MIAP Intro Class, Fall 2003

Tuesdays, 5-9 PM, room 651

Instructors: Howard Besser & Mona Jimenez

Introduction to Moving Image Archiving & Preservation H72.1800

Sept 30 Collecting Institutions: History and Culture of Museums, Archives, and other Repositories
see entire syllabus

Assignments due before class:

Mann, Sarah Ziebell. "The Evolution of American Moving Image Preservation: Defining the Preservation Landscape (1967-1977)", The Moving Image 1:2 (Fall 2001), pp 1-20
Magliozzi, Ronald. "Film Archiving as a Profession: An Interview with Eileen Bowser", The Moving Image 3:1 (Spring 2003), pp 132-146
Edmondson, Ray. "You Only Live Once: On Being a Troublemaking Professional", The Moving Image 2:1 (Spring 2002), pp 175-183
International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)Code of Ethics ,

Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel , from Labyrinths (or The Book of Sand) (see review )

Besser, Howard (1997). The Changing Role of Photographic Collections with the Advent of Digitization , in Katherine Jones-Garmil (ed.), The Wired Museum, Washington: American Association of Museums, pages 115-127.
"Why Ethics?" in Marie Malaro, Museum Governance: Mission, Ethics, Policy, pages 16-21
"Controlled Collecting: Drafting a Collection Management Policy" in Marie Malaro, Museum Governance: Mission, Ethics, Policy , pages 43-49
Jane R. Glaser with Artemis A. Zenetou, "Museum Professional Positions: Qualifications, Duties, and Responsibilities," Museums: A Place to Work: Planning Museum Careers (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 65-125
Libbie Rifkin, "Association/Value: Creative Collaborations in the Library ", RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, 2:2
O'Toole, James. (1990) "The History of the Archives Profession." In Understanding Archives and Manuscripts. Chicago: Society of American Archivists., pp. 27-47
Recommended:

Douglas, Mary. (1986) "Institutions Cannot Have Minds of Their Own." In How Institutions Think. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, pp 9-19

Planned Topics to cover:

Discussion of Final Projects
Groups for Orphans Project
How do the mission, goals, history, other activities, etc., of various repositories affect how moving images and sound are preserved and accessed?
What are the roles of different professionals in each type of institution?
What type of Professionalism is associated with each type of role & each institution
How has the role of collecting institutions changed as more and more people have started taking photographs of everyday life? How might changes in popular attitude towards this media effect expectations on collecting institutions? How will collecting institutions handle personal archives that no longer are only paper? And how will this all change even more as the number of home video cameras and digital editing vastly increases?

How do politics affect cultural heritage institutions as they strive to serve new audiences? (the Enola Gay incident?)

Agenda

almost everything (post a small number of still drawings) is done digitally
when film is released, everything is deleted (but periodic backups are saved, but with no indexes or ways to get to the material)
a business decision was made that, for sequels, they will just start from scratch

Netflix Uses Speed to Fend Off Wal-Mart Challenge, New York Times, Sept 29, 2003
The ideological librarians, Rich Lowery (editor of National Review), Town Hall, Sept 22, 2003 (see also Stuart Carlson's Cartoon in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sept 28, 2003)
The Role of the Delete Key in Blog, New York Times, Sept 29, 2003