In this talk, Eric Hoyt will reflect on two digital archival projects that he helps lead. The Media History Digital Library (MHDL, http://mediahist.org) is an open access collection of 2.5 million digitized books and magazines from film and broadcasting history. The MHDL digitizes print texts (most recently TV Guide), a multi-stage process of scanning, post-production, metadata entry, and indexing. PodcastRE (http://podcastre.org) is a digital repository and research platform for podcasts. Because PodcastRE works with born digital media objects, the workflows necessarily differ from the MHDL, with each project approaching metadata differently. Hoyt will address questions of authority and agency in metadata, as well as implications for media historiography.
Eric Hoyt is an Associate Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Media History Digital Library. He is the author of Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries before Home Video and co-editor of The Arclight Guidebook to Media History and the Digital Humanities. His work has been supported by a number of granting agencies, including the NEH, IMLS, SSHRC, ACLS, and the Mellon Foundation.
Presented by the Media Studies Research Collaboratory, Center for the 21st Century Studies