Article

Make It Happen

19 January 2015

As we saw in the recent #WhyAmIAnArchivist Twitter hashtag, for many people one of the inspirations to becoming an archivist is the thrill of discovering lost documents that unlock the past (or unlock an ancient vault full of gold or autopsied aliens). Life is an encoded puzzle written in invisible ink, and perhaps, just perhaps, that misplaced letter or oral history or receipt from 7-11 will shade in the image just a little bit more, enough to make out a fresh answer to the mystery or somehow better connect the present to the past.

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Estimating Duration of Open Reel Audio

10 December 2014

UPDATE: Find a simple Excel spreadsheet Duration Calculator here.

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Another Fowl Thanksgiving

25 November 2014

Growing up, my most memorable Thanksgiving was a non-Thanksgiving. 90% of my extended family lived in the Portland area, so all family events took place there, but we lived 3-4 hours away in southern Oregon.

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Maybe It Should Be Living Dead Media

19 November 2014

I’ve been a long time fan of zombie movies. And I’m old. I’m letting you know this so you know that I’m not some Johnny-rise-from-the-dead-lately who jumped on the zombie bandwagon with World War Z or The Walking Dead.

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Digital Preservation Is People

14 November 2014

Preservation is a resource heavy endeavor. People. Time. Equipment. Infrastructure. Facilities. Space. Training. And, I suppose, some cash-ola.

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AVPreserve Upcoming Events – Not Slowing Down for November

10 November 2014

Just as we’re catching our collective breaths after the intense conference month of October, AVPreserve is setting off again for a number of November events with our passports in hand. Senior Consultant Kara Van Malssen is currently in Mexico City as part of the instructional team for SOIMA-LATAM 2014: Safeguarding Sound and Image Collections. Part of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), SOIMA brings together archivists from across the globe to provide an intensive course over several weeks in order to train them on the care and preservation of audiovisual materials. Kara’s instruction will largely focus on metadata. She has been an instructor in the SOIMA program for several years and always looks forward to meeting new international colleagues.

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Fear and Planning in the Archives

27 October 2014

If you’re reading this today, and if today is October 27th, then it’s the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage! WDAVH (say that five times fast) is an international celebration of the importance of audio and moving image archives, both for the significance of their collections as well as critical need for preservation, hence this year’s theme “Archives at Risk – Much More to Do!”

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An Introduction To Using The Command Line Interface To Work With Files And Directories

25 October 2014

With the increasing ingest of born digital and digitized collections, we are at the point (perhaps well past the point) of admitting that almost all archives are digital archives, and as a profession we must identify and gain training on the tools that will help us describe, store, and manage file-based collections in the same ways we do with physical collections.

The Command Line Interface (CLI) is a critical tool here, both for managing files from ingest to storage directly or being able to access certain applications that only have a CLI option for running. These introductions to CLI (both for Mac and Windows OS) provide a basic understanding of managing directories and files with the command line, skills which can be expanded from managing individual files to ingesting and caring for large sets of files in batches in order to save time and address the realities of file-based acquisition.

World Day for Audiovisual Heritage Releases

25 October 2014

In celebration of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage on October 27th, AVPreserve is releasing several new or updated white papers that provide guidance on the preservation and management of audiovisual and digital media collections. To start, we have translated five of our white papers into Spanish in order to increase accessibility for a global audience. These first five papers cover processing of AV collections, preservation of optical media, cloud storage for archives, disaster recovery, and an introduction to Codecs. We hope to continue translating our resources and look to feedback on our efforts and future requests. The Spanish language papers can be downloaded for free at https://www.avpreserve.com/papers-and-presentations/documento-tecnico-de-lengua-espanola/

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Documentos Técnicos en Español

24 October 2014

La publicación inicial de cinco de nuestros documentos técnicos traducidos al español. Esperamos traducir más recursos pronto y compartirlos con nuestros colegas.

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