- WITNESS Archiving Guide Receives Award from Society of American Archivists The Activists' Guide to Archiving Video wins the Preservation Publication Award from the Society of American Archivists.
- Everything Needs to Change, So Everything Can Stay the Same: Challenges to Keeping Online Video Accessible Keeping a website online and continuously accessible to the public, whether its a human rights archive or a piece of art, is not merely a question of keeping the power switch on. Our senior archivist discusses some ways to prepare for the inevitable challenge of tech obsolescence.
- Why Time is Running Out For Your Videotapes How can individuals and organizations with limited resources deal with preserving all the videos recorded on tapes years ago?
- Atención, Activistas de Derechos Humanos: Aprende a archivar tu video con nuestra nueva guía! Activists Guide to Archiving Video now available in Spanish!
- انتباه لكل ناشطي حقوق الإنسان: تعلم كيفية أرشفة الفيديوهات الخاصة بك مع دليلنا الجديد! Our Activists' Guide to Archiving Video is now available in Arabic
- Attention Human Rights Activists: Learn How to Archive Your Video with our New Guide Our new how-to guide for managing, storing, sharing and preserving digital video.
- 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?
- Self-Preservation through Personal Digital Archiving ‘Personal digital archiving’ is a movement that helps individuals take control of their digital files. A WITNESS Archivist shares her insights from a national conference, outlining gaps and solutions for human rights defenders.
- 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.
- 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.
- Oral History and the Law: Boston College’s Woes At WITNESS, the importance of negotiating informed consent within human rights video is paramount. By helping interviewees recognize the reach that their testimony may have in today's digital age, both intended and unforeseen consequences quickly become part of the greater conversation. Education is the key.
- Join WITNESS For An Online Dialogue On Archiving Human Rights I'm excited to announce that starting today (May 16) through May 22 my fellow archivist Yvonne Ng and I will be co-hosting an online dialogue hosted by New Tactics in Human Rights titled Archiving Human Rights for Advocacy, Justice and Memory.
- Archiving Human Rights on the Web The web has given human rights organizations unprecedented access to global audiences. However a website will last only as long as funds are available for maintenance and hosting.
- 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.
- Inside the Media Archive: our Cataloging Manual now available online 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.
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.