Tuesdays, 6-10 PM,
room 651, Fall 2004
Instructors: Howard
Besser & Ann Harris
Introduction to Moving Image
Archiving
& Preservation H72.1800
Oct 19 Collecting
Institutions:
History and Culture of Museums, Archives, and other Repositories
(HB)
see entire
syllabus
Assignments due before class:
- Visit: Museum
of
Television
and Radio Fri Oct 15, 11:00-12:30
- Have final project topic approved
- 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
- International Federation of Film
Archives
(FIAF)Code
of Ethics ,
- 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.
- "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
- Further Readings:
- 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
Agenda:
- Catching up
- Museum of Television & Radio
- Recap Film Inspection
- Examining
uncataloged
boxes of
media and
filling out Bobst cataloging templates
- 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?)
- 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?)
- Current Events:
- Copyright & DRM -- Oscar
Plan to Encrypt DVD's Hits Glitches, NY Times, Oct 16,
2004
- Privacy vs. Piracy
- "Digital Recreations" -- Ford
Brings Back Steve McQueen, NY Times, Oct 15,
2004
- NFPF
Announces 2004 Fall Grant Recipients, Oct 7, 2004
- Political & economic structures affect what media is
produced/aired -- Will
We Need a New 'All the President's Men'?, NY Times, Oct 12,
2004
- , NY Times, Oct 12,
2004
- Continuation of Risk Assessment and introduction to storage
of
moving
images
- For next
week:
- Take Tour of Cineric
-- Fri Oct 22, 11:30-1:30
- Take Tour of Vidipax
either Thurs
Oct 21 12:00-1:30 or Fri Oct 22 2:00-3:30