CAW News, April 2024
News on the activities of CAW: upcoming workshops, a call for hosts, and a wrap-up of projects from late 2023.
New Project + Call for Host Sites
CAW receives NEH funds for the project, Expanding the Circle of Care for Audiovisual Collections in Tribal Archives
ATALM and CAW are seeking host sites for five regional workshops to be held between September 2024 and November 2025, as part of this project. To learn more about the project and apply to be a Host Site, click HERE. The deadline is May 1.
CAW is excited to announce continued support from the National Endowment for the Humanities through its Preservation and Access Education and Training grant. CAW will partner with the Association of Tribal Archives Libraries and Museums (ATALM), with the support of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), to assist tribal organizations across the country to inventory and develop preservation plans for thousands of audiovisual items in their care. Funded in part by the NEH’s special initiative, American Tapestry: Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future, as a project that will help emphasize the role of the humanities in tackling contemporary social challenges, Expanding the Circle of Care will allow CAW to build on the development of these tools and training, as well as establish a new training module in digital file storage and maintenance.
Upcoming Workshops
Below is a list highlighting some upcoming workshops.
Check our regularly updated calendar HERE for additional details, more workshops, and to sign up to volunteer.
Deserted Films, in collaboration with LGBTQ+ History & Archives of the Desert
Workshop presented by California Revealed
Date: Saturday June 1, 2024
Location: The Learning Center Community Room, Palm Springs Public Library (Palm Springs, CA)
Description: Deserted Films is dedicated to collecting, caring for and making accessible films shot in the general Palm Springs area, as well as Southern California and surrounding desert regions. The LGBTQ+ History & Archives has held exhibitions and public programs about LGBTQ+ history in Coachella Valley; and like Deserted Films, they too have archivists as co-founders. This workshop will instruct other members of their team and volunteers about archival processing and digitizing their collections, metadata standards. The workshop will catalog collections from both organizations; about 100 small gauge home movies and videotapes from Deserted Films, and 100 Mega Scene newsletters from the LGBTQ+ History & Archives.
Workshop presented by California Revealed
Date: Saturday May 18, 2024 (tentative)
Location: La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley, CA)
Description: La Peña’s archives, started in response to the Chilean military coup, document a hub for solidarity with international liberation struggles, Bay Area political organizing, community meetings, and cultural activism for over 50 years. The workshop will prioritize early albums from the photography collection, particularly those from the 1970s and 1980s, to increase photograph-level descriptions for each album.
Workshop presented by California Revealed
Date: Sunday June 9, 2024
Location: Burn All Books (San Diego, CA)
Description: SCANNNERS is a DIY zine and ephemera archive that has amassed a collection of over 1,000 zines, prints, and ephemera since its establishment in November 2023. This workshop will formalize archiving processes, focusing on training for facilitators and volunteers. SCANNNERS partners with Books Through Bars San Diego to process and catalog handwritten letters from prisoners across the country requesting books, conversation, and resources.
Workshop presented by California Revealed
Date: Saturday June 15, 2024
Location: Internet Archive (San Francisco, CA)
Description: Formed in 1999, Western Neighborhoods Project (WNP) preserves and shares the history and culture of the neighborhoods in western San Francisco. Along with community volunteers, WNP will rehouse and catalog over 200 issues of the Richmond Banner, a neighborhood newspaper published in San Francisco’s Richmond District from 1894-1974. Their goal for the collection is to create public access by digitizing the newspapers and making them available online.
2023 Recap: Workshops in Serbia, Turkey, and Georgia (US)
A brief report on activities from the end of one of our busiest years yet.
Timok Digital Workshop, Zaječar, Serbia, August, 2023
In 2023, archivists from CAW, MARMIA, and Library of Congress worked with the founders of SKVER Magazin in Zaječar, Serbia to develop and deliver a four-day long community archiving workshop called Timok Digital. The workshop brought together archivists, artists, and cultural workers to participate in intensive sessions in audiovisual preservation. It culminated in an “Open Door” event which introduced local community members to the work of SKVER and invited their participation. Six participants from Serbian organizations completed the training. SKVER Magazin is a regional archive collecting and preserving the history of Timok Valley, a rich cultural region in southeastern Serbia which was strongly affected by the privatization of its factories in the 1990s. Stay tuned for news on Timok Digital II, currently planned for August 2024.
CAW - IASA Partnership with Istanbul university and Z 1 Film Atölyesi; Istanbul, Turkey, September 2023
2023 marked the first community archiving workshop at the IASA conference! Partners were Istanbul University Central Library Ethnomusicology Department and Z 1 Film Atölyesi Ltd. The workshop was held at Istanbul University. This was our most international workshop to date! The workshop had over 40 participants from 15 countries including Ghana, Botswana, Georgia, China, the US, Poland, Russia, Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Austria, Slovenia, Mexico, South Africa, and Estonia. Participants worked on a collection of metal grooved discs of folk recordings of Turkish music from the Istanbul University Central Library Collection, and outtakes from feature films on MiniDV and VHS. During the workshop, 28 assets were inventoried and one sample tape was digitized. A highlight of the day was a special training session on grooved media.
Pictures of You Home Movie Festival; Fitzgerald, Georgia; December 2023
CAW worked with filmmakers Cyrus Moussavi, Hubert Taylor, and Brittany Nugent to participate in the Pictures of You Home Movie Festival in Fitzgerald, Georgia. During the day, local residents were encouraged to bring in their home movie collections for inventorying and evaluation. The day ended in a celebration of live music, talks, and home movie screenings at the Grand Theater. Photographs and video collections were processed, and several home movies were digitized. The festival is initiated as part of the forthcoming feature-length documentary, Somebody’s Gone, about the great spiritual singer Brother Theotis Taylor, told through a remarkable archive of footage shot by his son, Hubert.
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