- 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."
- 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.
- Srebrenica: A Forensic Reconstruction Now on Exhibit at Open Society Archive In July 1995, over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were systematically slaughtered on grounds of ethnicity in and around Srebrenica in roughly 72 hours by units of the Bosnian Serb Army.
- Forensic Anthropology, Video, and Archives In mid-April, an episode of NPR program "Speaking of Faith," featuring a representative of the Argentine forensic anthropology team (EAAF) aired. The guest spoke about how recovering the remains of victims of repressive regimes leads to healing, the re-writing of history, and the prosecution of justice.
- Thoughts on archives “fitting in”, and processing the Rainlake donation. I have had the pleasure of interning in the WITNESS Media Archive for the past semester. I chose this internship because I hoped to put my Masters in Human Rights Studies and my Masters in Library Science to work in the video archive.
- An Archivist’s Perspective on Access and Privacy The New York Times reports that earlier this month, a US District Court granted a petition by Chevron to subpoena 600 hours of footage from Crude: The Real Price of Oil. The film, by director Joe Berlinger, documents a landmark lawsuit filed by 30,000 Ecuadorean Amazon residents against the oil company for allegedly contaminating the jungle and creating a “death zone” the size of Rhode Island.
- Archiving Human Rights Last year, 2009, WITNESS devoted a considerable amount of time to strategic planning from which emerged a new and re-conceived way of approaching what we do, which is, simply put, video advocacy.
- Highlights from the Orphan Film Symposium: Part 2 Following on my post Tuesday, here are more highlights from the Orphan Film Symposium I attended last week:
- Highlights from the Orphan Film Symposium: Part 1 Last week I attended the 7th Orphan Film Symposium in New York City. “Orphans,” as it is known, is a biannual event that draws archivists, preservationists, scholars, collectors, and artists from around the world to watch and discuss non-commercial and/or neglected films.
- Archives Without Borders The preliminary program is now available for the Archives Without Borders international congress announced some months ago. Co-hosted by VVBAD, the Flemish association for archivists and librarians, and KVAN, the Dutch association for archivists, the meeting will be held August 30 and 31, 2010 in the Peace Palace in The Hague, The Netherlands.
- SAA Human Rights Roundtable approved Word comes from Valerie Love, U Conn’s Curator of Human Rights Collections, that the petition to create a Human Rights Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists has been approved; Valerie made the case here last October. A huge thanks to Valerie and T-Kay Sangwand of U Texas for making this happen; they are eager […]
- New Tactics Dialogue follow-up Earlier this month New Tactics in Human Rights hosted an online dialogue Documenting Human Rights Violations: Choosing the Right Approach featuring practitioners from a variety of fields. Although a bit hard to navigate, there's a wealth of interesting commentary. Here are a few highlights:
- New Tactics dialogue on human rights documentation Documenting Violations: Choosing the Right Approach is an online dialogue being facilitated by New Tactics in Human Rights, beginning today and running through February 5, 2010.
- ‘Archives Power’ virtual reading group I've mentioned the book Archives Power: Memory, Accountability and Social Justice by Rand Jimerson on this blog on a few occasions but haven't had a chance to post about it at any length.
- International Outreach Session at AMIA Last month I blogged about a session we attended at the Association of Moving Image Archivists' conference in St. Louis. The session, "AV Preservation Exchanges: New York Accra, and Buenos Aires," discussed two initiatives in which established institutions partnered with international moving image archives lacking in resources.
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.