The Administration of Television Newsfilm and Videotape Collections: A Curatorial Manual

Related records

• Histories

  Compiled directory of websites offering histories and chronologies of media culture, systems and tools; entries include museums (American Computer Museum, Museum of Television, Museum of TV and Radio, Obsolete Computer Museum), institutional archives and foundations (Daniel Langlois Foundation Centre for Research and Documentation; Woody and Steina Vasulka Archive; WGBH New Television Workshop Archives), scholarly and association resources (Media History Project; International Association for Media and History; Radio History Society), and specialized timelines and thematic collections on computing, cinema, radio, recording and pre-cinema.

• Saving the Images: A Report from the Looking Back/Looking Forward Symposium Preservation

  On May 31 and June 1 at Downtown Community TV Center in New York, over 50 media arts professionals convened for Looking Back/Looking Forward, a symposium on moving image preservation organized by the Experimental Television Center with IMAP and Bay Area Video Coalition. Sessions addressed physical preservation and remastering (including 1/2" open reel), economics, formats, collection assessment and capturing related histories; participants included representatives from museums, archives, media organizations and artist groups. Outcomes included transcripts for the ETC Video History site, a NEA-funded BAVC DVD (due late 2002), two commissioned papers (Video Preservation: The Basics; Reel to Real) and the Video History Project website (launched 2000) holding nine databases and about 3,500 records.

• Introduction Preservation

  Looking Back/Looking Forward is a symposium on electronic media preservation organized by the Experimental Television Center; it invited 58 artists, conservators, media arts staff and technical experts and is an activity of the Center’s Video History Project (begun 1994). The Video History Website (launched 2000) hosts nine interrelated databases with about 3,500 records and a Bibliography of over 1,000 entries. The Preservation area includes the commissioned papers Video Preservation and Reel to Real; Bay Area Video Coalition, with NEA funding, will produce a DVD due end of 2002.

• Distribution at Galleries, Museums, and Media Centers Collections

  Survey of videotape distribution through U.S. museums, gallery dealers and media centers; contributors include curators and distributors at Whitney, Everson, Berkeley University Art Museum, MoMA, Castelli/Sonnabend, Electronic Arts Intermix, Global Village, The Kitchen and Synapse. Museums package traveling video shows and charge artist fees; distributors and media centers lease or sell tapes to institutions. Betamax/VHS, cable and broadcast are discussed as emerging markets; notable projects include the Whitney's Introduction to Video for the AFA catalog, Everson's Video Anthology, Global Village's Giving Birth and Synapse's planned paid distribution beginning January 1979.

• Preservation Planning and Management Preservation

  Preservation Planning and Management provides guidance and a list of consultants and resources for audiovisual preservation, organized under sections for consultants, project planning and management, collection assessment and surveys, collection management, appraisals, and resources. It cites James C. Scholtz’s Developing and Maintaining Video Collections in Libraries (Santa Barbara, CA: CLIO, 1989) and notes the Magnetic Media Preservation Sourcebook available from Media Alliance; listings are provided as a service and are not endorsements by Media Alliance or the Experimental Television Center. Named consultants and institutions (including Boston Art Conservation; Heritage Resource Management Associates; Hollywood Vaults; the Image Permanence Institute at RIT; VidiPax; and others) are described with services such as collection assessment, appraisal, storage and environmental surveys, disaster planning, grant consultation, cataloging, and technical research on temperature, humidity and pollutants.

• Independent Video and the Museum of Modern Art Bibliography