Future Directions Plenary
& Session Stream

At an AMIA Board meeting earlier this year, a Future Directions Committee of the Board was established to nurture opportunities for the AMIA membership to discuss our shared future, bringing forward topics such as shifts in resource availability and audience expectations. The first activity of the Future Directions Committee is to open the discussion with three sessions at the Annual AMIA Conference in Savannah. These will focus on challenges of audiovisual preservation and access in a time of convergence, considering our role as a convening organization: what is essential about AMIA, now entering our 18th year? How, collectively, do we understand our future?

Thursday, November 13, 8:30am - 10:00am
Future Directions New Horizons: Organizations in the Face of Convergence

The conference opening plenary session will consider how the archival community can best manage change and how we might act together as an effective community. This first of three gatherings organized by AMIA's Future Directions Committee will frame common challenges and ways to understand them (See also Thursday, 2 p.m., Enacting Futures, and Saturday, 3:45 p.m., Electronic Publications.) The Future Directions Committee was formed in 2008 to ensure that AMIA's board and members scan the horizon together, discussing AMIA's role as a convening organization informed by other organizations and forward-thinking individuals.

Speakers

Sam Brylawski is Editor of the University of California, Santa Barbara online Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings. He is a consultant to the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board, working on access projects and assisting with the Congressionally-mandated study of the state of audio preservation. Sam is Immediate Past President of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections and was head of the Library of Congress Recorded Sound Section from 1996 to 2005.

Audio archives may be somewhat ahead of moving image collections in planning and practicing digital preservation on account of the comparatively smaller size of the files created for long-term archival storage. However, audio archivists are facing many obstacles in shifting to the digital domain, challenges yet to be overcome. Moving image collection managers will inevitably be required to grapple with the same problems: debates over best practices; affordable, trusted, storage; and expectations of funders and patrons which can't be met without navigating the copyright minefield. As yet, there are few solutions, but our communities will benefit from tackling these issues jointly.

Richard Cox is Professor in Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences, where he is responsible for the archives concentration in the Master's in Library Science degree and the Ph.D. degree, and where he chairs the Library and Information Science Program. He writes Reading Archives, a blog he has published since 2006. He has been a member of the Society of American Archivists Council from 1986 through 1989, served as Editor of the American Archivist from 1991 through 1995 and the Records & Information Management Report from 2001 through 2007, and has published thirteen books in archives, preservation, and records management (winning the Waldo Gifford Leland Award three times).

Good Times-Convergence, Conflict, & Chaos: The archival future looks either bright or bleak, depending on one's own personality and whom they happen to be reading or listening to at the moment. Digital technologies pose remarkable challenges, but there are other challenges having little to with these technologies. In order to deal with complex new documentary forms, we have to transcend boundaries, build new partnerships, ramp up educational programs to prepare new kinds of archivists, and redesign our mission to encompass ethical and accountability concerns. It is an exciting time!

Ricky Erway is a senior program officer at OCLC Research, where she focuses on digitization activities in the cultural heritage community. Until July of 2006, she coordinated the RLG Cultural Materials Alliance (a group of 54 libraries, archives, and museums providing a single point of access to their digitized special collections). From 1986-1995, Ricky worked at the Library of Congress as associate coordinator of the American Memory program, aimed at significantly increasing public access to the special collections of the Library of Congress. Ricky has an MLS from the University of Wisconsin.

Collaboration to Achieve Common Goals-Moving image archives are being asked to do more with less. One of the best ways to succeed in this situation is to combine efforts with others who share your goals. A recent study of collaboration across different entities suggests several catalysts that can engender successful collaborations. Having one or two in play makes cooperation possible; having several in play enables game-changing progress and innovation.

Chair
Karan Sheldon, co-founder of the independent regional archives Northeast Historic Film, was AMIA's first treasurer in 1991 and rejoined the Board in 2007, where she is a member of the Future Directions Committee.

Thursday, November 13, 2:00pm - 3:30pm
Future Directions: Enacting the Future

The plenary speakers Sam Brylawski, Richard Cox, and Ricky Erway will participate in a follow-up to the morning session focused on balancing issues of problem solving, technology and ethics in regard to audiovisual preservation and access. This will be an informal 90-minute discussion aimed at establishing common ground on practical issues.Chair

Caroline Frick is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas, Austin. Her research and teaching interests focus upon the evolution of the moving image archiving movement, cross-cultural approaches to historical preservation, and digital media libraries. She is the founder and executive director of the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, an organization devoted to the discovery and preservation of media related to the state.

Saturday, November 15 - 3:45pm - 5:15pm
Future Directions: Electronic Publishing

This panel looks at evolving forms of scholarly analysis and publication about moving images. No longer "new" exactly, online publications enable different modes of discourse and interactivity, but also present challenges that printed journals never knew. Is the long-desired form -- journals with embedded moving images that illustrate their texts -- now at hand? What advancements (or losses) are electronic journals providing study of moving images and sound? Will they last?

Christina Lane is an associate professor in the Motion Picture Program, University of Miami School of Communication. She is Associate Editor of the electronic journal In Short. She will discuss the importance of electronic publishing in general and emphasize the specific value of circulating small screen images. The journal focuses attention on "shorts," which allows it to encompass a wide range of content, creating connections among silent films, documentaries, experimental work, music videos, commercials, YouTube, video art, and TV programs.

Alisa Perren is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Georgia State University. She will discuss the online journals Flow and In Media Res. Her research specializations include television studies, media industry studies, and U.S. film and television history. The recent Flow conference provides an example of how discussions initiated on the Internet can be advanced further in productive ways through meetings in the offline world.

Mark J. Williams is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at Dartmouth College. He is the founding editor of the Journal of E-Media Studies, a blind peer-reviewed, on-line journal dedicated to the scholarly study of electronic media. This interdisciplinary journal is published by the Dartmouth College Library with an editorial board of scholars grounded in the methodologies of the field of film and television studies.

Chair
Dan Streible is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies in the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and associate director of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation graduate program. He chairs AMIA's Publication Committee, serves on the editorial boards of The Moving Image and the Journal of E-Media Studies, and organizes the biennial Orphan Film Symposium.

 

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