{"id":1655,"date":"2014-05-01T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjhblog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2014\/05\/01\/start-making-sense-ordering-the-chaos-of-av\/"},"modified":"2014-05-01T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T13:00:00","slug":"start-making-sense-ordering-the-chaos-of-av","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2014\/05\/01\/start-making-sense-ordering-the-chaos-of-av\/","title":{"rendered":"Start Making Sense: Ordering the Chaos of AV Material | Preservation Week 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re honoring National Preservation Week (April 26 through May 3) with a series of posts<\/a> from our archival experts about the best way to take care of your precious artifacts at home.\u00a0
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Above: An unprocessed AV collection.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>by <\/em>Alyssa Carver,\u00a0Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History<\/em><\/p>\n

Archivists work hard every day to preserve the historic record, but our main concern is with providing access to the information itself. This means it is necessary to care for the objects and artifacts that convey information, but we can rely on specialists like our conservator Felicity Corkill\u00a0to provide guidance on complex material issues. In contrast, an archivist might describe \u201cpreservation\u201d as an intellectual task, one that involves preserving authenticity, context and meaning. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

To do so, we must create order out of chaos\u2014at least, we try to. The reason we maintain archival collections is so they can be used for research, but how do potential researchers know what we have and whether it\u2019s relevant to their interests? Well, we arrange the collections (for example, by date, creator or function) to help identify what they are about, and we describe them with online catalog records, finding aids or collection guides that are available to the public.<\/p>\n

Here in the Shelby White & Leon Levy Archival Processing Laboratory, the bulk of our collections are comprised of paper documents: letters, reports, certificates, legal forms, manuscripts, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, posters, photos\u2014an astounding variety, really, once you start to enumerate the types.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Something all these items have in common, besides being two-dimensional and thus fitting within flat folders and file boxes, is that we don\u2019t require any special device to learn their content. Yes, we might find ourselves puzzling over a bit of difficult handwriting or having to solve the small mystery of some undated correspondence\u2026but audiovisual (AV) media provide a whole new set of challenges. A videotape, film reel or audiocassette doesn\u2019t \u201ctell\u201d you anything unless you interact with it through some kind of technology.<\/p>\n

This creates a number of difficulties. Sometimes the format is obsolete and the required playback technology no longer exists, or is prohibitively expensive. Playback also shortens the \u201clife expectancy\u201d of these types of media\u2014quite the opposite of our goal of preservation!\u00a0 Perhaps the biggest problem, however, is the time it would take to interact with every individual AV item. With paper, we can generally glance at a name or date and make a decision about what the item is.\u00a0 Depending on the nature of the collections, archivists at the Center process an average of several file boxes per week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For libraries and archives that specialize in AV media, it makes sense to invest in the equipment and the staff time, but it would be terribly inefficient for us here. Of course, we provide the proper housing and environment for these items to last as long as possible, but this doesn\u2019t fulfill the most important part of our job: to provide access through description. What this means is that the information\u00a0associated <\/em>with\u00a0the media becomes very important\u2014the labels, the packaging, the dates of nearby items.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The creator of the collection pictured in the image at the top of this post provided labels for most of the tapes, including dates, names or locations. There are a few ways in which she could have been more consistent, but having even this much information makes a world of difference. It\u2019s those details that make this an \u201carchival collection\u201d instead of a box of random tapes you might find at the flea market. As you can see from the examples below, it’s considerably less daunting to survey a neat stack of labeled tapes than\u00a0a mysterious container of media.<\/p>\n

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Above: Unidentified AV material\u2014a challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"image\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Above: Labeled AV items\u2014a great help!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some things you can do at home to help your future archivist? Besides\u00a0proper storage of AV media<\/a>, get those items labeled\u2014and don\u2019t wait until you’ve forgotten the important names, dates, places, occasions and purposes.\u00a0Find ways to keep track of and maintain all of this information (also known as \u201cmetadata\u201d), and you might find you enjoy remembering your own personal history\u2014and knowing precisely where those memories are stored.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More posts in our National Preservation Week series<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Your Digital Family Album: A System for Safekeeping<\/a>
<\/a>For Delicate Books, Safe and Snug Houses
<\/a>Defending Precious Artifacts from Mold and More
<\/a>Organizing Digital Files: Getting Your Photos and Scans in Shape<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re honoring National Preservation Week (April 26 through May 3) with a series of posts from our archival experts about the best way to take care of your precious artifacts at home.\u00a0 Above: An unprocessed AV collection. by Alyssa Carver,\u00a0Processing Archivist, Center for Jewish History Archivists work hard every day to preserve the historic record, but our main concern is with providing access to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[563,19,572,568,79,564,566,10,569,436,8,6,571,570,557,38,236,565,567],"class_list":["post-1655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-alyssa-carver","tag-archives","tag-artifacts","tag-audiotapes","tag-audiovisual","tag-av","tag-cassettes","tag-center-for-jewish-history","tag-felicity-corkill","tag-film","tag-history","tag-libraries","tag-media","tag-metadata","tag-national-preservation-week","tag-out-of-the-archives","tag-preservation","tag-tapes","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}