Preservation Services at Dartmouth College: Association of Moving Image Archivists Conference

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Association of Moving Image Archivists Conference

The Association of Moving Image Archivists is the professional organization for those who are involved with preserving and making accessible film and video. I attended the recent conference in Austin, TX and came away with a couple of good tools:

Hannah Frost from Stanford University presented this new tool, the AV Artifact Atlas, for understanding video and audio technical issues. The goal is to create a reference work with examples so that non-technical folks will be able to identify what is wrong with their video, learn the cause of the problem, and confirm if there is anything that can be done to correct it.

The tool is actually a wiki and will eventually be open for additions from the audio-visual community. As someone who is coming to film and video preservation without a technical background this is a fantastic guide to help me talk to media experts. For instance, I’d never heard of “quilting” other than as a hobby but now I know how to recognize it and sadly, that it can’t be corrected.

The National Archives has made public their guidelines for reformatting materials and the context for the digitized items that they produce. I’ll be looking at these documents with a goal of updating Dartmouth Library’s digitization specifications and to develop a media preservation guide. This will also build on the ideas Helen picked up at DLF, detailed in the session notes from Strategies for Film and Video Digitization.

Finally, clips from “The Orozco Mural Quetzalcoatl” were shown both at the Reel Thing technical session and Archival Screening Night. Russ Suniewick of Colorlab showed some before and after footage to demonstrate how they were able to restore the film to its original color after it had experienced magenta dye-fade; I showed a four-minute clip at Archival Screening Night as a teaser for the Spring 2012 world premier. Watch this blog for that announcement.

Written by Barb Sagraves

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Contributors

Deborah Howe Is the Collections Conservator at Dartmouth College Library. She's been involved in the book community for over 20 years. She is a member of the Guild of Book Workers and teaches classes in the Book Arts program.

Ryland Ianelli Is a cartoonist and Project Specialist in the Dartmouth Preservation Services department. He graduated from Reed College with a BA in Art History in 2008 and, more recently, from the Center for Cartoon Studies with an MFA in Cartooning in 2010. In addition to his work in Preservation and the Digital Production Unit, he is currently drawing and writing for various independently published comics and anthologies.

Barb Sagraves has been head of Preservation Services since its creation in 1995. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan SLIS program, has an MA in Medieval History from Michigan State University, and a BA in History from the University of Oklahoma. In her role as department head, Barb has overall responsibility for the preservation program and policies at Dartmouth College Library and is in charge of the Book Arts Program.

Jenny Mullins has been the Digital Preservation Librarian for Dartmouth College Library since May of 2014. Prior to coming to Dartmouth, she preserved video and audio collections, helped build a digital repository and worked in book and paper conservation labs. Jenny is a member of ALA and co-chair of the Preservation Metadata Interest Group for 2015-17.