Digital Collections and Tools at the Periphery of Media Canons
Those seeking materials to support research and teaching that extends beyond familiar canons will be interested in several archival collections made newly accessible online. The San Diego Lowrider Digital Archival Project features photographs, magazines, and manuscript materials documenting the lowrider movement in San Diego, from the 1950s to the present. An outgrowth of ongoing collaboration between members of the Car Club community and researchers and archivists at the University of San Diego, the project explores the practices and theories of “low and slow” important to Chicana and Chicano culture in the post-war era. The team invites additional contributions to the collection here.
Alternatively, researchers who feel the need for speed can turn to the Syracuse University Football Films Collection. Originally shot on 16mm film from 1949 to 1967, the 430 digitized items include game highlights, scrimmages and practice footage, bowl game presentations, promotional materials, and images of bands, baton twirlers, spectators, and referees wearing something approaching Hammer pants.
Tackling questions of accessibility, other projects attempt to connect audiences to important collections, using methods both new and familiar. AVAnnotate, which provides students and researchers a framework for annotating–and sharing annotations–of time-based media recently won a $1.5M Mellon Foundation award to expand its utility for teachers, researchers, and archivists. Sample projects suggest AVAnnotate’s promise for improving metadata, searchability, and aiding close analysis. Approaching accessibility from another angle–using a popular commercial platform with a massive user base–the Prelinger Archive recently launched its YouTube channel. There, viewers less familiar with the Internet Archive–where the Prelinger Archive hosts a bigger collection of (higher resolution) materials–can watch a range of “useful media,” ranging from home movies and outtakes to a wartime industrial film on the importance of fine-tooled engine parts and anti-communist propaganda targeting student movements and the Black Panthers.
Another approach to expanding the accessibility of archival collections comes from artist Kameron Neal. As artist in residence for New York City’s Department of Records, Neal drew from a collection of recently processed NYPD surveillance films to create “Down the Barrel (of a Lens),” an immersive installation exploring power dynamics between the New York police force and the civilians they surveilled (primarily Civil Rights activists, anti-war protestors, and other activist groups). The collection that formed the base of the piece–1,448 films created for the NYPD Bureau of Special Services and Investigations from 1960 to 1980–are freely available online via the NYC Department of Records and Information Services.
Archives under Threat: Climate Change
Climate change’s impact on archives and libraries–like the massive flooding that hit Vermont this summer–continues to emphasize the urgency of related risks posed to both collections and people within such institutions. While the National Endowment for the Humanities provided its state affiliate, Vermont Humanities, an emergency $200,000 grant from its Cultural Recovery Fund, The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) announced the (free, online) publication of two new resources to aid in developing practices and political frameworks for safeguarding archives amid crisis. Remotely Useful: Practical Lessons for Northern Community Archiving offers guidance for navigating relationships with funders, governments, and parent organizations while integrating Indigenous perspectives and peoples into the preservation process in Arctic and Subarctic regions particularly vulnerable to climate change. A Green New Deal for Archives takes stock of the major pressures facing archives in the Anthropocene and suggests a workable public policy program for addressing these challenges. For an abbreviated overview of the latter project that spans the impact of chronic understaffing to the possibility of “roving archivists” as a strategy for supporting under-resourced institutions, see Ithaka S+R’s interview with author Eira Tansey.
The PROTECCT-GLAM Project (Providing Risk of The Environment’s Changing Climate Threats for Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums), developed by researchers at Louisiana State and Arizona State Universities and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), takes a different tack. With a team of over 35 graduate and undergraduate students, the project created a geographical directory of GLAMs that hopes to map climate risks to the country’s culture and heritage institutions, with the aim of aiding researchers and GLAM professionals in assessing their vulnerabilities, creating mitigation and emergency management plans, and strategizing funding allocations. The dataset, which comprises some 74,000 entries, can be accessed here.
