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Strategies for Video & Film Digitization

Constellation C: Tuesday, November 1, 2:00 – 5:00PM

Currently, at many institutions, there is increased pressure to digitize video & film materials on a large scale, or at least on a larger scale than what was done before. Among other factors, deteriorating analog materials held in special collections and the rapid obsolescence of playback equipment generate an increasing sense of urgency. These new expectations raise a number of challenging issues for digital library operations. The working session we propose will be an opportunity to share the strategies and plans our institutions are developing to tackle those issues. It will be run as an interactive group discussion, and will include topics such as:

  • Workflows
  • Storage
  • Digitization as a preservation strategy (reformatting); development of tiered strategies to prioritize preservation and digitization needs
  • Strategies to communicate about cost and technical issues with library administration and collection development specialists (e.g., what are the exact cost/technical implications of accepting donations of large collections of videotapes)
  • Staffing & expertise (who is doing what, what skills do we already have that translate to working with these collections, and where
    do we find we have skill gaps); good places to develop staff expertise (professional organizations, conferences, etc.)
  • Access, copyright and other policy implications
  • Synergies with other campus priorities and projects, relation with other campus groups (e.g., campus-wide IT to secure very large storage capacity; online video services for teaching and learning, campus events, etc.)
  • In house vs. outsourced digitization
  • File formats & digitization specifications, implications for storage needs
  • Handling of born-digital video materials
  • Metadata

Session Leaders

Jon Dunn is Director of Library Technologies and Digital Libraries at Indiana University, where he directs the IU Digital Library Program and oversees IT support for the IU Bloomington Libraries. He is a member of the IU Bloomington Media Preservation Task Force and serves as Project Director for the IMLS-funded Variations on Video project, which is focused on building an open source digital media collections management and access system.

Hannah Frost manages the Stanford Media Preservation Lab (SMPL), a facility established in 2008 for treating, digitally reformatting and making accessible original audio, video, and film materials in the collections of Stanford University Libraries. In the last year, SMPL digitized over 1,600 recordings for use by researchers, educators, curators, and media producers.

Delphine Khanna is currently the Head of the Digital Library Initiatives department at Temple University. She provides leadership for this newly created department, helping the Library develop its digitization activities as well as build a robust digital infrastructure. She previously held several digital library positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University.

David Millman, Director of Digital Library Technology Services, has been at NYU since 2008. He previously held several roles at Columbia University, most recently as Senior Director of Research, Teaching and Learning Technologies in the Columbia IT unit. He was Managing Director of Technology for Columbia’s distance learning initiative, Digital Knowledge Ventures, and was the technology director for EPIC, the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia. He also led technology R&D, identity management, and content management groups there. Millman has developed and managed Internet-based services since the late 1980’s, including public information systems, reference book databases, art museum collections and electronic scholarly publications. A software developer since the 1970’s, he has taught programming and design in higher education and in industry.

Claire Stewart is Head of the Digital Collections department and director of the Center for Scholarly Communication and Digital Curation at the Northwestern University Library. She directs the library¹s digitization programs, provides leadership and support for the library¹s scholarly communication efforts, and participates in broader digital repository and faculty digital initiatives.

Jennifer Vinopal is New York University’s Librarian for Digital Scholarship Initiatives. She has a variety of roles at NYU including: Project Manager for NYU’s Digital Library Technology Services; Co-Head of the Digital Studio, NYU’s gateway to digital services supporting scholarship and teaching; and subject specialist for French and Italian language and literature. Her background is in humanities scholarship, library collection development, and public service. She is primarily interested in creating person to person services (on-site, remote, virtual, etc.) to encourage and support scholars’ use of technology for research, teaching and learning.