Multi-Media Collections: General Practices & Suggestions
Introduction
Medium (plural: media) relates to a format or type of material.
In archives, it is often that you will have mixed-media or multi-media collections or assets (belongings).
In some institutions, archivists only deal with one type of format (e.g., rare books, vinyl records).
In many Indigenous archives and cultural centres, there are interconnected pieces and materials, reflecting the connective and holistic nature of Indigenous knowledge.
How you care for multi-media collections is important. Different media will require different types of digitization processes, long-term care, and strategies to mobilize while keeping their knowledge and connections understandable.
In this article, we will look at ways to work with multiple formats at once and what to expect when working with different media forms in one archive or collection.
General Practices
Coding & Labelling
All materials should have a unique identifier or UID. This number will be essential to keep track of a resource or asset individually.
For more information on UIDs, check out this module: https://firstvoices.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DIGI/pages/1278065
When you are working to acquire or add something to your collection, it can be helpful to provide it an acquisition identifier too. Unlike a UID, an acquisition identifier is temporary.
These are used before you formally enter something into your inventory or for while you are still assessing its content. If for whatever reason, your team decides not to add something to a collection or inventory, you can use this other reference instead of a formal UID.
You will not have to remove a UID from your database or tracking system, as this is not a general practice. UIDs are for life.
Care
Research is essential with multi-media collections. What sort of care do I need to provide for this document compared to this audio-cassette and its future digital version?
This database by the University of Illinois-Urbana is a general guide to care and preservation methods for archives: https://psap.library.illinois.edu/about
The site states it is divided into these focuses:
Audiovisual Media: Film, Videotape (open-reel, cartridge-based; analog, digital), Audiotape (open-reel, cartridge-based; analog, digital), Phonograph Records, Optical Media (CD, DVD), Grooved Cylinders, and Wire Recordings.
Photographic and Image Materials: Photo Prints (B&W, color, Polaroids), Negatives (glass, film), Slides/Transparencies (glass, film), Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, Tintypes, Photomechanical Prints, Digital Prints, and Microform.
Paper (Bound, Unbound): Various ink/media on various paper types including Documents, Books, Pamphlets, Manuscript, Typescript, Office Copies/Prints (Xeroxes, carbon copies, etc.), Architectural Drawing Reproduction (Blueprints, Photostats, etc.), and more.
Objects: Inorganic object materials including Ceramics, Glass, Stone, and Metal.
Before diving into working with any material, be sure to learn more about it and its peculiarities.
Suggestions
When dealing with multi-media collections, the general practices above will inform how you balance and organize your information in a meaningful way.
Keeping It Together
Alongside a UID or temporary reference number, consider making a tag system or additional code for related resources. If various tapes, transcriptions, a few photos of the Elders in action, and regalia are related to each other, designating these belongings with a subset identifier can be helpful.
You will not need to store these materials altogether either. Digital files and analog pieces will be stored in different locations physically. However, in your tracking documentation or finding aids, you can note their relations with each other.
Restructuring
Institutionally, archives tend to operate under the principle of respect des fonds or le respect pour les fonds.
What is this concept?
Essentially, it dictates that records should be organized by who created them or who donated them (e.g., how you received them).
This practice works well in many settings as it can related content to authorship, ownership, donation, and intellectual property.
In Indigenous archives, sometimes ownership changes as well as rights related to hereditary knowledge or family information. Additionally, there can be shared authorship and creation. In addition to multiple formats, there can be many interpretations to the origins and the connections of knowledge.
There is not one solution to how to best organize or arrange information given all these factors.
A possibility is to consider restructuring how you organize your collections to reflect cultural logic and ways of knowing.
Using clan, house, nation, society, crest as an identifier can help cluster related knowledge and materials together in a more organic way than just with ‘creator’.
Using a seasonal model to divvy collections into how and when people will want to access this information can also naturally combine and have resources complement each other.
Archives can incorporate additional tagging to document these connections or form their own reference system around these ways of knowing. In remaking the reference organization or arrangement system, the connections become a structural move to keep information together.
In Practice
How might multi-media collections look in practice?
From these tips and suggestions, take a look at some of these scenarios:
Transcriptions & Recordings
These materials often go together. It is likely you have a lot of these pairings in your work already!
Some strategies to help organize this information include using the main themes or the timeframes in which recordings took place as a major focus or reference.
Often, language revitalization work has happened in eras or specific periods in communities or has been ongoing with specific chapters or changes in programs and projects. Labelling and using these thematic or administrative eras can help you identify content and order them in a way where related materials in different formats all fit closely together.
This way, transcriptions from the 1970s stay with digitized recordings in your tracking, not transcriptions of materials from the 1920s or modern day.
Regalia, Recordings, Art
When organizing many different formats & materials together, consider what is the takeaway that you want someone to have when they interact with these pieces together.
Distinguish if your focus is referencing this information relationally or curation and promotion.
Sometimes, many different pieces work well together and organically have a common thread. Sometimes, they can be presented well together, but logistically and administratively, it is harder to figure out how all the pieces can be sorted and stored in the same system.
Mixed media make for a great special collection, biographical exhibition, or community initiative. However, the components of this great idea and their formats might need to be arranged separately to a degree.
If there are central figures, Elders, events, or speakers across media, consider using this information as the organizational pivot point.
Combining regalia, photographs, art pieces, and other assets into a collection through a point person (e.g., the artist/ knowledge holder) can be the simplest option.
Alternatively, if there are multi-creator pieces or shared stories/recordings/knowledge, consider using traditional groupings like house or clan or family as tags. This way, patrons and people interacting with this knowledge know where it comes from.
Likewise, you could also organize by main theme if certain assets fit together intellectually, or all relate to the same event, practice, or language content. These materials could also be grouped together and referenced by the same tag.
GIS data, Recordings, Transcriptions
Platforms and databases are getting more complex. And, there are more to choose from too!
Some databases may be built with or have GIS capabilities installed into them.
Tracking GIS data with an archive is a great tool – if you use GIS data.
If your language materials do not heavily reference specific geographic locations, trying to fit them into a service or database built for coordinates and GIS figures might be challenging.
That said, if you are using a GIS-capable storage service or platform, many systems are being better programmed to group related fields and metadata together.
If there is space, you can add place name information as well as other related information: historical images, recordings, etc.
Language and land are one. Storing and organizing files and data related to these concepts might be separate processes for now in your workflow, which is alright.
Another way to integrate land-based knowledge into your multi-media collections is through reference tagging. You could also organize by cultural site or territory as the organizational pivot point. Seasonal usage information can also be a tag you put onto files and tracking documentation to show when certain teachings are used.
Takeaways
Key points to remember in dealing with multi-media or mixed media collections include:
Usability is key: design and implement systems and organization that work for you and your team.
Unique IDs (UID) and Reference IDs can be separate labels. UIDs do not repeat, but Reference IDs can cluster or connect different pieces together across formats.
Tagging assets as related is another method on top of using other ID systems. These tags can help you track commonalities in your documentation and can be specific to seasonal use, theme, geography.
Using cultural insights and relations to structure your organization can make organic organization fall into place with your Indigenous records.
There are no real right or wrong ways to care for your collections in their organization; it is based off what works for you and within the proper context.
For more information, check out these resources: