This summer, I had the pleasure of working with the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive at Video Data Bank, becoming very familiar with the types of videos in the collection and the particular challenges of digitizing and distributing this collection. The guiding philosophy of my work in the collection was in the spirit of Phil Morton’s “Copy<It>Right” philosophy, making the collection as widely accessible online as possible. What I enjoyed the most about the internship were the site visits and opportunities to branch outside of digitization. The site visits were an amazing way to ask questions of what their work entails, especially for parts of the field I am less familiar with.
VDB
I enjoyed working with U-matic and 1/2" Open Reel and learning about how to diagnose problems with the machines. Learning about how to maintain U-matic and Open Reel decks was a very rewarding experience in the internship. I was able to learn about how to maintain the decks and the steps needed to troubleshoot problems, which is an incredible skill to have, and often not afforded to interns. I am very thankful for the opportunities provided by VDB and everything I learned there.
