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Jessica L posted an update in the group
Choosing Your Community Discussion 3 months, 1 weeks ago Hello, all! I currently have two different communities that I’m debating between. The first community would be the gluten-free community. I am not gluten-free myself but I have several family members who were recently diagnosed as Celiac and can already sort of visualize the information needs of that community.
The second community I’m considering is the film preservation and/or archivist community. I’d really love to become a film archivist one day so this is something that truly, truly interests me. However, when I think about film preservation as an information community, I’m stumped. I have no idea where I’d even start or how I’d frame my writing!
Hi Jessica!
There are a few aspects that I think can be explored with film archival/preservation. First off, the community would seek information regarding the actual mechanics of preservation of the different types of mediums and their formats. For example what kind of equipment is needed to transfer the analog medium into a digitized version.? Or do you seek outside help to digitize the medium? And what kind of digital format are you turning it into and how will it be viewable.
Also, just knowing the history of the different moving picture mediums is a fascinating subject. What kind of film is it? 8mm or 70mm? Maybe its technicolor?
Another aspect is the actual content of the footage. What is it? Is it journalist in nature, or perhaps a motion picture from the 1940’s? Where did it originate? The history of it? What’s the copyright? I’m kind of just brainstorming question, but maybe this can spark some inspiration.
I know as a film student, I loved going to the media section of our library, and I watched some very obscure films that were only available on VHS at the time. I am forever grateful to those who manage to archive/preserve it all, and they offered the means for us students to watch it.
@jessabelle I have actually had a few good papers on film preservationists. It’s such an interesting area and you can actually pull in related communities such as archivists, digital preservationists, etc to explore the information behaviors and needs of this group. The gluten-free community would probably fall into reviewing and synthesizing literature related to health information seeking and perhaps medical information seeking. I hope that’s helpful.