“The Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video [is] a valuable contribution to the field of digital preservation. Produced for a broad audience of content creators, this website is a unique and much needed resource covering all aspects of preserving digital video.”
– SAA Preservation Publication Award Committee
Today I’m pleased to announce that our Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video has been selected for the Preservation Publication Award from the Society of American Archivists (SAA). It is an honor to receive this recognition from the oldest and largest national archival professional association in North America.
We created the Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video to respond to the critical gaps in knowledge and resources. Available in English, Spanish, and Arabic web and PDF versions, the Guide provides practical steps for managing, storing, sharing, and preserving your videos.
WITNESS has long been a proponent of the importance of archiving to human rights video advocacy. We have been fortunate to be able to work with hundreds of activists and organizations over the past 22 years, from whom we have learned about the needs and challenges of grassroots human rights work.
Since its release in 2013 the Guide has been accessed by thousands of human rights activists, NGOs, media collectives, and citizen journalists. Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive, reflecting the critical importance of authentication and preservation to video created for advocacy, documentation and evidence.
The guide is being used by groups like FilmAid International, who have created a valuable video collection through their work engaging refugee communities in media production. They found that “WITNESS’s guide has been very helpful to us – first, in understanding what challenges we share in common with other organizations; and second, in providing very detailed information about what is technically possible.”
A dedicated Syrian activist is using the guide to train other activists from her home country to document human rights violations with video.
“I never realized how important archiving was until fellow activists I was working with reached out to ask specifically for more guidance,” she says, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of her work. “We simply couldn’t cover enough about archiving in our already packed training sessions. The Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video addresses this need with a step-by-step resource that activists can reference frequently and on their own time.”
As co-author of the Guide, I hope that it continues to reach those who are seeking information on how to manage and preserve their video for human rights.
Join Us For An Online Archiving Q&A
Next week from August 11-15, I’ll be conducting an online conversation about archiving video on our Facebook page. Please join me there and ask your questions or to share your archiving experience with others.
Have you used the Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video? We’d love to hear from you!