What is a Community Archiving Workshop?
Recollection Wisconsin is one of three national anchor sites for the Community Archiving Workshop Regional Training of Trainers (TOT) program, supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) is a project of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) designed to address the challenge of obsolescence in audiovisual collections.
A CAW partners experienced audiovisual (AV) archivists with volunteers for a day-long workshop to assess and catalog as many materials as possible in the collections of a community archive or museum. In the process, volunteers gain hands-on experience working with AV materials and the organization gets a jump start preserving collections that include at-risk audio, video or film.
Training
In July 2019, Recollection Wisconsin team members, along with staff from the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, the Milwaukee Public Museum, History Museum at the Castle, UW-Eau Claire Archives and the Hoocąk Waaziija Haci Ho-Chunk Language Division participated in a “training of trainers” workshop that included a Community Archiving Workshop event at the UW-Madison Archives. Before the hands-on work could begin, a one-hour training seminar was conducted by audiovisual archivists Amy Sloper (Harvard Film Archive) and Jeff Martin (Chicago-based moving-image archivist and time-based art conservator) to inform all the participants of the work that would be conducted, preservation issues with film and audio reels, how to identify and properly handle materials at different states of decomposition, and the scope of work for the day. An overview of the collection was given by Cat Phan, the Digital and Media Archivist for UW-Madison Archives and Records Management Services.
Workshop
Participants were broken into smaller groups, each group having a CAW trainer assigned to help facilitate questions and guide the workflow.
The Kits
The IMLS grant also funded a film inspection kit that will be available to lend to cultural heritage organizations in Wisconsin. Recollection Wisconsin will also be working with Dorothea Salo and RADD at the UW-Madison iSchool to coordinate lending the PROUD digitization kit for VHS tapes, audiocassettes and other magnetic media.
Outcome
Aside from the great time everyone had working together, community building and gaining experience, we processed a lot of materials in a four hour period. In total we had 30 participants representing 11 organizations and were able to process 47 film and 139 audio reels.
What’s Next?
Our next step is to start planning the three regional CAWs in Wisconsin with Recollection Wisconsin acting as an anchor site to assist our regional partners:
Milwaukee Public Museum
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Area Research Center
The History Museum at the Castle/Outagamie County Historical Society
If you are interested in learning more about Community Archiving Workshops
Please visit the CAW handbook https://communityarchiving.org/
