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preservation > images
For Students:
Fall 2010 - Tuesdays 6-10pm, 721 Broadway, Rm 674

Introduction to Moving Image Archiving and Preservation H72.1800

Syllabus 1.52
(also see Fall 2005 or  Fall 2006  or Fall 2007 or Fall 2008 or Fall 2009 syllabus)

(make sure you are viewing the latest version of the syllabus, which is always at
http://miap.hosting.nyu.edu/program/10fall/intro-syllabus10.shtml )

Instructor: Howard Besser         Office Hours: Tu 4:15-5:45 PM, 665 Broadway, rm 612, and by appointment
Course Description:  This graduate-level course introduces and contextualizes aspects of the archiving and preservation of film, video, and new media.  We will consider the moving image and sound recording media as material objects, as technologies with histories.  We will contextualize them within culture, politics, industries, and economics. Topics include: conservation and preservation principles, organization and access, restoration, collecting, curatorship, and programming, legal issues and copyright, and emerging issues in digital media.    

Designed for students entering the profession of moving image archiving, the course examines the history of archiving and preservation and the development of the field’s theories, practices, and professional identities.  We will consider the tasks and areas of specialization practiced by moving image professionals and how these are changing and multiplying in the digital era.   

Required readings:  There is no single book, or even set of books, for this multiperspectival, interdisciplinary field and course.  The book that should start out the course is out of print, but read it on reserve.

 • Penelope Houston, Keepers of the Frame:  The Film Archives (BFI, 1994)  [one at Bobst Library Reserves Desk, TR886.3 H68]  (& A .pdf file of part of the book will be online at the Blackboard site)

          The other readings will be essays and documents handed out in class or (most often) made available in digital form (available through links on the course website or pdf files on the course Blackboard site; and electronic library documents via Bobst Library portals).  The U.S. national plans for television/video and film preservation are on-line, as are NFPF publications.  We will also read articles from the AMIA journal, The Moving Image.  The Spring 2003-Spring 2009 issues are available to you in .html and .pdf formats via Project Muse (see Bobst Library databases).   Your heaviest period for readings and other assignments will be the month of October, so it would be in your best interest to read ahead.

            Note:  Some readings (ie those in the "Restricted" directory on Howard's website) are only available if you have logged in via the NYU domain.  If you are using another ISP, you must either run a proxy server or be on campus to access these documents.  Please make sure you keep copies for yourself when any electronic versions are required reading.  Keep them handy for marking, reviewing.

       “Blackboard” – This online resource will host some of the course documents. Access NYU Blackboard Course Sites with a valid NYU Net ID and password through the Blackboard Classes list in NYUHome (https://home.nyu.edu).   Click on the “Academics” tab, then click on the course link in the list provided.  If the class link does not appear in your list, try clicking the "Update Classes Information" link at the bottom of the channel.  Help is at ITS Client Services (212) 998-3333, or NYU Blackboard Help Request Form .  Most of the readings that are not available on the open Web are available in the "Documents and Readings" section of our Blackboard class site.  Note:  The list of required readings is always on your syllabus.  The syllabus should be your guide to what you need to do, and sometimes the links on the syllabus are to the latest versions of readings (where the Blackboard site contains older versions).  There are many readings on the Blackboard site that are only recommended (not necessarily required).

Objectives:  After completing the course you should be able to  …

  • understand professional protocols of moving image archivists;
  • define the key concepts in moving images preservation, conservation, restoration, access, research, education, and use;
  • participate in debates about moving image preservation and archiving;
  • discuss ways in which practices of archiving affect the writing of history and the production of media;
  • assess the curatorial needs of collections, materials, and institutions;
  • articulate access policies and procedures;
  • demonstrate familiarity with key copyright issues;
  • describe principles and philosophies of audio-visual archiving, including ethical concerns, collection issues,
  • demonstrate knowledge of different types of institutions relevant to professional archivists, including private, public, governmental, commercial, local, regional and national archives, as well as museums, libraries, digital repositories, galleries, broadcasters, cinematheques, laboratories, schools, and others. 

