- New WITNESS Archive Intern My name is Ioannis Papaloizou and I am from Cyprus. My educational background is in film and video production (I obtained my Bachelor’s degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York) and more recently in “Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image” (prof. Master’s degree of the University of Amsterdam). At the university […]
- October is American Archives Month… 10 things to read/do/think about: 1. Read Archives and Justice: A South African Perspective by Verne Harris. 2. Check out this upcoming NY Archivists Roundtable workshop: Digital Asset Management and Institutional Repositories: Case Studies Addressing the Development and Implementation of Systems. November 10, 2008. One of the presenters is David Rice, Channel 13’s Digital Archivist. […]
- Job announcements for human rights archives/archivists Three current job openings relating to human rights collections: University of Texas Austin: Human Rights Archivist; Columbia University: Director of Area Studies/Global Resources; the position includes serving as the Director of the Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research. Amnesty International (at the Secretariat, UK): Cataloger, Peter Benenson Collection.
- What is an archivist? In a previous post I referred to Mark Greene's SAA address, "The Power of Archives: Archivists’ Values and Value in the Post-Modern Age." The full text is now available on the SAA site, but here is the "elevator speech" quote I referred to:
- Archiving cellphone video Earlier this week amateur cellphone video surfaced corroborating that casualties suffered in the August 22 US airstrike on the Afghan village of Azizabad were much higher than the military has been willing to admit. The Times published a piece by Carlotta Gall "Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid," which also includes a link to some of the video (edited due to graphic content).
- September 11 archives online Two online archives on the events of 9/11/01, both worth looking at: The Library of Congress Web Archive A wide range of web sites from individuals, institutions and news media around the world during the aftermath of the attacks. The September 11 Digital Archive Includes over 150,000 digital items including emails, images, voicemails, stories, video, […]
- Lawsuit to demand Cheney papers be made public Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) (with others) has filed a lawsuit to challenge Vice president Dick Cheney’s position, supported by NARA, that his office is not part of the Bush administration, and thus not subject to the Presidential Records Act of 1978. See the Washington Post for more.
- SAA2008: A few final notes Back from SF, to the office, first day of school, general fall craziness. I want to post just a couple of other notes re SAA before I move on to other topics. The session “Returning Displaced Archives: Legal and Ethical Perspectives” moderated by Trudy Peterson. The panelists, to whom scenarios (hypothetical and actual) were put […]
- SAA2008: Random notes I did the Internet Archive “tour” Weds morning – nothing to tour really, as befits a digital archive; a colleague said, “they have a building?” – but presentations and Q&A in the Presidio office about the Books program, NASA Images project, and Archive-it, a subscription service allowing customized website crawling/archiving for organizations. A few things […]
- SAA2008: Meaning, Justice and John Dean I started the day with “What, Why, How? Archival Meaning in a R/Evolutionary Age” which featured three excellent papers exploring meaning, purpose and collective identity for archivists. I especially liked Scott Cline’s paper which explored what he called “archival being” the core values of which are faith, radical self-understanding, intention, and integrity; and illustrated via […]
- SAA2008 I will be in San Francisco all of next week for the Society of American Archivists annual meeting. Of particular note: Global Issues Forum on “Archival Ethics and Social Justice: What is our Professional Responsibility?” Consisting of panelists and open discussion, the forum will begin by considering the “Key Propositions and Questions,” presented in the […]
- I-Witness Video, archives & advocacy Saturday’s Times had an update on the continuing efforts of the city of NY to force I-Witness Video to turn over hundreds of hours of videotapes shot during the 2004 protests at the Republican National Convention. For those unfamiliar with this story, this small group of activists mobilized hundreds of citizens with video cameras with […]
- My vacation I’m back from a road trip with family through PA, WV, VA and KY (really not the summer to do this, although gas was a lot cheaper down south). Along with some hiking and biking and fabulous roadside dioramas, I had the pleasure of making a short visit to Appalshop, the legendary arts, media and […]
- Saad Eskander Guardian interview The Guardian online has an interview with Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraqi National Archive and Library. The former Kurdish resistance fighter returned to Baghdad in 2003 with a freshly minted Phd from the London School of Economics, and was appointed soon after. It is an almost unimaginable job under heartbreaking and terrifying conditions; he […]
- U Conn HR archives symposium notes now online Now available on the Thomas J Dodd Research Center website are the proceedings of the meeting on human rights archives held March 3 & 4. Two notable outcomes of the conference include a new listserv, and the creation of a Human Rights Archives Information Portal. A prototype of the portal is currently being created by […]
Archiving Human Rights
Posts from the WITNESS Media Archive whose mission is to collect, document, preserve and provide access to audiovisual human rights media in the support of advocacy, prosecution of justice, truthtelling and the historical record.
These posts are devoted to news of our activities and work, and to discussion of topics relevant to it, including human rights archives and documentation, audiovisual archiving, social issue documentary, the social justice responsibilities of archives and archivists, etc.
Posts are written by Grace Lile, Director of Operations; Yvonne Ng, Archivist; and occasional other contributors.