The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) will unveil a series of online webinars this month, expanding its educational offerings on media preservation, and providing introduction of these important topics to the broader library and archive communities as well as the general public. AMIA Online will launch the first three webinar series in September, and address digital formats and storage, as well as best practices for personal and small audiovisual archives. “In the face of growing need and requests from both our members and the public, AMIA is in a unique position to offer expert-led, relevant education,” said Laura Rooney, Managing Director of AMIA.
AMIA’s Online Continuing Education Task Force surveyed the needs of the professional community and those with interest in learning. “These webinars are a direct result of that effort,” added Rooney. “We continue to support professionals in the archive and preservation communities from entry level to veteran practitioner, but also want to open up our expertise to individuals wanting to learn how to protect their own and their family legacy.”
The webinars are led by respected experts in the industry from arts, education and media. Developed by professional archivists, the project is led by industry experts Linda Tadic of Digital Bedrock, and Lance Watsky of the Sherman Grinberg Film Library.
The first series, an Introduction to Digital Formats and Storage, will include eight, one-and-a-half hour webinars. Topics range from an overview of digital video and audio formats, standards, best practices, storage, workflows and metadata. Instructors are expected to include Professor Barry Lunt from the School of Technology at Brigham Young University; Marcos Sueiro Bal, Senior Archivist at New York Public Radio; Alex Kroh, Digital Archivist at the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia; Kate Murray, Library of Congress; Jim Hone, Film & Media Digital Archivist at Washington University in St. Louis; Peter Oleksik, Museum of Modern Art; and Erik Piil, Associate Conservator at The Kramlich Collection / New Art Trust.
The second webinar series, Best Practices for Personal Audiovisual Archives, is specifically aimed at families and individuals with audiovisual collections they wish to preserve. It will delve into common media and formats likely to be found in the home, and explore obsolescence and degradation concerns. It will also focus on what hardware and software is useful for performing digitization at home. Nadia Ghasedi, Head of Visual Media Research Lab at Washington University in St. Louis will host the first webinar in this series, and Lauren Sorenson, Digital Asset Manager and Archivist at the Hammer Museum will lead the second session.
Series three will look at Best Practices for Small Audiovisual Archives. This series is directed at small institutions with audiovisual collections and limited staff. Ghasedi will address formats found in mixed archival collections, and discuss deterioration challenges being faced in this sector of the industry. Sorensen will address workstation needs and provide guidance on working with vendors for outsourcing digitization.
Each session takes place at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time, 1:00 p.m. Central, and 2:00 p.m. Eastern.
Participants can enroll in a full series or individual webinars. Fees are $40 per webinar for AMIA members, and $50 per webinar for non-members. Discounts are available.
For more information or to register, visit http://www.amiaonline.org.