Focus on Video Game Preservation, Access
In a move announced on September 7, the pioneering video game company Atari will acquire the fan-built resource hub and community forum, AtariAge, and collaborate with its founder as an in-house historian. Perhaps most well known for their home consoles, such as the Atari 2600 (or Atari VCS) and accompanying games like Pac-Man, the gaming giant eventually lagged behind competitors in the 1990s and 2000s. For fans of its early trailblazing technology from the late 1970s and 1980s, however, Atari games and consoles have been an object of enthusiasm and catalyzed significant ad-hoc efforts in community digital archivy. As part of this community's attention to video game nostalgia and history, Albert Yarusso established what would become AtariAge in 1998. After nearly 25 years of moderation and development, AtariAge became the resource for everything Atari – hardware and software information (and exchange), emulator recommendations, and homebrew developments. Atari’s official acquisition of the site and its forums is ongoing, as is Yarusso’s role as an in-house historian and retro developer for the company. Atari’s acquisition of the site comes at the same time as their re-release of the Atari 2600 as the Atari 2600+, an Atari-official retro-inspired console with a brand new virtual storefront.
Retrogaming and vintage consoles are also the subject of a new effort from the Australian National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA). Highlighting unique contributions from Australian developers, such as a 1991 skateboarding game set within the world of the daytime soap opera Neighbours, the NFSA hopes to bring the Australian games industry center stage. In a combined effort towards video game preservation, the NFSA, the BFI National Archive and The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games have also launched a survey geared toward organizations and groups involved in video game preservation to establish baseline data about the international state of such efforts. The survey will result in a brief shared with participants and be used to develop partnerships and collaborations to bolster and speed video game preservation. Although the 15-20 minute (available here) closes October 31, 2023, related questions can be directed to NFSA Digital Games Curator Chris Arneil.
Atari-enthusiasts and Australian archivists aren’t alone in their pursuit of video game preservation. This summer, The Video Game History Foundation released a study on the “commercial availability of classic video games,” determining that “87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered.” The VGHF hopes to lobby for the legal rights of libraries, museums, and archives to preserve video games in their playable forms for end users and researchers. Contrary to rules that govern other digital media like e-books, films, and audio, cultural heritage institutions that have video games in their collections are often prevented from digitally distributing them. Setting their sights on copyright law (like the upcoming Digital Millennium Copyright Act proceedings in 2024), the Video Game History Foundation’s lobbying group hopes to make resources available for historic preservation institutions to collect, preserve, and share historically important video games.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day and National Native American Heritage Month: Remembering Residential Schools and Seeking Repatriation
October 9th is recognized as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a prelude to National Native American Heritage Month in November that “call[s] attention to the culture, traditions, and achievements of the nation’s original inhabitants and of their descendants.” In the United States, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) recognizes these efforts as collecting, digitizing, and providing access to Indigenous histories. Of particular importance are the records that bring renewed attention to the oppressive systems that Indigenous people were forced to endure, such as residential schools. Increasingly over the past few years, following the discovery of mass graves in former Canadian residential schools, many groups in both Canada and the United States have attempted to recognize and atone for their role in the operation of residential schools. In Pennsylvania, a group advocating for “Native American people traumatized by an oppressive system of boarding schools for Native youths” will digitize 20,000 documents related to Quaker residential schools. In so doing, the group will provide critical insight into the treatment of Native youth who were forced into Quaker-operated schools.
The National Museum of the American Indian has overcome several challenges to their mission to repatriate ancestral remains to Indigenous communities. Taking nearly eight years, including a hiatus caused by lockdowns resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the museum successfully repatriated ancestral remains to four communities: those represented by the Confederation of Pueblo Kayambi in Pichincha Province, the Federation of Chachi Centers in Esmeraldas, and Comuna Sequita and Comuna Pepa de Huso in Manabí in Ecuador. The National Museum of the American Indian Act has resulted in over 30 international repatriations, and requires the Smithsonian to “return, upon request, Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to culturally affiliated federally recognized Indian tribes.” As one of its founding philosophies, repatriation is a high priority for the NMAI, which recognizes the process of repatriation as a human rights issue for Indigenous people.
Acquisitions
On October 5th, the National Museum of American History (NMAH) celebrated Byron Lewis’s donation of materials related to his career as the “godfather of multicultural marketing.” The founder of advertising agency UniWorld, Byron created campaigns that developed a Black consumer market–and challenged mainstream depictions of Black Americans–for companies like AT&T, Mars Inc., Burger King, and Quaker Oats. Lewis’s other media endeavors include co-founding The Urbanite, creating the radio soap Sounds of the City, developing the promotional campaign for Shaft (1971), and producing the syndicated TV news program, America's Black Forum (1977-2006). Although the finding aid for the collection–which includes business records, scripts, publications, artwork, and artifacts–is currently under construction, some digitized materials can be found here.
