AMIA: Thursday, December 1, 2005

7:00 am - 8:00 am
Education Committee Meeting

Chair: Francis Poole - University of Delaware

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Education Committee are invited to attend.

7:30 am - 8:00 am
Session Chair Orientation

Program Co-Chairs: Julie Lofthouse - The Film Reference Library
Carol Radovich - Rockefeller Archive Center

This meeting will serve as an information session for all session chairs at AMIA’s annual conference. It will provide chairs with an overview of their role as session facilitators and outline the Association’s Basic Chairing Guidelines. Members of the Conference Committee will be in attendance, and all session chairs should attend.

8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Continuous Screening: You’ll Laugh and Cry & Austin on Film

8:00 am - 5:00 pm
MIC Archive Directory Registration

8:00 am - 10:00 am
Scholarship Breakfast & Conference Welcome

Hosted By: Education Committee and Conference Committee
Speaker: David B. Gracy – School of Information University of Texas, Austin

On the opening day of the AMIA conference, please join us for breakfast and raise your coffee cup to toast the 2005-2006 recipients of the AMIA Scholarship and Fellowship awards, the Maryann Gomes Award and the Carolyn Hauer International Fund. AMIA President Milt Shefter and Conference Committee Co-Chairs Carol Radovich and Oksana Dykyj will welcome attendees and participating allied archival organizations to the conference and will offer opening comments.

10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Online mapping for sharing archive records on the Web

Hosted By: Cataloging Committee, Digital Initiatives Committee
Chair: Jane Johnson - Library of Congress
Speakers: Geoff Alexander - Academic Film Archive of North America
Karan Sheldon - Northeast Historic Film

MIC has broken new ground by creating a mapping utility enabling any moving image archive, regardless of metadata schema used, to share records globally through the MIC Union Catalog. The organization simply submits an application, sample records and field list. MIC then populates an online form with this data so that the organization can name MIC data element equivalents for its own fields. Program content: brief overview of MIC and its Union Catalog; walk the audience through the mapping process; testimonials from participants, discussing the benefits of the process, what use is made of the data, etc. Aimed at a wide audience with a range of expertise, from small archives with very little knowledge of metadata (showing the simplicity of sharing records with a much broader audience) to larger archives seeking to integrate multiple metadata schema into a single system, and system developers. This technology has great potential for all archives large and small, as well as storage facilities.

10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Staying Indie: The Struggle to Maintain Independent Media
from the 60s to the Present

Hosted By: Diversity Task Force and Independent Media Interest Group
Co-Chairs: Lewanne Jones - Autonomedia
David Rice - Democracy Now
Speakers: Roz Payne - Newsreel Archives
Tish Stringer - Independent Media Channel
Andrew Garrison - University of Texas, Austin

The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented consolidation of media assets in the hands of a few commercial and government entities. FCC deregulation, corporate media mergers, and ties between government and media all resulted in a small number of corporations controlling an ever increasing sector of the US news and information media. This panel will investigate media collections created and used by independent news outlets. Media supported by its users and not by its sponsors can provide perspectives that enhance the historical record by representing issues and communities that are not given voice through corporate media.

12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Lunch Break (Lunch on your own)

12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Poster Session

Chair: Sara Holmes - Texas Tech University Libraries

The poster session provides individuals, institutions, and groups an opportunity to present research and projects-in-process to the community of moving image archivists. The session will provide ample time for presenters to individually discuss their work with colleagues. Following the session, posters will be placed on display in the Vendor Exhibits on Friday, and a program of abstracts will be available near the registration desk during the conference.

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Digital Initiatives Committee Meeting

Co-Chairs: Linda Tadic - ARTstor
John Walko - Scene Savers

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Digital Initiatives Committee are invited to attend.

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Elections Committee Meeting

Chair: Ruta Abolins - University of Georgia Archives

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Elections Committee are invited to attend.

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Cataloging Committee Meeting

Chair: Nancy Dosch - National Library of Medicine

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Cataloging Committee are invited to attend.

1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Screening Day at the Paramount Theatre

Curated by: Grover Crisp - Sony Pictures Entertainment

Screenings of two films with presentations from individuals involved in their production and/or restoration.

The day will conclude (after a dinner break) with the screening at 8:00 pm. In conjunction with the Ransom Center, the Nederlands Filmmuseum and Milestone Films, AMIA presents “Beyond The Rocks” (1922) starring Gloria Swanson and Rudolf Valentino. Lost for decades, a print of this important film was recently discovered in a collection donated to the Nederlands Filmmuseum. Martin Scorsese calls it “a cause for celebration… a testament to the extraordinary artistry of silent cinema.”

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Interest Group Meeting

Chair: Lynne Kirste - Academy Film Archive

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Interest Group are invited to attend.

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Independent Media Interest Group Meeting

Chair: Stephen Parr - San Francisco Media Archive

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Independent Media Interest Group are invited to attend.

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Publications Committee Meeting

Chair: Karen Gracy - University of Pittsburgh

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Publications Committee are invited to attend.

