The Digital Conversion Interest Group meeting featured four speakers each sharing their experiences with different aspects of digital conversion work.
The session’s first speaker was Jacob Nadal, a Preservation Officer at the UCLA Library, who described the process by which he has established an institutional AV lab at UCLA.  Nadal noted that having received funding from the Arcadia Foundation, he was able to begin a project that aimed to capture performances – many of which were occurring on the UCLA campus – that merited expert preservation.
Nadal acknowledged that these activities were happening in an area rich for movies, so why, then, would the UCLA library need an AV lab? Simply put, Nadal explained, someone has to be able to translate from library-speak to industry-speak, and to be able to communicate with the solid vendor network for AV preservation.
Nadal also shared sample collections from UCLA, including:
In discussing these collections, Nadal stressed the importance of hiring a “very good lawyer†as intellectual property and privacy concerns will be undoubtedly be issues related to AV preservation. In addition to sorting out the legal implications of preserving these collections, Nadal reported that a number of site visits – including trips to the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Sixth Floor Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Long Island City, and the WNYC radio archive – contributed to his knowledge of AV preservation and positively informed plans to build the lab at UCLA.
In his closing remarks, Nadal enumerated the next steps for his project, including evaluating in-house vs. outsourced formats and appropriate handling of VHS, U-matic and cassette formats. Nadal ended his talk by noting that setting up a digital management system and acquiring appropriate diagnostic equipment and software are also immediately forthcoming activities for the project.
Following Nadal was Linda Tadic, Executive Director of the Audiovisual Archive Network. Tadic began her talk but emphasizing that archival activities are more than simple back-up measures, and that digital preservation must be integrated into archival workflows. Tadic espoused the notion that digital preservation activities ought to focus on files and their content, rather than on physical properties and that these activities require managed actions, rather than a simple “store and ignore†approach. Managed actions, Tadic argued, require that archivists preserve both the content as well as the asset, and that managed preservation occurs through a resource’s lifetime and is accomplished through metadata.  As part of managed preservation, Tadic recommended the following actions for content: identify the file format, perform file validation, identify the rendering environment, and capture technical and preservation metadata.
Tadic also encouraged the audience to consider other issues associated with digital preservation, among which are:
- Possible need to save old operating systems in order to access content later
- Beware of format interdependencies (i.e., digital animation)
- “What was the original source file?†– Track all transcoding data and history
Tadic concluded her talk with the following five recommendations for digital preservation: preserve the asset, establish online archival storage (being cognizant of back-up software, which is often proprietary in nature), establish geographic dispersal of assets to protect against both human and naturally cased threats, plan for physical carrier forward migration, and, finally, revalidate and check the files (running checksums to compare to the original. Tadic reiterated that digital preservation activities are integral to archival workflows, and that much of the process can be automated.
The third speaker of the session, George Blood, is the President of George Blood, L.P., a firm specializing in content reformatting. Blood’s talk focused on determining suitable digital video formats for medium term storage. Blood imparted to the audience the importance of considering tape a non-option for storage (“tape is dead”), and reiterated throughout his talk the most important maintenance commandment: “thou shalt not compress video.â€Â Blood reminded the audience that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to video formats and encouraged the audience to consider the high quality vs. low quality divide to be artificial.
The final speaker of the Digital Conversion Interest Group meeting was Dr. Karen Gracy of Kent State University. Dr. Gracy shared with the group a study she and her team conducted regarding the current archival practices and attitudes of moving image curators and managers. Despite, as Dr. Gracy noted, a small return rate and a gap in responses (public libraries are missing from the survey), the survey results proved useful for understanding the types of archival activities in practice presently at different types of institutions. During the question and answer period following the talk, a member of the audience inquired as to whether Dr. Gracy believed that most institutions involved in the survey had done an inventory of their content or whether they were simply guessing, to which Dr. Gracy responded there was a broad swath of inventory activities taking place.
Final considerations during the question and answer period following the last speaker involved some members of the audience acknowledging feeling overwhelmed by digital preservation efforts. Linda Tadic responded that digital preservation is not necessarily an overwhelming endeavor and to remember that many activities can be automated. Another audience member objected to a few of Jacob Nadal’s comments regarding preparation for audio and video resources. Other commenters from around the room encouraged consideration of the cost of acting now versus the cost of acting later, with the concluding comment of the session reminding the attendees that start-up requires investment while maintenance is less expensive.