Yvonne Ng, Author at WITNESS Blog

Sending Videos Safely through the Wild, Wild, Web From YouTube to FTP, and Dropbox to Google Drive, online services have very different ways of transferring files. Which ones are safest for your videos? May 9, 2013
Securing Archives in Insecure Situations: Lessons from Mali “Centuries of Invaluable Manuscripts Lost to Extremists” could have been the headline. But it wasn’t, because Timbuktu archivists made plans to preserve them. Keeping digital archives can be easier, but no less critical. Here’s what you can do. February 15, 2013
How To Make a Trustworthy Video Video activists risk everything to film human rights violations. But unverified footage can't stand in newsrooms or courtrooms, so their efforts may be in vain. How can activists prevent that? Archivist Yvonne Ng explains a few simple steps they can take. January 30, 2013
Behind-the-Scenes of Our 20th Anniversary Video The challenge: Make a video that encapsulates WITNESS and its work empowering human rights defenders to use video since 1992, set against a backdrop of global events from the last 20 years. June 22, 2012
7 Tips to Ensure Your Video Is Usable in the Long Term n the past year, we have witnessed an unprecedented amount of media created by activists, citizen journalists, oral historians, and others who are documenting contemporary protest movements worldwide. As the volume of material continues to grow, questions about how to find, identify, verify, organize, and maintain this media for use as evidence and as historical documentation have become more pressing than ever. December 8, 2011
Video Advocacy Example: Using Video Games to Educate The international response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti is often remembered as being chaotic and ineffective, hampered by the massive devastation, poor coordination and communication, and the preexisting economic and political situation in the nation. November 19, 2011
Saving Human Rights Video from an Online “Deadpool” Perhaps serving as a reminder to video creators that video sharing platforms are not archival repositories for their media (nor do they claim to be), Google Video will be finally shutting down entirely next month. Starting April 29, videos hosted on Google Video will no longer be available for playback; after May 13, the videos will be removed. Google is encouraging content owners to download or migrate their videos to YouTube before the deadline. April 25, 2011
Celebrate Women’s History Month and Support our Partners This month, we’ve been looking back at WITNESS’ past work with grassroots partners on women’s rights as part of our ongoing celebration of the International Women’s Day Centenary and Women’s History Month. March 29, 2011
March Video Sale: Support Women’s Rights Last week, I highlighted two videos that are part of our ongoing celebration of the International Women’s Day Centenary and Women’s History Month. Throughout March we are looking back at WITNESS’ past work with grassroots partners on women’s rights by spotlighting five videos, available in our Web Store (DVD) and on ReFrame (video-on-demand). March 22, 2011
Our March DVD Sale: Spotlight on Women’s Rights Videos As part of our ongoing celebration of the International Women's Day Centenary and Women's History Month, throughout March we will look back at WITNESS' past work with grassroots partners on women's rights by spotlighting five videos from our Web Store. March 15, 2011
Inside the Media Archive: Archiving Digital Video Inside the Media Archive is an ongoing, occasional behind-the-scenes look at the practices, methodologies, tools, and resources the WITNESS Media Archive has developed and implemented to manage our collection of human rights video documentation. January 12, 2011
Inside the Media Archive: Indexing Human Rights Inside the Media Archive is an ongoing, occasional behind-the-scenes look at the practices, methodologies, tools, and resources we have developed and implemented to manage our collection of human rights video documentation. December 13, 2010
What Does the Open Video Movement Mean For Archives? At the WITNESS Media Archive, we collect, document, preserve, and provide access to human rights videos. Each component in this archiving endeavor contributes to the creation of reliable and authentic records in support of advocacy, prosecution of justice, truthtelling, and historical understanding. October 6, 2010
Human Rights Archives: Report from SAA, Part 1 Last week, I attended the annual conference of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) in Washington, DC. There were a number of sessions relevant to human rights archives and archivists this year, most notably the inaugural meeting of the new Human Rights Archives Roundtable, and the panel it organized with the Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Roundtable, entitled "Silence No More! Archives Threatened by Political Instability." August 19, 2010
Inside the Media Archive: Metadata In the WITNESS Media Archive, we rely on a lot of open-source and openly documented (i.e. with published specs) resources to manage our collection of human rights videos created by our partners all over the world. July 21, 2010