Welcome, minutes, and next year's conference

[Rachel E. Beattie]

Hi all,

Hope everyone is having a lovely summer!  And welcome to the new members who have joined this list since the ACA conference in Ottawa!  Apologies for taking so long to send on the minutes for our meeting.  But here they are (see below). A huge thanks to Krista for doing the minutes!! Please let me know if there is anything that needs to be changed or added.

I also wanted to put out feelers about next year's conference.  Is anyone interested in submitting a proposal? Should we try for our workshop again?  Let me know if you have any ideas. The theme is: Truths, Trust and Technology. The call for papers and description is here:  http://archivists.ca/content/annual-conference   The deadline is October 1st.

SMISIS 2017 meeting minutes

Attending: Jana, Leslie, Rachel, Kate, Krista, Sarah, Robb, Ali

Round robin of introductions & updates

Rachel, SMISIS Chair - Media Commons, University of Toronto

Holdings include Canadian cultural productions. Interested in outreach using holdings but lots of copyright issues.

Kate - NWT Archives

Repatriated a few large collections to the Nunavut Archives and CBC. Holds lots of magnetic media and safety film. Holds  a lot of music and oral history. Working on small collection digitization. There are lots of challenges to digitization in a remote location.

Krista - University of Alberta Archives

Most AV holdings are from the Department of Radio and Television. Piloting digitization with an onsite unit called Arts Resource Centre with audio materials to test out the service. Libraries also launched a streaming service called ERA A+V using Avalon that can then host digital AV content.

Jana - City of Vancouver Archives

Only recently took responsibility for AV materials. Have a digitization budget for a vendor to do AV digitization. Audio has historically been done in house. Was using softweare called WaveLab. Now using Samplitude but having trouble getting it to work. Trying to gert in house digitization going again but not a top priority.

Also dealing with video from a cable access show on different formats including SP, DigiBeta, and a 12TB drive. Trying to put it all together to determine what is there. Looking ahead for how to provide access. Thinking of uploading zip files with MPEG4 files (2-3GB each) for access. For preservation, decision between disk image and individual files.

Leslie - Western University Archives

Has AV as part of portfolio (portfolio divided by fonds so other archivists have AV too). Includes production company and local films from the 1940s. Looking for funding for digitization because no other way to provide access. Currently no access system for AV. Digitized AV was historically stored on externals drives and recently moved to server.

Sarah - currently finishing MA thesis, oral historian

Working with Indigenous community records. Worked with the Harper Elders & interviewed people. Was given audio takes of oral histories and land records dating back to the 1970s, but with content ranging back hundreds if not thousands of years. Lots of oral histories are in Oji-Cree. Gathered using a food truck turned mobile oral history mobile. Can’t outsource digitization because too valuable. Looking to build how-to knowledge and equipment for local people in Winnipeg to undertake work.

Robb - University of Calgary Archives

Holdings include the EMI catalogue of production masters. Grant to pilot digitization. Hired an AV tech through the Mellon Foundation.