and Blueray. Somehow we got on the topic of me transferring audio for work and that somehow translated into me transferring his VHS to a hard drive. I said "Just as soon as I figure out how to do that for work..."

Outreach Done Well!

You know you're doing something right when a professor approaches you, said he heard about a film in your collections from one of his colleagues, and would like to get some people to donate to the cause to have it preserved and digitized! Even though this wasn't a severely deteriorating film I am currently trying to preserve from the Department of Athletics Collection, the film does need some work--slight warping, it broke while playing, very slight vinegar syndrome. The content, however, is completely unique! A former female anthropology professor, Dr. Regina Herzfeld, did field studies and interviews with Native American groups, and there is a lot of interaction between her and the Native American women--a rare occurrence. It's a relatively high-demand film (for the Archives), played about once a year, and having a digital copy would definitely help us out, but because it is relatively playable, it's not high on our priority list.

I received the initial description-based estimate from ColorLab today, and passed it to my interested parties. I hoped to get this project going soon, but once the professor saw the price tag, well, he's still interested, just slightly less so. He's compiling a longer list of people to seek donations from...

Project Planning-Audio Digitization

I have been reading Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation and IASA's Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects in preparation of planning not only an audio digitization project, but planning audio digitization standards for the CUA Archives.

I became quite overwhelmed from all the technical terms and processes today, so I decided to take a quick step ahead and do some project planning, based on logical steps taken while developing a normal digitization plan (names have been eliminated for privacy). Am I missing anything, at least in the preliminary stages? Anything I won't discover while doing the rest of my reading?

Project Plan for the School of Music Audio Digitization Program

People Involved:
Robin C. Pike, Audio Visual Archivist
Audio Visual Archivist’s student assistant
Possible practicum students or other student workers
Head Archivist and Associate Archivist, supervisors
Music Librarians
Other technical support staff?

1) PRELIMINARY:

a. Inventory A/V Equipment
i. Student Assistant creates inventory and shelflist
ii. I update Shelflist database

b. Set up equipment to MAC
i. Consult music librarians
ii. Reel player is priority
iii. Might need new analog to digital convertor
iv. Set up other audio equipment and possibly VHS/Beta, later

c. Organize Audio Materials
i. Work with Music Library and CPIT to accession rest of collection
ii. Research standards for cataloging audio
iii. Create cataloging schema
iv. Order re-housing supplies
v. Process Collection
- Student Assistant and student workers create inventory
-- Student workers note preservation concerns
- Re-house collection
- Student Assistant and student workers research and write history of the Music Department; consult with Music Librarians
- Student Assistant and other student workers create rest of finding aid parts

d. Research Digitization and Digital Preservation
i. ARSC sources, namely Sound Directions and IASA Guidelines book
ii. Set in-house standards and methods
iii. Order and set up preservation formats

2) ACTIONS

a. Preservation
i. Preservation notes from processing used
ii. Preserve materials as preparation for digitization

b. Digitization
i. Clean and oil machine well, and frequently
ii. Clean materials prior to preservation
iii. Digitize using Audacity or iLogic Express
iv. Save to formats, etc.

3) ONLINE
a. Upload to Web server
i. via WRLC? Omeka? Other?

4) ONGOING PRESERVATION AND DIGITAL PRESERVATION
a. Work with people in charge of Web server
b. Monitor preservation masters, and original

A Little Archiving From My Hometown...

I just saw a story on the AMIA listserv on preserving archival footage from WQED, a local broadcasting company in Pittsburgh, PA. The preservation action was performed by Preservation Technologies (a cool place to tour if you get the chance!) in Cranberry, PA, about an hour north of Pittsburgh. If you're familiar with WQED, you know they produced such amazing shows as Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (which are being preserved), along with many other PBS productions.

This grant-funded project is a rare opportunity for a public station because these types of stations cannot afford a project on this scale using their typical operating budget.

I can't wait to see the result of this mass digitization project!

Back to Work!

It's Monday and I'm back at work after a two-week vacation! I was compiling projects for the upcoming semester. What's on deck?

*Digitizing two scrapbooks from a alumni's father (the father was also an alumni), and creating the corresponding photo digital collections;
*School of Music audio recording project, consisting of organizing, re-housing, processing, researching digitization and digital preservation standards, digitizing, and cataloging;
*Department of Athletics film preservation and digitization project, consisting of working with a vendor to preserve and digitize the films, and then marketing the films to the university community properly to acquire funds to digitize more films;
*Finish EAD finding aids for two large university photo collections;
*Finish the A/V website coding (one page left!);
*Re-house a large portion of the audio and moving image media in the archives (when moving materials, I discovered the poor housing was leading to deterioration of some audio and films);
*Not go crazy attempting to finish all of this by May-ish.
Goals vs. what will actually be completed... Let's see how much I can do!