Requirements:  Course grades [A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D, F] will be determined by performance in the following areas. MIAP students must earn a grade a B or better to advance. 

Attendance and Participation (25%)  Attend all meetings of the course.  Participate actively in all discussions. 
Participation will also measured by your completion of short assignments given occasionally.  These required short assignments will be announced throughout the semester.  Most will consist of a brief written response (ca. 500-words), sometimes due a week after its assignment.  All assignments and readings will be listed on the syllabus on the date due, so be sure to scan ahead on the syllabus.
You must also monitor the electronic discussion supervised by the Association for Moving Image Archivists (AMIA-L).  Subscribe via e-mail.

Group Research report (25%)  Research and write a report on a single piece of under-researched film or video.  You and one or two classmates will be provided an access copy of an original item about which little is known.  Studying the film’s content, historical context, archival and material conditions, your group will compose a written report assessing the piece’s significance and recommend a preservation and presentation plan.  Your group will also have to present this as an oral class presentation on Oct 26.

Proposal  (10%)  A proposal for your final project, including preliminary research bibliography and a prospectus.  Due via email by Oct 8.  (3-4 pages). 

Individual Final project  (40%)  A substantive, in-depth, individual research project.  Integrate archival research with one or more set of moving image materials (or related materials, such as audio, photographic or paper documents), or develop an essay and documentation on an archival project stemming from issues in the course.  This project will have a written component (due Dec 7), plus you will be graded on your class presentation of your project during the final class session.
            The topic of your final project must be approved before submitting a formal proposal.  You will receive an additional list of possible projects, but you may also propose a project of your own invention.  Look at the MIAP web site to see projects that students have done previously.  The best projects tend to work with available primary materials. 
            Some general options to consider include:

  • Research and write a plan for a film or video that needs preservation and/or restoration.  This might include a combination of the following:  locate existing elements and prints, identify differences between extant copies, do interviews and historical research about the production and post-production, create a budget for restoration.
  • Write an essay comparing two archival institutions of differing types (e.g., a public library and a state archive or historical society).  Analyze how institutional differences affect moving image archival practice (acquisition, cataloging, access, preservation).
  • Plan an exhibition series for historic moving image material. Select the works to show, check print and date availability, write program notes, plan a publicity campaign, coordinate with tie-in activities or events, ...
  • Award-winning experimental documentary filmmaker Jill Godmilow has a collection of primarily print material that needs to be organized and assessed before it is turned over to an archive.  You would view one of her films then go though her material and create a finding aid.  Possible films are the 1974 Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman (which is on the national film registry, and may be shown at the Flaherty Seminar next year)--1 file drawer of material; the Sundance award-winning 1987 Waiting for the Moon--4 file drawers of material; or 1984 Far from Poland--3/4 file drawer of material.
  • Do intensive research on an elderly media artist (such as Red Burns, Director of the Tisch Interactive Telecommunications Program--ITP).  Develop a set of questions getting to the heart of what they have done and how they did it.  Perform and record an oral history with them (minimum of 2 hours, but could be in multiple sittings).  Edit and index the oral history, and put it online.
  • Your project might also lead to a thesis project if it’s expandable.  Or your final Intro course project might also grown out of the first research report you do with a classmate.
  • list of other possibilities from previous years
---------------

Sept 7 Introduction to Entire Class (week 1)

Topics covered:
  • What is this class about?  (non-MIAP students should pay more attention to both the "Professional Organizations" reading next week, and should read notes on academic programs; MIAP students will get more details on these in Internship class and in Orientation)
  • Films/Videos/DVD clips on the act of moving image preservation, as well as how preserved material is reused and represented in different ways
  • Why is conservation and preservation important?
  • Who has taken on the responsibility for moving image and sound preservation?
  • What are the issues involved in making visual materials persist over time? How do we decide which materials should persist over time?
  • What are some of the organizations that hold moving image and sound material? (Film Studios, TV stations, large public film & television archives, media preservation depts. w/i larger collecting institutions, small non-profits preserving their own media, ...)
  • What are some of the Professional Organizations that Moving Image Archivists belong to? And at what conferences can one learn about professional issues? (AMIA, FIAF, FIAT, AIC, AAM, MCN, SMPTE, ALA, Orphans, SCMS)
  • What are basic functions? (identification, selection [of both "content" and equipment], appraisal, ...)
  • What are the various professional practices that moving image archiving and preservation professionals draw from? (cataloging, reference, exhibition, fundraising, budgeting, management, ...)
  • What are the various roles or tasks we are responsible for?
  • What are the structures like of film and other moving image works?
  • lecture notes 
  • News ariticles

