PROJECTS
Blackhawk Films Collection
From 2019-2023 I worked as a Preservation Archivist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Film Archive on the Blackhawk Films Collection where I oversaw a large-scale digitization project—the primary aim of which was to scan to protect rare and under-represented titles within the collection for greater access.
Still from Atlantis Rising
Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters Finding Aid
Todd Wiener, Caitlin Denny and I recently presented at AMIA's Spring Online Conference on the collaborative process that made the finding aid for The Ken Kesey collection of the Merry Pranksters home movies and other material possible. For this presentation I discussed the processing plan and series-level finding aid I wrote while I was an intern for the UCLA Film & Television Archive in 2018 and 2019. This finding aid was made available on the UCLA Library's Film & Television Archive's collections page in 2021 and complies with SAA’s 2nd Edition of DACS.
This collection was selected for this work since access to had been significantly hindered due to the disarray in which the collection was received, communal authorship of the material within the collection, conflicting legacy records, and level of cataloging that had been possible to complete for it. The complex nature of the over 500 items that comprise this collection also posed complex cataloging issues in relation to provenance, original order and respect des fonds. To accurately arrange and describe this material, ten years of documentation from multiple preservation projects had to be consolidated.
Bob Baker Marionette Theater Library & Archives at the old 1345 W. 1st Street location; Photo: Ian Byers-Gamber
Bob Baker Marionette Theater
I have assisted Adam Foster with the Bob Baker Marionette Theater’s archives and library since 2017. In this time, we have become intimately involved with their multimedia collections, history, staff, and community. As recipients of the 2018-2019 UCLA Community Archives Lab/Mellon Foundation Internship Project, we were able to finish the process of moving the ~1,000 linear feet of these materials to their new theater space in Highland Park. This has involved conducting an audit that established collections by format, calculated linear and cubic feet, approximated totals for each of the collections’ holdings and providing recommendations for archival storage and housing. To preserve the original order of these materials we also created preliminary inventories for all of these collections.
Spring 2019 Performance! Newsletter of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Performing Arts Section, “Preserving Place: Moving the Bob Baker Marionette Theater”
2018 AMIA Annual Conference: “The Bob Baker Marionette Theater: Archiving with Oral Histories” (Presentation Slides)
Design by Grace Danico
Rewind & Hit Play Mini-Conference
In April of 2019, I programmed and organized a day long mini-conference Rewind & Hit Play on behalf of the UCLA AMIA Student Chapter. This event brought together a selection of local scholars and professionals working in the field of media archiving, who had recently presented work in other conference programs. The motivation behind this event was to include past presentations, projects, and research that were previously inaccessible due to barriers such as the expense to attend, geographic location, or scheduling conflicts with coursework or jobs. In the spirit of access, this conference was also entirely free for attendees and included swag, lunch, and a reception!
Rewind & Hit Play was a collaboration with the Los Angeles Archivists Collective (LAAC), who designed all of the branding for the event, and were the promotional sponsor. Financial support was secured from Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), UCLA Department of Information Studies, LAC Group, Prasad Corporation, the Society of California Archivists (SCA), and Deluxe Entertainment.
Example of collection specific histograms created for the project report to visualize A-D strip results
Getty Acetate Project
Working directly with the Getty Research Institute's (GRI) Media Conservator Jonathan Furmanski, the goal of the Acetate Project was to create a long-term preservation plan for the acetate films in the GRI's collections for greater access. Together, Jonathan and I identified and documented all of the Getty's acetate films; tested them with A-D strips to measure deterioration and condition; thoroughly documented the severity of these results; scheduled periodic testing to monitor their acetate film holdings in the future; relocated films to cold or frozen storage that were in severe stages of deterioration; re-housed films to meet archival standards; and prioritized films for outsourced reformatting. These findings were collated in a report structured around the guidelines provided by the Image Permanence Institute's (IPI) User’s Guide to A-D Strips: A Safe and Accurate Way to Check Film for Vinegar Syndrome. From these metrics, an assessment of the overall film holdings was provided with recommendations for preservation priorities and digital reformatting.
Clip from the Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park Videotape Collection, "SEQU/KICA #8550 Split Screen (Tape 12 of 13)," VHS, color, silent, undated
Sequoia Kings Canyon Videotape Collection
Over the Winter and Spring quarters of 2017, I digitally preserved 109 tapes from Sequoia King's Canyon National Park's audiovisual collection under the supervision and training of Yasmin Dessem and Allie Whalen at UCLA's Preservation Lab. The collection included an assortment of 1/2” open reel, Umatic, VHS, miniDV and Hi8. The content of these tapes were diverse and included footage of controlled burns, road surveys, oral histories, questionable 1970s reenactments, home movies, administrative meetings, as well as Umatic “access copies” of nitrate films shot in the 1930s. For this project, all of these tapes were inventoried, described, and digitized to archival standards.