SFC Humanities Advisory Meeting

photo 1On November 17th, the SFC arranged a humanities advisory group meeting as part of the Extending the Reach of Southern Audiovisual Sources grant. The group consisted of UNC library staff, university professors, and visiting digital humanities experts, including Nathan Salsburg (Curator of the Alan Lomax Archive), Allen Tullos (Professor of History at Emory University, and co-director of the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship), and Sam Brylawski (Chair of the National Recording Preservation Board for the Library of Congress). The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the preservation of, and access to SFC’s large holdings of analog moving image and sound materials.

photo 2The collection amounts to over 250,000 historic sound recordings on a number of at-risk formats, including wax cylinders, Digital Audio Tape (DAT), and lacquer discs. In addition, there are 3,500 video recordings on a variety of formats, and over 8 million feet of film. Over the span of the grant, the core team seeks to revamp workflows, investigate and consider new equipment and facilities, and work towards increased online streaming access in order to make more collections available to researchers, faculty, and students.

Through the coming months we will continue to assess our workflows and carry out conservation and access assessments for SFC collections, while also keeping in mind the invaluable responses and recommendations we received from this humanities advisory group. Expect more updates on our progress to be posted to Field Trip South in 2015.