As detailed in my final report, this digitization project was completed for the Lesbian Herstory Archives as a part of the Projects in Digital Archives course. Throughout the semester, in a small group, I worked on the digitization of physical audiovisual materials and stewardship of the resultant digital assets for inclusion in the Herstories Audiovisual digital collections website.
Our group received a small collection of 15 undocumented audio and video tapes, and throughout the course of the semester we digitized the tapes according to best archival practices, managed the outsourcing of two tapes for mold treatment and offsite digitization, recorded metadata and tracked files of digitized materials, created preservation master and fair use copies, and worked together with other teams in our class to match metadata to the files and upload these materials to the digital collections website in order to make them available and accessible.
During digitization, we had a few technical issues with the capture software and hardware that we troubleshooted and resolved successfully. Additionally, this project entailed many conversations about copyright and as a result we created master and derivative files as well as fair use clips for materials where copyright was unclear, making access to the collection a priority. We managed all these files within a Google Drive folder storage system with spreadsheet inventory that was easily accessed and used by members of other groups in the class.
Through this project, I have demonstrated my understanding of digitization tools including audiovisual formats, their hardware, capture software, file management, and the specific guidelines and recommended best practices for preservation digitization in an archives setting. I have also demonstrated my knowledge of web-based content management systems, in this case Omeka, to disseminate and make widely available collections that were previously undescribed and siloed within a physical archive, only accessible by research appointment.
Beth Rudig 