The Social Life of Film Preservationists

Gracy’s piece (Gracy, Karen. Film Preservation: Competing definitions of value, use, and practice. Chicago: Society of American Archivists. 2006. Chp. 8) is really interesting from our perspective as students in the Ischool, because it really examines the work that a film archivist actually does, from inspecting the film, to negotiating with labs, to selecting what can be saved. It would be helpful to study many different types of positions in this field (libraries, archives, digitization), since professionally there are so many different kinds of positions and kinds of work to be done, and this type of anthropological writing, examining the work that people do, is so rare. We read a chapter of Gracy’s work in Caroline Frick’s Politics of Preservation course last year. It reminded me of readings that I did in Doty’s Users course about studying the way that people work and the way that people share information and gain knowledge on the job, primarily through gaining experience and watching other ‘experts’ in the field (The Social Life of Information, Brown and Duguid). This is why interviewing people, and working on case studies of archives and other institutions can be so helpful for students, because people on the job can succinctly sum up what the main issues are within the field.

For me, the most interesting aspects were the political discussions about deciding which films should be saved. This is something that a digital preservationist really decides, and there is never a right answer.

Viewing two digitized film collections

I looked at two archives online (note: It seemed that The University of Maryland site’s videos were not accessible to people outside of the University of Maryland).

The first site I looked at was the Internet Archive (archive.org), which has a lot of interesting films to watch. I had been on this site before. Anyone can upload videos here. Collections are subdivided into subject categories, or people can just use a keyword search. I first looked in the “Cultural and Academic Films” category, and found the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology collection, which includes a collection of digitized 16mm films made by Watson Kintner, during his travels around the world from 1933 to 1969. I watched “1967 #12 Tunisia.”

It is available in downloadable MPEG 1, MPEG 2, MPEG 4 and Streaming formats. Like most films on the Internet Archive site, the work is not formally cataloged, just tagged with a few words. It also includes a shot list though, and reel numbers. This must have all been compiled originally at the University of Pennsylvania and uploaded by them.

When “full screen” it looks bad, there is lots of blocky data. When it is not blown up, it doesn’t look so bad. It’s silent and in color. The color looks beautiful to me, though maybe it is a little faded.




“Theme from Shaft Hip-Hop Remix Video” 2008, was listed as a featured open- source video so I thought I would check it out. I'm not sure how they decide to 'feature' videos. The footage of this one was interesting to watch, but I have to say I didn't really get in to the remix.



This was just something that someone made, so it isn’t cataloged, though there are a good number of tags on the work. I’m wondering how some of this stuff is not under copyright, since it is in the open source section, and I don’t really believe that this video could just be used by anyone. Since it comes from a lot of different clips, some scenes look much better than others, which is interesting to look at in a digitization context. For the most part, it looks pretty badly pixelated though, probably the worst of anything I watched today.

It’s simply described as, “A Hip-Hop remix of Isaac Hayes' "Theme from Shaft" strictly for the B-Boys. The video includes classic footage from Wattstax, Shaft, Wild Style and other classics paying tribute to Mr. Hayes' contributions to Hip-Hop culture.” (Presumably this was written by the person who made this).

It’s available in Quicktime and MPEG4.

Finally I looked at the amazing “Disneyland Dream,” which is 1955 home movie footage of the Barstow family, who won a nationwide contest to take a trip to Disneyland. In 1995, Mr. Barstow narrated the story, turning the film into a little documentary, and he is quite funny:



It’s available in MPEG 1, 2 and 4, as well as streaming. Again, it looks pretty pixelated. I chose this item because the Internet Archive has a way of showing how many times things have been downloaded, and this was one of the most downloaded videos. They also allow users to rate the videos with stars, which is somewhat helpful. There’s no information about how long the video is, until you start playing it, this was true of all of them. This one also was not cataloged, just tagged. The Internet Archive gives information about the producer, but since everyone uploads their own content, I would assume that most do not include information about the digitization process, and these three were no exception. The Internet Archive does provide thumbnails from every minute of a video, which, while definitely not ‘cataloging,’ does give the user a little more information before he or she watches the film.

Overall, I had no problem viewing the streaming files. They didn't start and stop, and they just played in the browser, which is simple.

I also looked at the site “American Memory” motion picture collection from the Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/ListSome.php?format=Motion+Picture

I ended up viewing ‘Early Films of New York, 1898-1906. These files were much better cataloged then the Internet Archive collection, which makes sense because they are from the Library of Congress, and on the Internet Archive, anyone can add anything. They also have more information about how the videos can be viewed, which is helpful. Users can view the videos with RealMedia, Quicktime, and MPEG formats, all streaming. As a Mac user, I was able to easily use the Quicktime and MPEG formats, though they are quite small. (The MPEG is a little bigger). And the quality is not great on either version.

One thing that is really nice about this site, is that they give you contextual information about the collection. “New York City at the Turn of the Century,” “America at the Turn of the Century,” and “Pioneer Cameramen” are some of the educational pages that this collection includes. I would think that this could be a good resource for teachers. While this is not really a way to ‘describe’ the work, it does give the user more background information, which I would think a library would want to provide. Users are able to browse by subject, search by keyword or view an entire list of the films available. I browsed by subject. These records included information about the copyright holders, date created, cameraman, location of filming and descriptions. They also include the location of the holding of the physical film, as well as a digital ID number, which of course would be useful.

I watched a “Sleighing Scene” created by Thomas Edison’s company in 1898. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/papr:@FILREQ(@field(SUBJ+@od1(Sleighs--New+York++State+--New+York+))+@FIELD(COLLID+newyork))

As well as a film of the demolition of the Star Theatre in New York, over approximately 30 days in 1901:

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/papr:@FILREQ(@field(SUBJ+@od1(Star+Theatre++New+York,+N+Y+++))+@FIELD(COLLID+newyork))

And a parade in Washington Square Park, “Parade of "exempt" firemen / American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.”

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/papr:@FILREQ(@field(SUBJ+@od1(Washington+Square+Park++New+York,+N+Y+++))+@FIELD(COLLID+newyork))