Finding and Using Moving Images In Context

The gap in weekly postings since earlier in July was caused by exigencies of National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access: Humanities Collections and Resources proposal deadline. Yesterday we submitted “Finding and Using Moving Images in Context: Natural Resources, Communities, and Civic Engagement in New England.” The planned two-year project builds on lessons learned here:

• Work with interested scholars to build contextual materials
• Streamline video digitizing process
• Manage video library with networked open source tools
• Co-publish video with organizations having aligned interests
• Engage metadata specialists
• Foreground rights for users

The Project Description
Northeast Historic Film (NHF) has for more than 20 years collected archival moving images depicting changes in the New England environment illuminating natural resources, communities, and civic engagement in the 20th century. This project, between May 2009 and April 2011, will digitize 1,500 audiovisual records possessing great value for regional studies and broader scholarship, and will create free public access with contextual material for effective search, discovery, and reuse. Digital video access will be created in collaboration with scholars and partner organizations engaged in humanities research and publication. Metadata specialists will ensure that our descriptive tools adhere to contemporary standards. For the first time, researchers will have access to the objects as digital video with attached related information. Creating finding aids and direct access to the largest repository of regional moving images in the U.S. changes the model for finding and using moving images with relevant materials. Moving Images in Context, the digital video Website developed in this project, will support scholarly research and writing, classroom teaching, and public use. (more…)