Likewise adding to our understanding of consumer culture is the NMAH’s acquisition of archival materials and artifacts from Anchor Brewing Co., often described as America’s oldest microbrewery. While adding to the museum’s Brewing History Initiative, the donation seeks to preserve the company’s legacy as the brewery itself faces an uncertain future following its 2017 purchase and liquidation by beverage giant Sapporo.
The Los Angeles Public Library recently announced the acquisition of the Lydia R. Otero archive. Supporting the repository’s investments in telling the stories of LA’s diverse communities, the materials document Dr. Otero’s life as a queer, non-binary Latinx activist and author. Consisting of correspondence, papers, photographs, meeting minutes, articles, and artifacts, the collection also tells a larger story relating to queer life in LA, as well as the several interlocking activist organizations they joined, co-founded, and led (Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos, Lesbianas Unidos, Bienestar) in the 1980s and early 1990s, amidst the unfolding AIDS crisis. The materials likewise complement the GLBT Historical Society’s collections and primary source teaching sets related to Latinx activists living and working in more northern climes of the state.
Three major filmmakers have recently donated their materials to publicly accessible repositories. Irvin Winkler, producer of blockbuster hollywood pictures featuring men fighting, killing, lying, cheating, racketeering, defrauding, and generally ignoring their wives and girlfriends (Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street, Rocky, Creed, The Right Stuff, Raging Bull, The Irishman), donated correspondence, scripts, diaries, and drafts of his memoir to the Harry Ransom Center (HRC) at the University of Texas at Austin. The collection, which spans 1966 to 2022, joins the papers of Winkler’s frequent collaborator, Robert DeNiro, also held at the HRC.
Ken and Flo Jacobs, prolific experimental filmmakers and teachers in New York City’s avant-garde cinema scene, donated their materials to the University of Colorado Boulder’s Libraries Rare and Distinctive Collections (RaD)—also the home of the Stan Brakhage collection. The Ken and Flo Jacobs collection includes filmmaking records, sound and video recordings, teaching materials, personal records, film distribution documentation, and correspondence, including with other artists and scholars. A two-day symposium, Living Archive, Living Cinema was convened by RaD and the Brakhage Center in early October to mark the processing of the collection and the significance of the Jacobs’ work.
In Brief
- Efforts to digitize nitrate footage related to Orson Welles' It's All True (1941-42) were recently expanded due to the efforts of documentary filmmakers Laura Godoy and Marcella Jacques. At work on a film examining Welles' journey through Ouro Preto, a colonial city that features in the director's unfinished 4-part semi-documentary exploring Mexico and Brazil, the pair collaborated with Paramount Senior Preservation Manager Jeff McCarty to determine whether the city appears in previously unscanned nitrate film. Not only did Godoy and Jacques successfully identify 8,000 feet of nitrate footage relating to Ouro Preto Holy Week festivities, Catherine L. Benamou, who has been consulting on It's All True preservation efforts, reports that Paramount plans to scan all remaining nitrate footage - 260,000 feet of film of considerable historical value to Mexico and Brazil - that will hopefully be made available for further study and creative reuse.
- Autumnal Cinematic Celebrations. Even if you missed Silent Movie Day (September 29), Home Movie Day (October 21), or World Day for Audiovisual Heritage (October 27), their websites often offer recordings of special events and related resources for safeguarding media history and culture.
- Finally, we revisit last issue’s recognition of the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike. While the writers’ strike has now ended after a historic 148 days, the SAG-AFTRA strike carries on. Last issue, we acknowledged the labor conditions in the film and media industry that can unintentionally lead to difficult archival conditions. To round out our focus on industry labor conditions in this issue, we are highlighting the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)’s 2019 survey on labor conditions in the field of archivy. In collaboration with the National Film Preservation Board’s Diversity Task Force, AMIA published data on factors like age, race, education, and experience, aiming to assess their impact on salaries and career advancement in the audiovisual archives profession. The survey revealed disparities in racial representation and significant student loan burdens relative to salaries. While the findings indicate a lack of diversity in the audiovisual heritage field, AMIA hopes to address these challenges "through open discussion and a willingness to take decisive action to promote positive change."
“Archival News” reports on recent news highlights from the media archives community for the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies readership. Some information in this column comes courtesy of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) listserv, along with institutional newsletters, websites, and press releases. This column is updated quarterly. We welcome contributions. Please send to Kit Hughes and Kat Brewster at [email protected].