2:15 pm - 3:45 pm
Texas Triage: Combining Preservation, Access & Entertainment with “Lost” Films of the Lone Star State

Co-Chairs: Caroline Frick - Texas Archive of the Moving Image /
University of Texas at Austin
Dwight Swanson - Appalshop
Speakers: Bradley Reeves - Consultant
Judy L. Johnson - Childress Theatre Company (TX)
Stephanie Langenkamp - San Marcos Public Library (TX)

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, itinerant filmmakers traversed North America, Europe, and Australia documenting towns and creating local “stars.” Their films now serve as important visual catalogs of communities at specific moments in time, functioning, in a sense, as communal home movies. Through the work of Melton Barker, a Texas filmmaker who traveled across the country making local versions of “Our Gang” short subjects, this panel will investigate how these archival artifacts recently have been rediscovered, preserved, and exploited. Open to all levels of participation, from media archivists and historians to those less familiar with film preservation and practice, this panel offers a range of perspectives on how ephemeral films can be effectively utilized by a broad range of organizations.

2:15 pm - 3:45 pm
Should We Take This In? A Practical Guide to Collecting Policies and Donor Agreements

Chair: David Pierce - Consultant
Speakers: Mike Mashon - Library of Congress
Elizabeth Weatherford - Smithsonian National
Museum of the American Indian
Carole Lazio - Media Consultant to the Film & Video Center, NMAI
David Rowntree - Washington University Film & Media Archive

Moving image and sound archives make cultural decisions on whether to accept materials into their collections and practical decisions on the terms and conditions on which materials will be accepted. Written policies and guidelines ensure that acquisitions are focused, and material that does not fit the institution’s needs are referred elsewhere. Potential donors naturally prefer agreements where they retain all rights and can withdraw materials at will; most institutions are reluctant to accept materials if their primary role is providing complementary storage. This session will examine the value of documented policies, discuss their creation and provide examples of their application. It will also review standard deposit and donor agreements at institutions, including when it is appropriate to make exceptions. This panel will be valuable to all archive staff and rights-holders whose material is held by public institutions. Examples of existing policies and donor agreements will be distributed.

2:15 pm – 3:45 pm
When the Curtain Falls on Celluloid: Archival Film Projection in the Era of HD

Hosted By: Projection & Presentation (sub-group of the Access Committee)
Chair: Leo Enticknap - Northern Region Film & Television Archive
Speakers: John Pytlak - Eastman Kodak Co.
Dennis Doros - Milestone Films
Brad Miller - Film-Tech Ltd.

Cinema (theatrical) projection using computer based imaging technologies instead of film has made little commercial impact thus far. Speculation is intensifying as to if and when Moore’s Law will overtake the development of film-based imaging, thereby signaling the start of the 35mm release print’s decline into obsolescence. When the phasing out of film in mainstream theatres finally happens (even if way in the future), equipment provision, service infrastructure, the technical skills base and even the manufacture of release print film stock itself will cease. Archives which currently showcase their preservation and restoration activities through the medium of 35mm prints and the venues which show them will need to have a strategy in place. This session aims to offer a meaningful forum for members concerned with the projection of archival film prints in screening venues to consider the issue, and how archivists and theatre operators might be able to prepare for the end of film projection as a mainstream technology.

3:45 pm - 4:15 pm
Break

4:15 pm - 5:45 pm
Breaking Free from the Silo: The Digital Library & METS

Hosted By: Cataloging Committee
Chair: Andrea Leigh - UCLA Film & Television Archive
Speakers: Howard Besser - Moving Image Archiving & Preservation,
Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
Jerome McDonough - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Conventionally, digital asset management can be conceptualized as a silo, the creation of a single repository encapsulating unstructured content. This is in contrast to a true digital library, which ideally expresses all of the semantics of a digital object’s lifecycle, not only by describing its content, but documenting how the object behaves, its function and use, its relationship to other information objects, and how the object should be managed. This session will cover what constitutes a digital library vs. stand-alone databases, provide a brief history of the development of the Metadata Encoding Transmission Standard (METS) within the digital library community, outline METS’ ability to integrate disparate forms of metadata within a single document, and provide an example of how METS might be applied to video materials.

4:15 pm - 5:45 pm
Archiving the Action: Issues of Political Activist Video

Hosted By: Independent Media Interest Group & LGBT Interest Group
Chair: Tom Colley - Video Data Bank
Speakers: Eric Paulus - The Austin Independent Media Center
Jim Hubbard - ACT UP Oral History Project
Siue Moffat

Technological change has increasingly enabled political activists to document their own activities in moving images and sound. Archivists and makers and distributors of these materials will discuss issues related to preservation and access, examining theoretical questions and concrete problems. The panelists will examine specific collections of historical work, and explore the implications of digital technology and the internet. Tom Colley from the Video Data Bank will discuss issues involved in preserving the Videofreex tapes from the late sixties and early seventies. Jim Hubbard will examine the intricacies of the ACT UP Oral History Project, creating an AIDS Activist Video collection for the New York Public Library, and building preservation into video projects. Siue Moffat will contextualize recent work from the unique perspective of an activist video maker, and recent graduate of one of our profession’s new moving image archive graduate programs. Eric Paulus from the Austin Independent Media Center will provide local participation from the vantage point of one who is actively involved in disseminating current activist moving images.

