An Archivist's Memoir: When Born-digital Oral History Videos Were all the Rage

• In Event: Stories of Shape and Motion: Perspectives on Creating and Curating Audiovisual Collections of the Long Black Freedom Struggle

Abstract

Managing the born-digital assets of the Congressionally mandated Civil Rights History Project demands solutions, workflows and answers to problems ranging from the practical to the potentially insurmountable. With this recent project, we are forced to think anew and reformulate about how to handle digital preservation of data files, numbering in the hundreds and averaging in the 100GB range each. This presentation offers an insiders look at the day-to-day logistics and the questions surrounding the stewardship of born-digital video at the Library of Congress, an institution well-versed in managing and sustaining the digital image and the electronic document. It will address issues of emerging concern for creators, managers and producers of such initiatives such as bottle-necks in managing collecting initiatives and products and implementing the necessary tools, infrastructure and workflows to sustain the project, among other burning questions.

Author

• Bertram Lyons, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress