During the Spring 2026 semester, I completed an internship with MoMA’s Archives, Library and Research Center under the supervision of MoMA Archivist, Ana Marie. Building on the work of previous MIAP interns, I contributed to a digital preservation project focused on ingesting sound recordings from the Avalanche Archive through MoMA Archives’ AV Storage Workflow. Avalanche was a New York City-based art magazine founded in 1968 by Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp which endeavored to explore art from the perspective of artists, rather than critics. As part of the magazine’s production, Liza Béar conducted numerous interviews with prominent artists, constituting much of the audio collection: primarily cassette tapes, three-inch, five-inch, and seven-inch open reel audiotapes which were digitized in 2013.
The AV storage workflow involved preparing batches of hundreds of sound recordings for ingest into the Digital Repository for Museum Collections (DRMC), MoMA’s digital repository for long-term preservation of digital objects and artworks. Preservation master files from Avalanche were nested within a specific file hierarchy for ingest into the repository. After files were prepared, they were shared with Digital Preservation Specialist Sarah Gentile in Media Conservation, who oversees the DRMC. Access-level files were then prepared for ingest into NetX, MoMA’s Digital Asset Management System (also referred to as the DAM). Those access files were adjusted to adhere to a specific naming convention associating them with their object numbers in The Museum System (TMS), MoMA’s collection management software. Once access files had been prepared, they were shared with Digital Asset Managers Mark Haydn and Jennifer Sellar, who oversee NetX.
I also spent time creating an inventory of previously uncataloged audiovisual materials and updating MoMA’s Sound Recordings finding aid. The latter task involved collaborating with the Archives department on appropriate language regarding researchers’ ability to access any given sound recording (for example, whether a recording can be played on its original carrier, is accessible via a digital file). I added item-level access notes for every record in the Sound Recordings finding aid using a bulk update feature within ArchivesSpace. Access notes have now been added to over 2,900 records in the Sound Recordings finding aid.