4:15 pm - 5:45 pm
Super 8mm: Past, Present... and Future?

Chair: Steve Polta - San Francisco Cinematheque
Speakers: Alan Kattelle
Colette Scott - Eastman Kodak Company
Rhonda Vigeant - Pro 8mm
Andrew Lampert – Anthology Film Archives

Super 8 celebrates its 40th birthday in 2005, presenting us with a perfect opportunity to reflect on the past and present of this small format, as well as possible futures. With Super 8’s traditional applications—as a small gauge reversal stock used in home movies, amateur travelogues, artist films, and limited industrial use—apparently on the decline, new S8 negative stocks are finding applications in the commercial market. Archivally speaking, S8 presents many quandaries, especially in terms of preservation via reformatting to larger gauges, to video and into the digital realm. This panel will discuss S8 in both a historical and present day context. Topics will include: the parallel histories of marketing and manufacture; the future of S8 reversal stock; the cost effectiveness and inherent problems of preservation on video/digital versus film; and issues of equipment obsolescence.

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
New Member Welcome and Orientation

Hosted by: AMIA Board of Directors

During this session, representatives of AMIA’s Board of Directors, Committees, Interest Groups and Task Forces will greet new AMIA members and first-time conference attendees. An overview of AMIA’s history and mission will be provided. The session also will provide an opportunity for newcomers to introduce themselves, to express their expectations of the conference and AMIA in general, and to share information on the kinds of moving images held in their collections. Everyone is welcome to attend!

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Projection & Presentation (Access Committee sub-group) Meeting

Co-Chairs: Leo Enticknap - Northern Region Film & Television Archive
Katie Trainor – IFC Center

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Projection & Presentation are invited to attend.

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Awards Committee Meeting

Chair: Robert Dirig - Art Center College of Design

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Awards Committee are invited to attend.

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Diversity Task Force Meeting

Co-Chairs: Lewanne Jones - Autonomedia
David Rowntree - Washington University Film & Media Archive

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the Diversity Task Force are invited to attend.

6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
International Outreach Task Force Meeting

Co-Chairs: Sam Kula - Independent Consultant
Ray Edmonson - Archive Associates

AMIA members interested in contributing to the work of the International Outreach Task Force are invited to attend.

8:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Third Annual Restoration Screening: Beyond The Rocks

Co-Chairs: Grover Crisp - Sony Pictures Entertainment
Oksana Dykyj - Concordia University

In conjunction with the Ransom Center, the Nederlands Filmmuseum and Milestone Films, AMIA presents “Beyond The Rocks” (1922) starring Gloria Swanson and Rudolf Valentino. Lost for decades, a print of this important film was recently discovered in a collection donated to the Nederlands Filmmuseum. Martin Scorsese calls it “a cause for celebration… a testament to the extraordinary artistry of silent cinema.” The film will be introduced jointly by Giovanna Fossati, responsible for the restoration, and Elif Rongen-Kaynakci, responsible for the archival research, both from the Nederlands Filmmuseum.

Dr. David B. Gracy

David B. Gracy II, who began his archival career in the University of Texas Archives the year before T. R. Schellenberg came to the University to teach the first course he offered outside of Washington, is the Governor Bill Daniel Professor in Archival Enterprise in UT’s School of Information.

If one theme characterizes Gracy’s 46-year-career, it must be launching things. During his 20 years as an archival administrator, he established the Southern Labor Archives of Georgia State University before becoming the State Archivist of Texas. During his 19 years, and counting, as an archival educator, he recruited the professorship he holds, established the archival education program in the iSchool, and introduced the School’s first courses in preservation.
While president of the Society of Georgia Archivists, he established Georgia Archive (since renamed Provenance), then as president of the Society of American Archivists, he launched the Archives and Society initiative.
Among his many works in archival literature, Gracy wrote the SAA’s first manual on arrangement and description.

Presently, Gracy is launching an interdisciplinary history research quarterly titled Libraries & the Cultural Record. A refocusing of Libraries & Culture, the new journal invites contributions exploring the significance of collections of recorded knowledge in any form and medium—their creation, organization, preservation, and utilization—in the context of cultural and social history, unlimited as to time and place. The publication gives voice to the histories, individually and intertwined, of librarians, archivists, museum administrators, curators, preservation administrators, and document conservators—those men and women making common cause in their stewardship of the cultural record.

Gracy is a native of Austin who revels in the triumph of the Archives War of Texas, evidence of which momentous event every visitor to Austin can see on Congress Avenue in the statue of Angelina Eberly firing the cannon whose shot saved the Archives of the Republic of Texas for Austin and thereby saved Austin as the capital of Texas.