Digital Media Resources
I’m just starting to cobble together a collection of online resources for . . . well, for my job, really. But hopefully it will be useful to others who are interested in digital media and especially the issues that come with the digitization of older analog video formats and the preservation of the resulting data.
Old video formats
Total Rewind: The Virtual Museum of Vintage VCRS is a great source of information on the development of different home video recorders and players.
Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive offers information on preserving audiovisual materials, including a very detailed film preservation handbook.
National Film Preservation Foundation.
Digitizing analog video
Media Matters has a huge collection of resources available, dealing with a wide range of topics related to digitizing audiovisual materials.
JISC Digital Media is another “jackpot” site, full of information about digitizing audiovisual materials.
AHDS Visual Arts provides guides to good practice and information papers to help in the implementation of a digitization project.
Chapter Seven of the NINCH Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials (2002) discusses audio and video digitization. A PDF of the entire NINCH guide is also available.
PrestoSpace is an interesting audio/visual preservation project taking place in Europe. Their Preservation Guide Wiki is available to the public, as is their A/V Archive Digitisation and Storage Guide.
The TAPE project (Training for Audiovisual Preservation in Europe) offers some Short Guidelines for Video Digitisation (PDF) as well as other publications pertaining to audiovisual material.
Front Porch Digital provides systems for migrating analog to a wide range of digital formats.
Digital preservation
Digital Preservation Europe provides information, news, and training related to digital preservation. They have a spectacular animated video (yes!) about digital preservation on YouTube. You can also watch videos from their four-day digital preservation training course in October 2008.
The Library of Congress’s Digital Preservation Initiative and the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative are also good sources of information, though much of their work so far seems more focused on image and sound rather than video.
The digital preservation available on their website, as well as guidelines for digitization.
Useful organizations
AIMA: Association of Moving Image Archivists. Their listserve (and archive) is an incredible resource.
ARSC: Association for Recorded Sound Collections. Yes, it’s audio stuff, not video, but it’s a good organization. They provide a great annotated list of essential audio preservation resources (PDF).
International Federation of Film Archives.
SAA: Society of American Archivists.
AIC (The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works) will apparently soon start hosting CoOL and the Conservation DistList, which were originally at Stanford University Libraries.
The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) has a few publications that deal with audio archiving, including The Safeguarding of the Audio Heritage: Ethics, Principles and Preservation Strategy (2005), which is available as a PDF.
Archives
Library and Archives Canada has a detailed explanation of their digital initiatives; they also provide a chart of their internal digitization standards.
Washington University’s Film and Media Archive has a great collection and some impressive digital work going on.
Copyright
The Library of Congress’s Copyright Basics is available via Project Gutenberg.
Metadata ‘n’ stuff
Introduction to Metadata v.3.0 (2008) is available online
OAIster harvests metadata from members of the Open Archives Initiative community.
PBCore Metadata Dictionary Elements can be used to describe media items produced by public broadcasting radio and TV stations.
Education
NYU offers a M.A. in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation.
UCLA has a Moving Image Archives Studies program.
A Graduate Certificate in Audiovisual Archiving is available via distance education from Charles Sturt University (Australia).
Other
John R. Gibbs of the University of Washington has compiled a wonderful bibliography on Audio Preservation and Restoration (including some links to film and video tape preservation).
UNESCO’s Audiovisual Archives: A Practical Reader is available online (though a bit old).
