The University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) will play a major role in an ambitious nationwide preservation effort to digitize media content. Through its partnership with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), SLIS will host four preservation fellowships during the fall semester. Fellows will work throughout the semester at one of three public broadcasting stations to digitize and preserve at-risk media. The stations are the Center for Public Television (CPT) at The University of Alabama, WSRE in Pensacola, Florida, and WCVE in Richmond, Virginia.
“By tapping in to the expertise of professional archivists, we are preparing our fellows for the critical work of protecting local media and ensuring that these records of our past are accessible in the future,” said Dr. Jim Elmborg, Director of SLIS. “We look forward to seeing what gems are revealed at CPT, WSRE and WCVE over the course of the semester.”
According to AAPB, a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH, a Boston-area public media broadcaster, the work the fellows complete will be incorporated into the AAPB database at the end of the semester.
“Public media stations have created community-focused, enriching programs for decades. Each of these programs is a unique snapshot that reflects what mattered to communities at a given time and is a rich historical resource for stations, scholars and the public,” said Karen Cariani, Director of WGBH’s Media Library and Archives. “We’re thrilled to help guide the next generation of archivists and for AAPB to serve as a home for these programs from CPT, WSRE and WCVE.”
Fellows will begin the program with an immersive training hosted by SLIS, led by WGBH Media Library and Archives staff and Jackie Jay, a digitization expert from Bay Area Video Coalition, from August 5-8. At the host stations, fellows will work with station staff to identify programs that are most valuable to the station and currently residing on at-risk and obsolete videotape formats. According to AAPB, each fellow will catalog and digitize up to 60 hours of this content. Fellows will be supported by AAPB archivists and funding from SLIS.
The School of Library and Information Studies is a part of the College of Communication and Information Sciences (C&IS) at The University of Alabama. To learn more about C&IS, visit www.cis.ua.edu.
