LAMs (Libraries, Archives, and Museums)
MLIS (Master’s of Library and Information Science)
Week Three
Day Seventeen: The Wiener Library
for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide
“We do want people to come in and use the space”
Leah Sidebotham, Digital Asset Manager, The Wiener Library
The back entrance to the British Museum is a block and a half away
Due to the sensitive nature of the material at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, wanted to be respectful, so today I also dialed back my humor on the titles, subtitles, and quotes. I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about how I would approach a client with “serious” media, and that I can pivot to be respectful when the need arises.
But, truth be told, media is media, to a degree. To organize it well, it doesn’t matter if it’s Marx Brothers short films, a corporate media center’s backlog of training and event video, the Netflix catalog, or the rare material such as Leah Sidebotham showed me during our tour of the cellar of the Wiener Library. As Digital Asset Manager, the care and consideration of the physical media in possession of the Library has fallen under the Leah’s purview.
Audiovisual-access terminals not visible
What the library has in their stores is a mixture of audio tape formats, vinyl audio recordings, microfilm, and about 4,000 or so VHS tapes. Of which none the state of is known. Leah and I discussed several topics, including copyright (who really owns the material on some of the recordings), to the potential state of health of the items, based on age and storage conditions, both current and over time. There are several red flags among the physical media for Leah in the old wine cellar that is their vault. There are a lot of questions about how to make the material accessible, but at what cost? The Library is completely funded via donations, so where in the “pecking order” large digitization efforts fall when budgeting rolls around is a valid point.
There’s a VHS player in here, too. Don’t worry!
Leah did say they have had offers to digitize the entire collection, but the price has always been that that digitizers want to retain a copy for themselves. Archivists and librarians alike will understand the issues of copyright, ownership, and donation records. The Library doesn’t have the right to give the material away like that. They would need to go back to everyone who donated, or everyone who participated in an oral history project, etc., and get new releases signed. It’s just not practical.
These were digitized in the ’80s, but in a fluke of fate, they are still with us
So the tapes and other recordings sit. Until either another solution arises, or the technology to replay the material disappears, or the media itself disintegrates beyond the point where it is playable.
But the audiovisual archive at the Wiener Library isn’t all doom and gloom! They do have a series of oral histories digitized and accessible via two terminals in their reading room. They are on self-contained systems, separate from the rest of the network, and not internet-accessible. Old-school media management. Don’t let the internet corrupt your media! They have a server on the landing of the third floor, but Leah said it’s not optimal for many reasons, mostly climate control-related, and they are looking to move to a cloud-based service where the backups are automatic, and somebody else’s daily responsibility.
(Apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein)
I could go on about their catalog, and their Explorer-based organization system for some of the media, but I’m going to go ahead and save that for my paper!
2.7 miles/6,700 steps/No flights climbed
Deb's in London & on the LAM(s) 