Library of Congress Saves Films!

On the Media--Film Buff

The Library of Congress has established a National Film Registry to preserve the legacy of some of the best films of all time, but among the submissions were orphan films--historical films, corporate films, and ameteur art/music films that are little known, often not associated with an author, causing them to be forgotten about and rarely preserved. With the Library of Congress's help, these films are being preserved and digitized, saving a legacy otherwise not known.

NPR: On the Media did a story on these orphan films.

I Can't Escape!

I'm visiting family in PA for "late Christmas," and I'm at my Grandmother's house and what happens? She happens to have several old photos from an older relative's house that need a new home and she doesn't know what she's going to do with them!

Uh... What do I do for a living?!

I have inherited three framed and about 6 unframed large photos from the early 1900s of family, mostly from my Lebanese side (including a rare photo taken of my great-great-aunt in presumably her wedding dress, a few months before she prematurely died)! As soon as I return to DC, I'm going to the closest Michaels and looking into having the unframed ones re-framed with UV filtering glass. I am also going to perform some minor repair work on one unframed photo that has become torn (Japanese tissue paper to the rescue). As for the three that are framed, well, I'm going to try to find an appraiser that can give me advice on having them de-framed and keeping the frames while replacing the glass with UV filtering glass. But for now, I have the perfect darker hallway in my apartment for my family!

I have seriously hit the jackpot!

Fantastic Films (2)

On Friday I got the estimate from our film vendor, and because of the severe deterioration of the films, after closer inspection, the five cost almost twice as much as the Archives wanted to spend! So, we're going with my original idea of preserving three films and pursuing donors to save the other films (now more donors than we initially thought).

I chose three from the five, and it hurt to know that the other two might not be able to be saved because we can't afford it right now. I feel like I'm abandoning my cat, or something. I care about these vinegar-smelling pieces of acetate.

*Sob*

I digress...

The films that will be saved are as follows:
"Old Film" ca. 1939 (I'm hoping this is a film of the record-setting football team, the year they went to the Sun Bowl)
"Track and Field. Zuppa Doyle runs a mile for CUA" (Record-setting event)
"CUA Football" ca. late 1920s or 1930s (possibly from the year the team went to the Orange Bowl, but probably game footage from when the team was prominent in the USA).

I made the tearful selection, got back to our rep, and got as much as I could do taken care of. Hopefully this project will get off the ground in January, and be finished in the first few months of the new year! My next step is to approach the Offices of University Development and Alumni Relations to see how we can market these DVDs to interested alumni and their families, so we can get more money to digitize more films.

Reading Resources

In my attempt to get the audio preservation and digitization programs off the ground in the Archives, I have been doing an excessive amount of research and reading lately, mostly from THE reading list provided by the ARSC Technical Committee.

I had to take a sick day today, so I'm trying to get through (at least a part of) resource #2: Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects. Kevin Bradley, Editor. Aarhus, Denmark: International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA), 2004.

I have some catching up to do!

Fantastic Films

After wrapping up discussions on the reception last night, I erased quite a few things from my to-do dry erase board, and added my new projects. In the next week and two days I will be starting to focus solely on the CUA School of Music audio recordings, and the CUA Department of Athletics films. I made great progress today, which has left me in a super happy mood!

I talked with my supervisor about starting the film preservation/digitization project. Starting is a lose term because I located two collections of severely degraded films a little over a year ago. I had students perform surveys (library students who jumped to have the experience to learn about and survey film, not that were grudingly stuck with vinegar syndrome films) to complete an inventory but to also survey preservation concerns. I met with Russ Suniewick, President (and representative) of ColorLab, a film laboratory and telecine service, who appraised the films, took the surveys, and provided an estimate soon after.

And then we sat on those estimates because we didn't have the money to do either large project. I proposed doing a few films as a pilot project to my supervisors, and then we can use this pilot project to get money from donors who can help us to complete this project. However, I could not pursue this project because of the reception.

Today was a day for new goals.

Today I contacted our sales rep, agreed on a price and type of project we are looking to do, re-reviewed the inventory, selected the five films (based on level of deterioration and potential for popularity and donor appeal), and FedEx-ed them off to ColorLab!

Tomorrow, audio!