- Format, Frame Size and More: Digital Video Basics for Activists We're launching a new video in our series for activists on video archiving and preservation, which covers digital video basics including file formats, encoding, and more.
- What Activists Need to Know About Video Archiving and Preservation Advocacy campaigns can take time to achieve results, so it’s important that your videos remain available after they are filmed. A new video series from WITNESS shares tips with activists about video archiving and preservation.
- Preserving Videos from Ferguson for Justice and Accountability Basic tips that activists can take towards properly preserving the authenticity and context of human rights videos, strengthening the likelihood that the videos could someday be used as evidence in the fight for justice and accountability.
- Highlights from our Video Archiving Q&A Earlier this month, we hosted a lively online Q&A on all aspects of human rights video archiving and preservation. Activists and archivists from around the world participated, sharing their practical ideas and knowledge on how to safeguard video collections.
- List of Free or Low-cost Tools and Resources for Video Activists This list of free or low-cost tools and resources for video activists is curated from participants who joined our Live Video Archive #AskMeAnything event on our Facebook page.
- 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.
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.