On January 25th, Yvonne will participate in a one-hour guest talk with the Winter School for Audiovisual Archiving hosted by The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Yvonne will discuss the preservation strategies that WITNESS has implemented for its 25-year archive of human rights video.

The webinar will be livestreamed and registration is free. For more details and to register visit: http://bit.ly/2jp3879.

On February 8th, Yvonne will participate in the Council on Library and Information Services, Strategies for Advancing Hidden Collections (SAHC) Webinar: “Overcoming Project Hurdles: Approaches to Identifying and Managing Collection Red Flags”, where she will discuss challenges she faces in caring for her collection and evaluating and managing ethical issues.

Registration is currently full for this webinar however, you can listen to the recordings of the session, which will be made available a few days after, by visiting: http://bit.ly/2jS1dLv.

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Yvonne Ng is the senior archivist at WITNESS, an international nonprofit organization that supports individuals using video to document human rights abuses. She manages the organization’s video collection, which is recorded by partners and staff, and creates training resources to empower activists to archive and preserve their own videos. In 2014, WITNESS received SAA’s Preservation Publication Award for Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video. Read on as Ng shares how she feels archives can promote and protect human rights.

SAA: What drew you to the archives profession?

YN: I have always had an interest in independent and alternative media. In 2005, I worked at the Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Centre in Toronto, one of the oldest artist-run centres in Canada, to assess its film print collection. While it was a circulating collection, many of the prints were unique or best copies of important Canadian experimental works. At the time, I had a background in film studies and was just learning film preservation on the job.

I ended up at the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program at NYU, where I became more acutely aware of the problems of magnetic media and the emerging challenges of digital video. In MIAP, we were taught principles and standards, but also exposed to the realities of both large, slow-moving institutions and small, underresourced nonprofits. My interest was in de facto archives, places where media was being made or collected that did not necessarily have the mission or resources to archive and preserve. This culminated in my thesis, which focused on assessing the readiness of small organizations to start their own archival initiatives.

I think what draws me to the archives profession is actually the need for archival expertise and skills outside of formal archival institutions. It’s here that I feel I can make the most impact.

SAA: What groups have you partnered with to document human rights abuses and advocate for change?

YN: WITNESS has worked with more than 360 organizations over our 23-year history. We have partnered with international human rights organizations like Amnesty International, and national human rights groups like LICADHO, which fights forced evictions and land grabs in Cambodia. We have worked with lawyer-led groups like the Research and Advocacy Unit in Zimbabwe and Our Children’s Trust, which tackles climate change in the United States. We also partner with independent activist media collectives and citizen witness groups documenting systematic abuses in places like Syria and Brazil.

SAA: What role can archives play in protecting and promoting human rights?

YN: We all know on the most basic level that archives and archival records are useful for securing rights and proving abuse. But outside of formal archives, good archival practices also can be advantageously employed by people who are monitoring and documenting human rights in their communities.

Videos by citizen witnesses and activists may contain valuable information and evidence but are particularly vulnerable to loss, tampering, or decontextualization. There are greater security concerns for the individuals and for the footage. People are using available cameras or mobile phones with sometimes unsustainable formats, storing on consumer-grade portable hard drives, or uploading to third-party video sharing sites. Also, activists who film usually do not have time to properly arrange or describe their content, and the more they record, the harder it becomes to find and identify particular videos.

Archivists can support activists who are protecting and promoting human rights by sharing knowledge about basic practices that can help ensure that authentic evidentiary content is properly protected, preserved, and accessible later on.

SAA: What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about archives?

YN: I would want everyone to know that archiving should not just take place in archives, but is an essential component of present-day digital production workflows. Digital video can become inaccessible immediately, not just far off in the future, if it is not properly handled, managed, and described from the outset.

SAA: As an archivist, I can ___________________.

YN: . . . help people make the best use of their media to create change in the world.

This was the message shared by WITNESS archivist Yvonne Ng along with archivists Rachel Mattson and Marie Lascu at their recent training for activists on how to archive their video collections.

Hosted by Interference Archive, an archive for activist materials in Brooklyn, New York, the training brought together activists and archivists to discuss the core principles and practices of archiving. Using their own collections as examples, participants were led through modules on the basics of video and metadata, organizing and storing media, and accessibility and long-term storage considerations. Through activities, group work and the presentation of a video from WITNESS’s series on archiving video, participants worked together to figure out the best methods for organizing and preserving various collections.

Through implementing these steps, the trainees will be able to preserve media captured of protests, arrests, testimonies and other subjects and allow them to share these videos later for advocacy, justice and accountability and educational purposes.

To learn more about archiving video, check out The Activist’s Guide to Archiving Video and accompanying video series (currently in progress).

Yvonne, who co-authored WITNESS’ award winning Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video, and Democracy Now! hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, looked at current events such as the Ferguson protests and the death of Eric Garner at the hands of New York police where activists and citizen witnesses used video to document human rights abuse. At question is where and how archiving should be considered in the video production workflow.

Some key take aways from the segment include:

1. While WITNESS provides resources for how to film events, one should consider what they’ll do with their footage after the event;
2. Archiving’s role in preserving video and the metadata associated with it is essential in using footage for exonerating the falsely accused and bringing accountability and justice to human rights violators;
3. The point of archiving is to insure that your video is preserved, intact and ready to be used when you need it.
4. Common video platforms such as YouTube are not archiving solutions because a) they strip essential metadata from video files and b) they often take down video for a variety of reasons.

Related

For quick tips on archiving, visit the WITNESS Blog where Yvonne posted highlights from a recent online Q&A she moderated.

For a deep dive, visit The Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video.

Yvonne Ng, WITNESS’ Senior Archivist, explains the Guide and its usage over on the WITNESS Blog:

We created The Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video to respond to the critical gaps in knowledge and resources. Available in English, Spanish, and Arabic web and PDF versions, the Guide provides practical steps for managing, storing, sharing, and preserving your videos…

…Since its release in 2013 the Guide has been accessed by thousands of human rights activists, NGOs, media collectives, and citizen journalists. Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive, reflecting the critical importance of authentication and preservation to video created for advocacy, documentation and evidence.

The Society of American Archivists describes why it issued the award:

Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video, published by WITNESS, a nonprofit organization that uses video to expose human rights abuses, is the 2014 recipient of the Preservation Publication Award. Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video focuses on preserving digital video, an area in which there is still little published guidance. Available freely online in three languages, the guide is organized into eight sections that focus on stages in a video archiving workflow: create, transfer, acquire, organize, store, catalog, preserve, and share. Unlike other resources, it is aimed at content creators rather than archivists, enabling interventions that support preservation early in the digital lifecycle. The guide also uses easy-to-understand language and low-cost recommendations that empower individuals and grassroots organizations with fewer resources to take action to safeguard their own valuable collections. To date, the guide has found enthusiastic users among nonarchivists, including independent media producers and archives educators, as well as archivists who are new to managing digital video content.

The Award Committee noted that the guide was a “valuable contribution to the field of digital preservation” and an “example of what a good online resource should be.”

Join Us For An Online Archiving Q&A

Join WITNESS’ resident archivist Yvonne Ng on Facebook as she hosts an online Q&A between video producers and video archivists. Sign up and ask questions here. The Q&A will run August 11-15.