Sept 14 Modes and Artifacts of Moving Image Production: Video, Audio, and New Media; Issues of Risk Assessment with all forms of Moving Image Works (week 2)

Assignments due before class:
Topics covered:
  • Examination of recording devices
  • Discussion of handling audio and new media
  • Kitchen Sisters.  Sonic Memorial stored on Center for History & New Media's Sept 11 Digital Archive.
  • Discussion of general landscape: professional organizations & professionalism, preservation, cataloging, future changing landscape

Sept 21 Modes & Artifacts of Moving Image Production: General Discussion & Film, Basic Distribution Issues (week 3)

Assignments due before class:
Topics covered:

Sept 28   Collections Management: Issues and Approaches (week 4)

Assignments due before class:
Topics covered:

Oct 5  Collecting in Context: Theoretical Underpinnings (week 5)

Assignments due before class:
  • Proposal for Final Project  due Fri Oct 8
  • Read:
    • Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland. Enduring Paradigm, New Opportunities: The Value of the Archival Perspective in the Digital Environment , Council on Library & Information Resources, pub89, pp 1-16 [document pages 1-16, not Acrobat pages 1-16]
    • Belk, Russell W. "A Brief History of Collecting," in Collecting in Consumer Society. New York: Routledge, 1995, pages 22-64
    • Benjamin, Walter. "Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting." Illuminations. Ed. and intro. by Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969, pp 59-67
    • Pearce, Susan M. "Collecting Processes," in On Collecting: An Investigation into collecting in the European tradition . New York: Routledge, 1995, pages 3-35
    • Jean Baudrillardís "The System of Collecting." In John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, eds., Cultures of Collecting, pp. 7-24. London: Reaktion, 1994, translated by Roger Cardinal.
    • Further Readings
      • Pierre Bourdieu, The field of cultural production: essays on art and literature, Cambridge: Polity, 1993
      • Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright in Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (Oxford University Press, 2001)
      • Buckland, Michael. (1997) What is a Document?", Journal of the American Society for Information Science 48 (9), pp. 804-809
      • Harrison, Helen P. (ed.). Audiovisual Archives. A practical reader for the AV Archivists. 1997
      • Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Illuminations. Ed. and intro. by Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969, pp 217-251
      • John Berger. Ways of Seeing , New York: Viking, 1972
      • Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett "Objects of Ethnography" in Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine (eds.) Exhibiting Cultures:  The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, Washington: Smithsonian Press, 1991, pp 386-443
      • Pearce, Susan M. "Collecting in Time" in On Collecting: An Investigation into collecting in the European tradition. New York: Routledge, 1995 pages 235-254
      • Drucker, Johanna. "The Codex and Its Variations." The Century of Artists' Books. New York: Granary Books, 1997. 121-59
Topics covered:
  • Discussion of Final Projects
  • Collection Management (continued)
    • Continuation of  Metadata Talk and Metadata Issues
    • Archival Arrangement--maintaining original order, context, relationships
    • Metadata Standards (EAD, Dublin Core, MARC)
  • Appraisal, selection, description, sorting, organizing
  • Risk Management discussion
  • Why do we collect?
  • Extensive questions to ponder
    • Issues of evidence and authenticity
    • Issues of representation
    • Who collects what? for whom? and why?  How do collections define their collectors?  How have museums influenced colonialism, nationalism, and taxonomies (categories) of knowledge?  What kinds of interdependence exists between institutions of collecting and certain methodological goals of art history and anthropology?  How can we learn to read exhibits critically?  What is a ërhetoricí or ëpoeticsí of display?  Why do people keep personal collections of objects?  How do ethnicities and genders appear--or disappear--in museum contexts?  How do museums also function to support a local community memory and history?  How do artists view museums as social institutions?  How can we imagine collecting practices and museums in the future? How can the history of collecting be read as an interdisciplinary intellectual practice?
    • Why do we need museums?  What should  they look like? Why do we collect things? What kinds of museums and collections  might we have in the future?  What role might electronic media play in the  rethinking of the museum?  Would changes in museum practice necessitate changes  in the disciplines of art history and anthropology?
    • How are moving images and sound part of the larger visual culture and ways of looking and seeing? How does our understanding of visual culture impact our role in moving image archiving and preservation?
    • How do reformatting and multiple formats of the same work change how we look at a work? (e.g., are videos the same as films? Are digital photographs the same as analog photos?)
    • Is there a social context to viewing an object? (is viewing a video at home the same as viewing a film in a theater? Is viewing a mural on a screen the same as viewing it in-situ?)
    • Who attributes value to a work, and under what circumstances? How does one deal with the different values that different communities may have towards any particular set of works?
    • Are there ethical considerations in format conversions (e.g., film colorization, pan-and-scan?)

