2008 ALA Conference Program

Action! Setting Preservation Priorities and Ensuring Access to Your Moving Image Collections

ALA Annual Conference, Sunday, June 29, 2008
Presented by the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS)
Co-sponsored by Arts Section (ARTS) & Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS)

Snowden Becker - Co-founder, The Center for Home Movies “Get the Max from the Mix! Evaluating, Preserving and Making the Most of Audiovisual Materials in Mixed Collections”
[PowerPoint, 7.19 Mb] [view as slideshow in browser] [Handout - PDF]

Hannah Frost - Media Preservation Librarian, Stanford University “Reformatting Moving Images: Opportunities, Compromises and Decision-making in Today’s Media Landscape”
[PowerPoint, 4.94 Mb] [view as slideshow in browser]

Mike Pogorzelski - Director, Academy Film Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “Essential Film: A How-To Guide to Photochemical Preservation in 20 Minutes or Less”
[PowerPoint, 2.41 Mb] [view as slideshow in browser]

Program Summary
Submitted by Serena Vaquilar, Wayne State University, ILS Program

ACRL’s Rare Books and Manuscript Section (RBMS) presented “Action! Setting Preservation Priorities and Ensuring Access to Your Moving Image Collections.” It was co –sponsored by Arts Section (ARTS) and Preservation and Reformatting Section. The presentation aimed to highlight the necessary steps to preserving audiovisual collections in three perspectives.

Snowden Becker (Co-founder of The Center for Home Movies) discussed the basic steps of identifying, assessing and preserving audiovisual materials. She offered a numeric order to follow, but prefaced the order by stating that this process can happen organically, and not to consider the numeric order gospel. These steps were outlined: counting, identifying, assessing, describing, quantifying, prioritizing, preserving and publicizing. She emphasized the importance of counting first, as it creates a new semantic reality to the collection, as well as makes grant writing easier, since numbers are more compelling than expressions of “the sky is falling.” She also advocated a pilot of the project, stating that it saves money, and will show how wrong things can go, or “how much you don’t know about your collection.” To close, she promoted publicizing what you do, stating that the more we do it, the easier it is for people who follow us.

Hannah Frost (Media Preservation Librarian, Stanford University) presented “Reformatting Moving Images: Opportunities, Compromises and Decision-making in Today’s Media Landscape.” YouTube presents a challenge to the list of new resources; although the argument can be made that it is a form of preservation, YouTube changes the expectation of the user, who in turn assumes that everything can be online. Analog tape or video are really a thing of the past. Frost advocates turning to digital technology. The audio community has a widely held consensus on the specs for reformatting: 24 bit, 96 kilohertz (at a minimum) and uncompressed PCM data in a broadcasting format. Unfortunately, digital technology is not so straight forward. She gave examples of her experiences in reformatting, providing examples of dirty film, after digitization, as well as flaws in analog formats which cannot be helped, and are thus transferred to the digital copy.

Mike Pogorzelski (Director, Academy Film Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) presented “Essential Film: A How-To Guide to Photochemical Preservation in 20 Minutes or Less.” He offered a basic definition of terms to help define the different elements involved (original camera negative, Fine grain master positive, duplicate negative, answer print, check print, preservation element, to name a few). Porkorzelski then walked through the process of producing a preservation element, access to the film, and finally (if the budget allows) a production element for subsequent copies. Cost is a relative variable, depending on the project.