Preservation Organizations

Nonprofits Active in Preservation

The American Association of Museums (AAM): www.aam-us.org: The AAM is dedicated to the continued excellence of museums via standards and accreditation. Their Museum Assessment Program (MAP) offers guidance on professional standards designed to help museums fulfill their missions and their potentials. MAP also has some nuts-and-bolts preservation advice. Their Collections Management Assessment focuses on the care of museum collections.
The American Library Association (ALA): www.ala.org: The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services is the preservation arm of the ALA . It focuses not only on the preservation of library materials (through acquisition, identification, cataloging, and classification), but also on the development of library resources.
Amigos Library Services—Imaging and Preservation Services: www.amigos.org/preserve.html: A nonprofit, grant-funded service, Imaging and Preservation Services (IPS) provides preservation information, support, and training to librarians and archivists primarily in the Southwestern United States. IPS began documenting the preservation needs of libraries and archives in the Southwest and now provides information, disaster planning and recovery assistance, training, and site surveys. It also develops state and local cooperative networks and advocates preservation strategies on a local and national basis. IPS offers a range of workshops (in Dallas, TX) on various preservation issues, including Digitizing Analog Audio Resources, Metadata for Digitized Resources, Preservation of Audiovisual Materials, and Preserving Digital Objects in an Uncertain Future.
Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC): www.bavc.org: Since its founding, BAVC has supported the independent media community as a noncommercial media access and training center. In the early 1990s it expanded its focus into the video preservation field. The coalition’s preservation services include consultation, cleaning and transfer, correction services, and more. BAVC’s interactive DVD entitled Playback guides viewers through the technical aspects of video preservation. The DVD contains sections called “Analog Video Basics,” “Preservation Case Study” (an example of a real-life preservation process), and the “Eternal Frame,” a video art piece about the pivotal video footage of the assassination of J.F.K.
Dance Heritage Coalition (DHC): www.danceheritage.org/preservation/: DHC is concerned with documenting and preserving American dance as well as the physical materials and objects that contain information about dance or dance traditions. Its four areas of focus are: access to dance heritage materials; the continuing documentation of dance; the preservation of existing documentation; and education around practices, methods, and standards of documentation and preservation. Specifically, DHC is focused on the preservation of videotape and is exploring the future preservation of dance on magnetic media.
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI): www.eai.org: EAI, the parent organization of IMAP, is a leading resource for artists’ videos and interactive media. Their Online Catalogue is a thorough resource of 3,000 works by 175 artists. All works preserved by EAI are available for educational and cultural distribution and can be viewed in their on-site Viewing Room located in New York City. In addition, the EAI web site contains a searchable database, which includes bios, tape descriptions, and QuickTime excerpts. (preservation subheading: http://www.eai.org/eai/preservation_program.jsp).
Electronic Music Foundation (EMF): www.emf.org: EMF is dedicated to electronic music and art and its history. The EMF Institute, http://emfinstitute.emf.org/index.html, highlights the work of pioneers in the field and offers resources and support for contemporary electronic music artists.
Experimental Television Center—Video History Project: www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history/index.html: An ongoing research initiative of the Experimental Television Center, the Video History Project is dedicated to the documentation and preservation of video art and community television. The site includes Video Preservation—The Basics, which introduces the pertinent issues of preservation, from cleaning to storage to cataloging. The site also includes glossaries, a bibliography, and links to other organizations and sites of interest.
The Kitchen: www.thekitchen.org: The Kitchen is a multidisciplinary presenting organization that provides support for artists in all stages of their careers, from administrative to technical to exhibition assistance. Its extensive video collection (searchable online by title, artist/performer, and interviewer/other) is available for rental and purchase. Brief explanatory notes, synopses of content, and narrative information about videos is available online. They are developing special initiatives in the area of archives, arts, and technology.
Media Alliance: www.mediaalliance.org: Media Alliance, an independent media arts advocacy group of service organizations, began work in video preservation in the early 1990s and published the first comprehensive study of video preservation needs, called Video Preservation: Securing the Future of the Past. Current publications, including the Magnetic Media Preservation Sourcebook, are available through the Media Alliance web site.
National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture (NAMAC): www.namac.org: The National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture is a membership organization whose site acts as a clearinghouse for relevant preservation and media arts links. The site provides a directory of media-related organizations and a synopsis of NAMAC’s. Publications available for purchase include the NAMAC newsletter, MAIN (Media Arts Information Network). NAMAC has also convened a series of “working groups” to consider the effects of digital conversion on the media arts field and to make recommendations for its application. While the public cannot link directly to the working groups, NAMAC does publish their findings in “Digital Directions: Convergence Planning for the Media Arts.” A sample is available at http://www.namac.org/article.cfm?id=101.
New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT): www.nywift.org: NYWIFT is a nonprofit professional organization focused on the continued advancement of women in the film, TV, and moving-image industries. The Women’s Film Preservation Fund is dedicated to the preservation and restoration of films in which women held significant creative positions. Guidelines for the grant are available on-line. There is also a list of links and a brief list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) on preservation.
Rhizome: www.rhizome.org: Rhizome is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1996 to provide an online platform for the global new media art community. Its programs and services support the creation, presentation, discussion, and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. The Rhizome ArtBase is an online archive that preserves and provides access to new media art works

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