Oct 12  Collecting Institutions: History & Culture of Museums, Archives, Libraries, & Other Repositories  (week 6)

Assignments due before class:
  • Read:
    • Mann, Sarah Ziebell. "The Evolution of American Moving Image Preservation: Defining the Preservation Landscape (1967-1977)", The Moving Image 1:2 (Fall 2001), pp 1-20
    • Magliozzi, Ronald. "Film Archiving as a Profession: An Interview with Eileen Bowser", The Moving Image 3:1 (Spring 2003), pp 132-146
    • Edmondson, Ray. "You Only Live Once: On Being a Troublemaking Professional", The Moving Image 2:1 (Spring 2002), pp 175-183
    • Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel ,  from Labyrinths (or The Book of Sand) (see review  )
    • Besser, Howard (1997). The Changing Role of Photographic Collections with the Advent of Digitization , in Katherine Jones-Garmil (ed.), The Wired Museum, Washington: American Association of Museums, pages 115-127.
      • Further Readings:
    • "Why Ethics?" in Marie Malaro, Museum Governance: Mission, Ethics, Policy, pages 16-21
    • "Controlled Collecting: Drafting a Collection Management Policy" in Marie Malaro, Museum Governance: Mission, Ethics, Policy , pages 43-49
    • O'Toole, James. (1990) "The History of the Archives Profession." In Understanding Archives and Manuscripts. Chicago: Society of American Archivists., pp. 27-47
    • Douglas, Mary. (1986) "Institutions Cannot Have Minds of Their Own." In How Institutions Think. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, pp 9-19
    • Jane R. Glaser with Artemis A. Zenetou, "Museum Professional Positions: Qualifications, Duties, and Responsibilities," Museums: A Place to Work: Planning Museum Careers (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 65-125
    • Libbie Rifkin, "Association/Value: Creative Collaborations in the Library ", RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, 2:2
Topics covered:
  • How do the mission, goals, history, other activities, etc., of various repositories affect how moving images and sound are preserved and accessed?
  • What are the roles of different professionals in each type of institution?
  • What type of Professionalism is associated with each type of role & each institution
  • How has the role of collecting institutions changed as more and more people have started taking photographs of everyday life? How might changes in popular attitude towards this media effect expectations on collecting institutions? How will collecting institutions handle personal archives that no longer are only paper? And how will this all change even more as the number of home video cameras and digital editing vastly increases?
  • How do politics affect cultural heritage institutions as they strive to serve new audiences? (the Enola Gay incident?)
  • News articles:
    • xxx
  • Note: Saturday Oct 16 is Home Movie Day at Light Industry in Brooklyn (177 Livingston)
  • Note: On Oct 19 we will meet at 6:10 in Alan Berliner's Tribecca studio.  Make sure that you show up there rather than in our regular classroom.  And take a look at his website  beforehand to get an idea of the kinds of films he makes.

