Finding and Using Moving Images In Context

Northeast Historic Film is an independent archives formed in 1986. We preserve and provide access to all genres of film and videotape of the northeastern United States, from 1901 to the present day. While we are dedicated to preserving original materials relating to Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts, our collections encompass a much broader geography. Moving image creators from the region traveled widely; for example, the earliest known color film of Gandhi is found in one Northeast Historic Film (NHF) collection.

Welcome to the first release of Finding and Using Moving Images in Context, an experiment in open source tools for managing and using heritage moving images, with practices scaled to small and medium-size units (special collections, historical societies, topical audiovisual archives, and educational centers). As a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Startup, the site is a public assessment of new standards and practices. We invite you to comment on your experience viewing the moving images and their context. The footer on this page contains links to the tools we used.

We are dedicated to providing public access and serving scholarly interest in moving images, emphasizing their evidentiary value. From this page you can go to selections from two collections containing film of China made between 1928 and 1936, the Branch and Gilbert Collections.

These are unedited primary source materials accompanied with curatorial background from the archives and our partners. The seven clips provide a medium for developing our metadata structure and testing open source digital library tools, many of which are in development.

All video clips are available for viewing as QuickTime (MOV) files. Each clip has associated information about the collection it was excerpted from—its provenance—descriptive metadata about that specific clip, credits and how to cite the work when showing or using it, and a link to pages for additional interactive activities such as viewing and commenting on bilingual audio description for the visually impaired at or sharing thoughts on content and meaning [Gilbert CommentPress to come].

As funds allow we will move our in-house 28,000 record database, describing 800 collections, to a Web-based hierarchical system online. XML will support new forms of searching, integrating interpretive text with the moving images for the first time, helping scholars and the public to find and use materials online.

For background, visit our project blog on the National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Startup grant work in 2007-2008, http://movingimagesincontext.org/blog/

The Branch and Gilbert China videos are presented for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. We include information on how to cite the clip when you show it.