Who's Answering Your Questions
For the past several years, archivists and conservators from different Smithsonian archives have gathered on a Wednesday in October to listen and respond to questions about historic material that you might own or care for personally. We've enjoyed fielding questions about your personal historic documents, photos, videos, film, audio and born digital material. Here is a little bit about the staff who will be participating in today's Ask-the-Smithsonian Online Q & A, available virtually on the Smithsonian’s main Facebook page from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Riccardo Ferrante, IT Archivist, Smithsonian Institution Archives
Riccardo Ferrante, Information Technology Archivist and director of the Smithsonian Institution Archives' Digital Services Division, oversees the Archives’ digitization, digital preservation/curation, web and social media efforts, and its Electronic Records Program. He also participates in a number of national and international groups focused on best practices and standards in these areas.
Nora Lockshin, Paper Conservator, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
Nora Lockshin is a Paper Conservator at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and conserves physical objects and consults on preservation goals with archivists, collection managers, and curators at the Archives and throughout the larger Smithsonian archival and museum community. She runs the Smithsonian Center for Archives Conservation, a service and teaching laboratory of Smithsonian Institution Archives Collections Care team.
Michael Pahn, Media Archivist, National Museum of the American Indian.
Michael Pahn is a Media Archivist, specializing in audio, video, and motion picture film, at the National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, a position he has held since 2003. He has a BA in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh and an MLS from the University of Maryland.
Lynda Schmitz Fuhrig, Electronic Records Archivist, Smithsonian Institution Archives
Lynda Schmitz Fuhrig, Electronic Records Archivist at the Smithsonian Institution Archives since 2005, specializes in preserving born-digital materials that include images, audio, video, websites, and email from across the Smithsonian. Her work involves using tools and creating methods that help digital objects remain accessible in the future.
Marguerite Roby is the Photograph Archivist at Smithsonian Institution Archives and manages several large photographic collections. Her work involves establishing intellectual and physical control over these collections as well as contributing efforts towards digitization and the management of digitized assets.
We hope that you’ll join us on Facebook today, and we look forward to your questions!
Comments (5) – Leave a comment
Hi,
I understand that you are available today to answer questions re: safeguarding personal collections. My question is: Is there a way to protect electronic media from being 'erased' during some sort of e-wave phenomenon that we are reading about, originating from earthbound 'terrorist' sources or from sunflares, etc. ?
Thank you for providing your service to the public at large.
Have a beautiful day!
Rosemary
I'm not sure if this is the focus of the q&a, but if multiple video recordings exist of the same performance (ie, cultural dance), does it infringe on any copyright or intellectual property rights to archive them for future public access? Does one recording retain more right than another?
I was very happy to see the post about today's Q&A about preserving our precious family mementos ... hope you can help. While sorting through our father's effects we came across a short roll of movie film (45 mm) that was probably shot in the late 1940's or early 1950's. At that time he was using a 16 mm camera so we know this film would have been professionally shot. It was taken during the holiday season at his father's restaurant so we know the film belongs to the family. I've checked with some local companies who transfer old movies to disc but no one can help us with transferring the 45 mm movie film to disc. They can't even suggest places to contact. The technology is out there but we have no clue where to turn to. It would be incredible if the Smithsonian provided a service like this (for a fee of course) through their facility in DC (we're located in Northern VA). This Q&A opportunity could be the answer to our search.
Thank you so much in advance for any advice you can give,
Toni
This is actually not a question related to preservation techniques, but entry into the field itself. I worked for about 6 months as an archivist's assistant in college and completely fell in love with my work.
I worked for a genealogical society and my work was a bit of everything, but mostly involved: sorting and cataloging photographs and antique documents, making copies of everything, organizing them into volumes according to their surnames of origin, and entering records of the finished collections into databases. Many of these archives I completed on my own.
I am now looking at graduate schools and am keenly interested in applying to an MLS program with a focus on archival and preservation techniques. Do all of you have backgrounds in the field, or is it something that you came to accidentally? I know that there are only a handful of schools in the US that offer archive-based programs so I'm trying to choose carefully.
Thank you!
Rosemary, I answered your question on the Smithsonian's Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/smithsonian/) where the Q&A is going on, but here is a recap:
"To Rosemary, I'm not familiar with the e-wave phenomenon you ask about, but I'll check into it. Since these might be considered catastrophic events, you might be interested to know that large organizations sometimes use underground storage for strategic records. Not particularly practical for the ordinary individual, though.
Ricc"
Leave a comment
Produced by the Smithsonian Institution Archives. For copyright questions, please see the Terms of Use.