Oct 19  Film Artifact & Preservation Issues (week 7)

Assignments due before class
  • Meet at 6:10PM at Alan Berliner's Tribecca studio (13 Vestry St, enter off of Hudson St just south of Canal)
  • Read:
    • Read, Paul and Mark-Paul Meyer. "Introduction to the Restoration of Motion Picture Film" and "Menschen am Sonntag--a Reconstruction and Documentation Case Study", Restoration of Motion Picture Film, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000, pp 1-5 and pp 231-241
    • Gartenberg, Jon, "The Fragile Emulsion", The Moving Image 2:2 (Fall 2002), pp 142-152
    • Frye, Brian. "The Accidental Preservationist: An Interview with Bill Brand", Film History 15:2 (2003), p 214 [reprinted in MIAP's co-publication -- Andrew Lampert (ed)  Results you can't refuse: celebrating 30 years of BB Optics, New York: Anthology Film Archive, 2006  http://miap.hosting.nyu.edu/research/bboptics/ ]
  • Recommended
Topics covered:
  • Knowing more about film artifacts, what does that tell you about risks to the material? What about its needs for description and care?
  • What are some of the major issues with film preservation?
  • Show video from Film Technology; DVDs from ColorLab and LaboCine

Oct 26 Perspectives on Collecting, Preservation, & Conservation (week 8)

Assignments due before class
Topics covered:
  • Panel discussion including professionals from different organizations and fields:
    • Carol Stringari, Chief Conservator, Guggenheim Museum of Art
    • Barbara Mathe, Senior Special Collections Librarian,American Museum of Natural History
    • Duane Watson, Board Member and Curatorial Director of the Wilderstein Preservation, and former Head of Conservation, NY Public Library
  • Reports from Home Movie Day
  • Research Report presentations
    • Last year:  Aaark! Something About Communication  (part 1)   (part 2)
  • What are the basic guiding principles of conservation/preservation coming from different professions and/or communities? How were they shaped?
  • How have they been utilized and/or affected by moving image and recorded sound materials, through such factors as multiple copies, "born digital" formats, and changing definitions of appropriate archival mediums?
  • What are some of the issues that the archive, conservation, library and independent preservation communities are addressing with regard to moving image and sound preservation?
  • What are the role(s) of a moving image specialist in relation to other professionals caring for moving images and sound collections?
  • Ray Edmundson, in Audiovisual archiving: Philosophy and Principles, proposes that moving image archiving is evolving as a synthesis of other archiving and preservation practices. What are the pros and cons of such an approach? What would be aspects of this synthesis from various professions?
  • What are ethical considerations are fundamental to our work as moving image archiving and preservation specialists?
  • Where do "de facto" archives - those organizations with important materials but untrained as preservationists - fit?
  • What is the role of producers in preservation practice?
  • Different NYU projects:
    • Merce Cunningham project
    • NYU IMLS project to improve 21st Century job situation for Moving Image Professionals within Libraries
    • NYU potential Mellon proposal to research uniqueness and need for preservation within circulating library moving image collections
  • from student project proposals: issue of opportunistic collection development
  • from student project proposals and group history projects: This field isn't old enough to have a large established literature.  Most projects need to go through iterative, and change direction based upon how much info may be available
  • from student project proposals: Panofsky, Shatford/Layne--pre-iconographic/Iconographic/Iconological (see JISC's Approaches to Describing Images)
  • Current Events Articles:
Nov 2  Video & Audio Preservation Issues (week 9)
Assignments due before class
Topics covered:
  • Sound
  • Tape Cleaning
  • "Playback" DVD
  • What are some of the major issues with video and sound preservation?
  • What are typical approaches to caring for and preserving video and sound?
  • What is the effect of digital formats and digitization on media preservation?
  • Knowing more about video/sound artifacts, what does that tell you about risks to the material? What about its needs for description and care?

