Claire Fox, Fall 2019

Claire Fox, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fall 2019, NEH

For my internship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I performed an obsolescence risk report for The Met Moving Image Archive, which holds over 13,000 items on over 23 analog and digital formats. The Met Moving Image Archive at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a repository for moving image materials originating on physical media carriers that are stewarded by The Met's Digital Department. These moving image materials represent irreplaceable institutional history, and in turn, a significant contribution to cultural heritage in the United States. Holdings include film prints of archaeological digs in Egypt in the 1920s, works commissioned by the museum in cooperation with Charles and Ray Eames in the 1960s, and extensive documentation of the museum’s lectures, symposia, concerts, and other events. This internship provided me with an opportunity to be exposed to different technologies, challenges, and ways of thinking about how to analyze the needs of a unique collection of audiovisual materials within a large museum. I learned how to perform an assessment on a large collection using a combination of a new data-driven skill -- writing SQL queries -- and the knowledge I’ve gained in MIAP about the care of audiovisual materials on physical carriers. The Lead Technical Analyst encouraged me to think creatively and strategically about ways to approach this collection and set up systems that will allow the collection’s data to remain up to date in the DAMS over time, even after I leave. The mentorship I experienced at The Met has allowed me to gain an entirely new skill set that will prepare me for jobs in digital preservation in the future.