Looking at Archives in Cinema: Recent Representations of Records in Motion Pictures

Archivists who followed the Best Picture Nominees for the 2013 Academy Awards would have noticed the appearance of a recurring character – records. The winning film, Argo, depicts the rescue of six American hostages during the Iran Hostage Crisis. Lincoln, praised for Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of the Sixteenth President, presents a look at Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency during the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The most controversial of the three, Zero Dark Thirty chronicles the events leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden. While archivists and archival repositories are absent from these three films, records and records creation play a central role in the development of each of the stories. This paper will analyze the depiction of records and records creation in these three films through the use of the framework proposed by Barbara Craig and James O’Toole in their analysis of representations of records in art. Craig and O’Toole argue that the way in which records are depicted can lead to an understanding of how the creators and audiences of art understand records, suggesting that these representations may further our understanding of the “cultural penetration of archives.”i The authors suggest that in art, records are depicted in a number of ways: as props, as representations of specific documents, as the central subject, and as information objects that are created and used. We expand Craig and O’Toole’s framework with the addition of two themes: the integration of original documentation into the films themselves, and the use of source material that has an affective influence on the mise-en-scène

Media Arts Centers as Alternative Archival Spaces: Investigating the Development of Archival Practices in Non-Profit Media Organizations

In the United States, archival institutions have prioritized the preservation of commercial and Hollywood cinema overlooking small-scale media production by non-professionals and independent media artists. Media arts centers, however, have played a pivotal role in the continued access, use, and preservation of materials produced by the communities that they serve. These non-profit media collectives were imagined as a distributed network of organizations supporting the production, exhibition and study of media; serving as information centers about media resources; and supporting regional preservation efforts. However, media arts centers have remained over-looked and unexplored by the archival field. This dissertation seeks to shift this balance, including these artist-run organizations as part of the network of archives and collecting institutions preserving independent media. Using case study methodologies this study investigated the practices at three media arts centers, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Paper Tiger Television, and the Termite Television Collective, seeking to understand the role of these organizations in the collection and preservation of independent media and the development of archival practices in non-profit media organizations. The study places each of these organizations in the wider history of media arts center movement in the United States and looks broadly at the development of archives and archival practices within these organizations. Framing media arts centers as maker-spaces and archival spaces, this dissertation argues for a critique of professional archival practices and a redefinition of the standards for preservation of audiovisual materials

Podcasts and Partnerships: Learning Through Listening and Content Creation

Scholarly and practitioner interest in educational/pedagogical podcasts has been evident in many areas of educational praxis since 2007; however, we have seen relatively little attention to podcast pedagogy in LIS, despite the field’s role as an early adopter of media-making pedagogies. We see podcasts as a means of extending learning beyond our immediate environs by connecting with others, either across the globe or from the reaches of the archives. We will offer a discussion of varied collaborative frameworks that can support podcasting as a pedagogical praxis. The panelists have done research and developed podcasts in multiple courses and grant-funded, open-source settings. This range of experiences and learning environments enables the panel to make recommendations to instructors who want to bring new media (and new voices) into their classrooms, giving attention to both risks and rewards. Our panel will discuss developing podcasts as open-source learning resources and as community engagement assignments that challenge students to develop technology- and listening- based skills. Based on interdisciplinary theories and experience, this panel identifies emergent best practices for using podcasting in conjunction with instruction and learning. During this panel, we envision time for information sharing and discussion

Library and Information Science across Disciplines

At the heart of library and information science (LIS) is the process of seeking information, gathering and storing it, and then putting it to use - often by its dissemination to others. LIS is a field that immerses itself in the continual improvement of this process- which consequently is also the lifeblood of every academic domain. Using concrete examples, this panel proposes to discuss how LIS as an interdisciplinary field threads through other fields. Just as information is fundamental to knowledge, the processes regarding information retrieval, storage, and use that LIS is constantly seeking to refine are integral to all academic domains. The five members of this panel represent five institutions and five disparate areas of LIS research. What they have in common is their expertise in developing collaborative research partnerships with outside areas. Each panelist will discuss their experiences in seeking out and creating these productive collaborative relationships and how they see the interdisciplinary nature of LIS impacting their work. In addition to the panelists presentations, the audience will be polled on their research and professional collaborations with outside disciplines and the results will be displayed using data visualization software. Finally, the panelists will solicit crowd participation and open the floor for a discussion on experiences significant to the theme

Media arts centers as alternative archival spaces: Investigating the development of archival practices in non-profit media organizations

In the United States, archival institutions have prioritized the preservation of commercial and Hollywood cinema overlooking small-scale media production by non-professionals and independent media artists. Media arts centers, however, have played a pivotal role in the continued access, use, and preservation of materials produced by the communities that they serve. These non-profit media collectives were imagined as a distributed network of organizations supporting the production, exhibition and study of media; serving as information centers about media resources; and supporting regional preservation efforts. However, media arts centers have remained over-looked and unexplored by the archival field. This dissertation seeks to shift this balance, including these artist-run organizations as part of the network of archives and collecting institutions preserving independent media. Using case study methodologies this study investigated the practices at three media arts centers, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Paper Tiger Television, and the Termite Television Collective, seeking to understand the role of these organizations in the collection and preservation of independent media and the development of archival practices in non-profit media organizations. The study places each of these organizations in the wider history of media arts center movement in the United States and looks broadly at the development of archives and archival practices within these organizations. Framing media arts centers as maker-spaces and archival spaces, this dissertation argues for a critique of professional archival practices and a redefinition of the standards for preservation of audiovisual materials

A case for digital squirrels: Using and preserving YouTube for popular culture research

YouTube users around the globe upload 400 hours of content every 60 seconds, a quantity that leads to descriptions of the platform as “the world’s largest archive of moving images.” We look at how the myth of YouTube as an archive arises and evaluate sources that show its shortcomings in this respect. These discussions ground our recommendations for developing new practices for archiving YouTube content to support scholarly research, a recommendation that starts with a squirrel