  • Assignment at AMIA conference

Nov 9 New Media & Digital Preservation Issues, Digital Public Television Preservation (week 10)

Assignments due before class:
Topics covered:
  • Guest: Dietrich Schueller, former Director, Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences, very active in IASA and in international activities (maybe also Kara Van Malssen, Senior NDIIPP Fellow, Preserving Public Television)

  • Student reports from AMIA
  • Introduction NYU/Public Television preservation project
  • Knowing more about digital media artifacts, what does that tell you about risks to the material? What about its needs for description and care?
  • What are some of the major issues with new media preservation?
  • What are the major issues facing moving image and sound archivists in the "digital age"?
  • What are some of the practicalities that preservationists must address?
  • What theories and predictions are being advanced?
  • Does this evidential value change when materials are reformatted?What are the advantages and disadvantages of keeping different versions of materials?
  • What is different between the preservation needs of material that is "born digital" and that which has been digitized?
  • Is it possible to preserve digital materials unchanged?
  • What are the strengths and limitations of the various proposed methods of digital preservation for different uses of cultural materials?
  • As the digital world moves toward multiple uses and viewing works from different angles, how does this affect notions of context and its preservation?
  • How do digital objects challenge traditional archival notions of evidence?  Can ways be found to authenticate digital works, and track provenance and versioning?
  • Documentaries, Actuality Footage, media art, installation art, performance art
  • Documentation, treatment
  • News Articles

Nov 16  Access, Curating, Programming, Presentation (week 11)

Assignments due before class:
  • Read: Additional readings (optional):
    • The Moving Image 4:1, Spring 2004, pages 1-88
    • Atkinson, Jane. AGCS Occupational Profile: Programme Researcher: Broadcasting/film/video
    • At least 3 of the papers from the March 2003 Toronto Conference  Terms of Address: The Pedagogy and Politics of Film and Video Programming and Curating  (you will need to find the text of these papers yourself)
    • In Focus: a guide to using films / by Linda Blakaby, Dan Georgakas and Barbara Margolis. NY: Cine Information, 1980.
    • American Film Distribution: the changing marketplace / by Suzanne Mary Donahue. MI: UMI Research Press, 1987
    • Noriega, Chon A. "On curating," Wide Angle Vol XVII nr 1-4 (1995); p 292-304
    • Gilmore, Geoff. "Sundance's agenda," Scenario Vol II nr 3 (Fall 1996); p 4-5
    • Peary, Gerald. "Season of the hunt; On the practice of film festival programming," American Film Vol XVI nr 10 (Nov-Dec 1991); p 20
    • PaÔni, Dominique. "Comme dans un musee" Journal of Film Preservation no 53 (Nov 1996); p 8-11 (Argues that programming in archives should be directed at building collections. Explores current explosion in film restorations within the context of archival programming.)
    • MacDonald, Scott. "Avant-garde at the Flaherty," Wide Angle Vol XVII nr 1-4 (1995); p 256-267
    • Besser, Howard (1998). The Shape of the 21st Century Library, in Milton Wolf et. al. (eds.), Information Imagineering: Meeting at the Interface , Chicago: American Library Association, pages 133-146
    • Moving Image Collections (MIC) General Information
    • Schiller, Daniel. (1988) "How to think about information." In. V. Mosco and J. Wasko (eds.), The Political Economy of Information (pp. 27-43). Madison, WI : University of Wisonsin Press. 1988
    • Lievrouw, L.A. (1994) "Information Resources and Democracy: Understanding the Paradox." Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 45(6), July, pp. 350-357
    • AMIA Compendium of Moving Image Cataloging Practice, edited by Abigail Leab Martin and compiled by Jane D. Johnson, Linda Tadic, Linda Elkins, Christine Lee, and Amy Wood. Society of American Archivists & AMIA, 2001. ca. 275 pp.
    • Archival Moving Image Materials: A Cataloging Manual (AMIM2) . 2nd ed. revised by the AMIM Revision Committee, Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, Cataloging Distribution Service, 2000. 1 v. ISBN 0-8444-1008-X
    • Harrison, Harriet W. (comp. and ed.), for the Cataloging Commission of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). The FIAF Cataloging Rules for Film Archives. Film-Television-Sound Archive Series: Volume 1. München; London; New York; Paris: K.G. Saur, 1991

