Matisse Bustos-Hawkes, WITNESS’ Senior Communications Manager, outlines the importance of archiving for video activists:

We’ve got a new, free resource available in Arabic, English and Spanish called the Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video. WITNESS created it after hearing from hundreds of activists and citizen journalists worldwide that preservation and future access to their media was a crucial concern. It’s been getting a lot of good feedback and next month we’re getting an award from an archive association.

All of us are creating more media than ever before, and face challenges about how to store, share and access our images, videos especially as technology and formats are ever changing. Activists face additional concerns: including the terms of use that govern the most popular of sharing sites — where their content is as risk of more frequent take-down notices; of losing their content due to lack of back up systems or due to being directly targeted by police or other forces in repressive regimes that seek to destroy possible evidence.

More citizens with the power of video to document human rights includes the need for people to safeguard their material for future justice and accountability procedures that could take years if not decades to come to fruition. Hopefully the guide is going to this purpose.

Boing Boing: How to archive your video media, an activist’s guide by WITNESS.

Learn more about WITNESS’ Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video.