Demonstrating the strength of NYU Tisch’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program (MIAP) beyond the traditional film and television archive communities, four recent MIAP graduates were awarded coveted residency positions in the National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) program.
The Library of Congress, in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, created the NDSR in 2013 “to build a dedicated community of professionals who will advance our nation's capabilities in managing, preserving, and making accessible the digital record of human achievement.” These funded postgraduate s residences were designed to match graduating Library & Information Science students to challenging informational environments.
The awards went to Rebecca Fraimow and Shira Peltzman, who received their MIAP master’s degrees in 2013, as well as Joseph Heinen and Julia Kim, 2014 graduates. They follow the footsteps of Erica Titkemeyer (MIAP ’13), who received one of the inaugural NDSR positions the previous year.
“These residents are grappling with the complex and rapidly-changing nature of digital technologies and information systems,” says Dan Streible, associate professor and now director of the MIAP Program. “Their innovative work shows how far NYU’s master’s program stretches beyond the familiar formats of film and videotape. We’re proud that 40% of the fellows selected were MIAP graduates – which speaks to the program’s leadership in this field.”
The NDSR residencies place each fellow at a leading institution, working full-time on cutting- edge initiatives involving digital curation. Titkemeyer worked with time-based media at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. The Metropolitan New York Library Council is implementing the NDSR in New York. Peltzman’s residency at Carnegie Hall and Kim’s at NYU Libraries both involve developing policies and workflows for managing digital archival materials. At NDSR Boston, Fraimow is documenting practices of the WGBH Media Library and Archives, while Heinen works with Harvard Library, studying obsolete digital formats.
Each of these archivists was mentored by Howard Besser, NYU professor of cinema studies and longtime director of the MIAP Program.
“MIAP was one of the first graduate programs of any kind to fully integrate digital stewardship throughout its curriculum, and we require courses focused on curation of the most challenging of content types and teach tools for curating these,” said Besser. “This curriculum, combined with emphasis on practical projects within cultural institutions, gives our graduates both theory and practice with regard to curation issues surrounding the most challenging types of digital collections. This makes our graduates better positioned to handle stewardship of complex digital works encompassing all mediums.”
About NYU Tisch MIAP
Founded in 2003, The Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) Program is one of only three graduate programs in the United States devoted to training the next generation of audiovisual archivists. It is a rigorous interdisciplinary 64-credit, two-year course of study in the Department of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts that provides students with a comprehensive education in the theories, methods and practices of moving image archiving and preservation.
The MIAP program is unique in its emphasis on training specialists to manage mixed collections of film, magnetic media, and digital media in a variety of organizations such as archives, museums, and specialized repositories. MIAP graduates lead in creating new policies and strategies for preservation and access.