Topics covered:
  • Report from Korean Cine-Media and the Transnational 
  • Catching up
    • finish AMIA Committee reports (& interesting sessions)
    • Preserving Digital Public Television
    • other things from previous weeks
  • Curating Process
  • Repurposing, DVDs
  • Issues of access
  • Obtaining moving image materials:
    • How does one find moving image collections? (Moving Image Gateway Project)
    • What are sources for clips? For ancillary materials?
  • Types of resources (biographical, film indexes, union catalogs, almanacs, periodical indexes, trades, dictionaries, encyclopedias, review compilations)
  • What are issues for historical research and reconstruction?
  • How are moving images and sound part of the larger visual culture and ways of looking and seeing? How does our understanding of visual culture impact our role in moving image archiving and preservation?
  • News articles:

Nov 23 Copyright, Legal Issues, & Policy (week 12)

Assignments due before class:
Topics covered:
  • Discussion & logistics for final projects (10-15 min formal presentation, slides, on-time)
  • Issues of term, territory, and market
  • What are some of the practices with regard to copyright, ownership, licensing, and the use of "talent" or footage that are part of the history of a particular form of production or genre of work?
  • What are some of the recent or anticipated changes in the legal arena that affect moving image/sound preservation or use?
  • Effects of copyright on preservation and programming
  • Avoidance of intellectual property issues
  • Fair Use guidelines
  • How do intellectual property issues affect preservation, access, and use of visual materials ? (e.g., the implications of the digital millennium copyright act?
  • Complexity of underlying rights
  • Other legal issues
  • Policy issues
  • News Articles

Nov 30 TBA and Final Classroom Presentations (week 13)

Presentations by Taylor, Caitlen, Crystal, Marie

Dec 7 Final Classroom Presentations (week 14)

Assignments due before class:
  • Present your final project to the rest of the class.  (Arrive promptly and be prepared to stay late so that everyone can present.)  We will only have 10-15 minutes for each presentation (including questions and discussion)
Topics covered:

Other Information

MIAP Digital Archive:  In addition to any paper or other materials that must be submitted for a course project, all MIAP course projects will be submitted with accompanying electronic copies.  The ‘e-versions’ will be made part of the MIAP digital archive.  Provide all files with (1) a MIAP Submission Form and (2) file names that follow MIAP Digital Archive file-naming guidelines (which can be found at http://miap.hosting.nyu.edu/program/handbook/index.shtml#E10).  Identify on the Submission Form any content that might require access restrictions. 

Plagiarism Advisory:

Plagiarism and other violations of the University’s published policies are serious offenses and will be punished severely.  Plagiarism includes presenting or paraphrasing a phrase, sentence, or passage of a published work (including material from the World-Wide Web) in a paper or exam answer without quotation marks and attribution of the source, submitting your own original work toward requirements in more than one class without the prior permission of the instructors, submitting a paper written by someone else, submitting as your own work any portion of a paper or research that you purchased from another person or commercial firm, and presenting in any other way the work, ideas, data, or words of someone else without attribution. These are punishable offenses whether intended or unintended (e.g., occurs through poor citations or confusion about how to reference properly).
           
You are encouraged to read additional texts and to discuss the issues of this course and your papers with others; but if you use ideas that come from others, you must acknowledge their help.  It is always better to err on the side of acknowledging other people than to fail to do so.  

Other offenses against academic integrity include: collaborating with others on assignments without the express permission of the instructor, giving your work to another student to submit as his/her own, copying answers from another student or source materials during examinations, secreting or destroying library or reference materials. . If you have any questions about how to cite sources, what constitutes appropriate use of a text, or other matters of academic integrity, please discuss them with your course instructor. 

Anyone caught plagiarizing will fail the course.  In addition, violations of academic integrity, including plagiarism, call for disciplinary action through the University. 


Moving Image Archiving and Preservation - Department of Cinema Studies - 721 Broadway, Room 600 New York NY 10003

+1 212 998 1600 phone +1 212 995 4061 fax tisch.preservation@nyu.edu

Department of Cinema Studies - Tisch School of the Arts - New York University