WITNESS, Author at WITNESS Blog

Guantánamo Bay archive project Another interesting project announced recently, also with a significant web component, is the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center Archive. The archive was conceived by Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz, attorneys representing several Guantánamo detainees as well as professors of law at Seton Hall University; and co-directed by Michael Nash, director of NYU’s Tamiment Library. […] July 23, 2009
Columbia seeking Web Collection Curator for human rights project Columbia University Libraries has announced a grant-funded position to help develop infrastructure for web content collecting, including specifically in the area of human rights. Excerpt from the announcement: “The incumbent will work closely a second web collection curator, selectors, archivists, digital projects staff, senior managers, scholars and individuals in human rights organizations around the world […] July 22, 2009
New Media History and Research on Rights, War, and Memory From researcher and guest blogger Karl Arthur Baumann, currently doing research and interviews here at WITNESS, about his project: The recent events in Iran have proven once again the potency and conscience raising capabilities of current communications technologies, vis a vis Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. But to what extent have they created active responses? The […] July 15, 2009
Open Video Conference: follow-up I was unfortunately unable to attend the OVC conference in last month, but here's video of the session "Human Rights and Indigenous Media: Dilemmas, Challenges and Opportunities" featuring my colleagues Sam Gregory and Sameer Padania. And, from a blog post by Teague Schneiter on the Institute of Network Cultures site, with some interesting report-back. (Teague is actually interning here at WITNESS.) July 14, 2009
Open Video Conference: human rights in an open video culture. Lots of great stuff on tap at this week's Open Video Conference (June 19-20, NYU). My WITNESS colleagues Sam Gregory and Sameer Padania will speak on the panel "Human Rights, Indigenous Media and Ethics in Video: Dilemmas, Challenges and Opportunities:" June 17, 2009
Human rights archives/archivists at SAA 2009 From the ICA Archives and Human Rights blog, for archivists of human rights collections: Dear colleagues, Hello, my name is T-Kay Sangwand and I’m the new Human Rights Archivist at the University of Texas Libraries. I am writing to see if any list members will be attending the Society of American Archivists annual meeting taking […] May 27, 2009
Why isn't everything digitized yet? A few weeks ago Indicommons featured an excellent blog post by Deborah Wythe, Head of Digital Collections and Services at the Brooklyn Museum. She poses the question many of us frequently hear: Why isn't everything digitized yet? She then proceeds with a nicely articulated description of some of the challenges, then quantifies them: May 15, 2009
Archives as Medium I recently stumbled upon Essays: Archives as Medium , on the web site Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan (in turn part of Library and Archives Canada online.) From Lance Strate's essay The Medium is the Memory: May 8, 2009
Archiving Project: Burma Humanitarian Mission This report is from Jenn Blaylock, NYU Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program: As my time interning at WITNESS Media Archive comes to a close I thought I’d share the details of the archival project that I’ve been working on with the archival blogosphere. Simply put, I organized and digitized a collection of over forty-six […] May 6, 2009
Conference: Memory, Archives, Human Rights In Copehagen Denamrk, and Malmö, Sweden, June 4-5, 2009: Archives, Memory and Human Rights. May 2, 2009
Citizen Archivists: MiT6 Notes, part 2 Another thematic thread from MIT6, MIT's Media in Transition conference, highlighted by Rick Prelinger (Prelinger Library, Prelinger Archives) at the 2nd plenary, Archives and History. April 30, 2009
Immediacy & Persistence: MIT6 Notes part 1 I spent last Friday Saturday and a bit of Sunday at MIT 6, the 6th biennial Media in Transition gathering convened by MIT’s Comparative Media Studies (CMS) program. April 28, 2009
The past is not past On March 26, a day after Guatemala’s Human Rights Ombudsman Sergio Morales released the first report on the contents of the National Police Archives, his wife was abducted and tortured. If anyone doubts the relevance of records and archives to the present, not only in redressing the past but as factors in ongoing terror and […] April 7, 2009
Conference: Media in Transition 6 at MIT Media in Transition: April 24 - 26, at MIT. Excerpt from the conference description: " What challenges confront librarians and archivists who must supervise the migration of print culture to digital formats and who must also find ways to preserve and catalogue the vast and increasing range of words and images generated by new technologies? How are shifts in distribution and circulation affecting the stories we tell, the art we produce, the social structures and policies we construct?" April 1, 2009
Garbage bag of history There's a wonderful quote in a Talk of the Town piece in this week's New Yorker. The piece covers the opening of an exhibit of work by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam War photographer Eddie Adams; many of the images have never been displayed before, having been not long ago discovered in plastic garbage bags in the garage of Adams' first wife. March 27, 2009