The American Archive of Public Broadcasting is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH with a mission to coordinate a national effort to preserve at-risk public media. To date, the AAPB has preserved more than 50,000 hours of historic public broadcasting content from more than 100 stations and organizations across the country, 21,000 hours of which are radio programming. AAPB is now growing its collection by acquiring up to 25,000 hours of digitized or born digital content per year. At this session, AAPB staff will give AAPB background and overview; discuss the workflow and requirements for contributing a collection to the Archive, including an overview of grant opportunities for digitization and suggested partnerships; provide recommendations for jumpstarting your station's archival program and give tips for community engagement. Bill Siemering, a founding member of the NPR Board of Directors will discuss the historical value and significance of preserving public radio. Ernesto Aguilar, NFCB Membership Program Director will talk about the value of participating in a nationally coordinated effort to preserve public media.
Radio Rediscovered with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting
1. PRPD Conference 2018
Ryn Marchese
AAPB Engagement and Use Manager
Bill Siemering
Senior Fellow, Wyncote Foundation
AAPB Executive Council Member
Ernesto Aguilar
Program Director, National Federation of Community Broadcasters
AAPB Stations and Producers Advisory Committee Co-Chair
Radio Rediscovered with the
2. a collaboration between the
Library of Congress and WGBH
The AAPB coordinates a
national effort to preserve
at-risk public media
before its content is lost to
posterity and provides a
central web portal for
access to the unique
programming that public
stations have aired over
the past 70+ years.
Mission
3. Radio History
Bill Siemering,
Senior Fellow, Wyncote Foundation
AAPB Executive Council Member
“In 1901 the only definition of ‘broadcast’ was
‘to scatter seeds.’ This is still my favorite
metaphor for public radio.”
4. Wisconsin Public Radio – Where Broadcast Radio Began
“Old Radio Hall” on the University of Wisconsin campus depicts early developments in the history of
WHA-AM since 1917, making it the ”oldest station in the nation” with continuous programming.
Mural painted by John Stella.
10. National Public Radio Mission Statement, 1970
“The total service should be trustworthy, enhance intellectual
development, expand knowledge, deepen aural esthetic
enjoyment, increase the pleasure of living in a pluralistic society
and result in a service to listeners which makes them more
responsive, informed human beings and intelligent responsible
citizens of their communities and the world.”
21. Background
2011 - CPB Inventory project - identified
more than 3 million items kept at 120
stations, archives, producers, university
collections across the country dating back
to the 1950s
2012 - CPB Digitization Project - 40,000
hours of digital material initially from more
than 100 stations
2013 – WGBH and LOC were selected as
the “Permanent Home”
2015 -
26. Archival
Management
System
Participating organizations have access to
the Archival Management System (AMS)
where station administrators can:
• Search and access their metadata
records
• Export their records
• Import additional records
• Edit their records
• Watch/listen to their low-res proxy files
• Download their low-res proxy files
WGBH is currently working with AVP and
Indiana University to develop a new and
improved AMS, which will launch in late 2018.
27. More than 50,000 hours of digitized and born digital material from over 100
public broadcasting stations and organizations
Website launched October 2015
>34,000 streaming video and audio files in an Online Reading Room (38%
of full collection)
- 15,000 of which is radio
Public access to the full collection of video and audio on-site at WGBH and
the Library of Congress
>2.5 million inventory records from 120 stations, in addition to the
digitized items, are available for research
The AAPB Collection www.americanarchive.org
28. - 5,500 radio programs
- 1950s-1960s
- 100 NAEB member stations
- radio documentaries, coverage of events (hearings,
meetings, conferences, and seminars), interviews, debates,
and lectures on public affairs topics such as civil rights,
foreign affairs, health, politics, education, and broadcasting
National Association of Educational Broadcasters
Special Collection
33. Goals
Coordinate a national effort to preserve and make
accessible as much significant public broadcasting
materials as possible
Become a focal point for discoverability
Provide standards and best practices for storing,
processing, preserving, and making accessible
historical content
Facilitate the use of archival content by scholars,
educators, students, journalists, media producers,
researchers, and the public
Increase public awareness of the significance of
historical public media and the need to preserve it
and make it accessible
34. Commitment
to Growth
The Library and WGBH are committed to growing the
AAPB collection by up to 25,000 hours of digitized,
or “born digital” content per year
This year, we have targeted outreach to stations in
states, regions and communities currently
underrepresented in the AAPB.
We are currently lacking any content in the archive
from 12 states and the territories (excluding Guam)
We are providing grant writing assistance to
organizations submitting applications for digitization
grant programs
We have created a grant proposal document
package for organizations that want to collaborate with
us on proposals
35. Deed of Gift - Transfer of Ownership
“Bits and Bytes” – donating tangible things, i.e. digital copies, not the intellectual property
Subject to the terms of this Deed of Gift, (“Donor”) hereby irrevocably
donates and conveys to the WGBH Educational Foundation and the
Library of Congress on behalf of the American Archive of Public
Broadcasting ("AAPB") (this Deed of Gift refers individually to the
Donor and the AAPB collaborators each as “a Party” and collectively
as “the Parties”) the materials described in Exhibit A to this Deed of
Gift (the "Donated Materials"), all rights, title, and interest that Donor
possesses therein and in all metadata related to the Donated Materials
(the “Metadata”).
36. Deed of Gift – Copyright Ownership
Indicating the current copyright status of the materials
To the best of Donor’s knowledge (check one):
☐ a. Donor controls all copyrights in the Donated Materials (i.e., Donor
created or acquired the copyrights in all Donated Materials).
☐ b. Donor controls some of the copyrights in the Donated Materials (i.e.,
Donor created or acquired the copyrights in some of the Donated Materials,
but other individuals or organizations control some copyrights).
☐ c. Donor controls none of the copyrights in the Donated Materials.
Donor shall include any information it may have on the ownership or control
of the copyrights in the Donated Materials on Exhibit A.
37. Deed of Gift – Assignment of Permissions
Assignment of rights (check one):
☐ a. Donor irrevocably assigns to AAPB any and all rights, including copyrights, that
Donor controls in the Donated Materials.
☐ b. Donor makes the Donated Materials available for use subject to the Creative
Commons CC0 1.0 Universal License (“no rights reserved”).
☐ c. Donor grants AAPB an irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free worldwide
perpetual license for AAPB’s discretionary uses of the Donated Materials, in addition
to all uses permitted by law. Such discretionary uses may include but are not limited to
cataloging, preservation, copying and migration for preservation and access purposes,
exhibition, display, and making works available for non-commercial public access
(including online), in accordance with AAPB policy and with applicable law.
38. Deed of Gift- Use by Patrons
Re-use of Donated Materials by patrons
☐ I. Donor further authorizes AAPB to make the Donated Materials
available for re-use by patrons subject to the Creative Commons
Attribution license or such other license as is indicated below, if any:
___________________________________________
☐ II. Donor does not authorize AAPB to make the Donated Materials
available for re-use by patrons.
Metadata
Donor makes the Metadata accessible under the Creative Commons
CC0 1.0 Universal License.
39. Steps Involved in Contributing to the Archive
1. Analogue formats
Stations should think about:
- How many tapes per format and estimated duration
- The content and its historical value, locally and
nationally
- The value you see in the collection
AAPB:
- Vendors quotes for digitization
- We will work with you in preparing a grant proposal
(packet of materials, assist with preparing your
narrative)
40. Steps Involved in Contributing to the Archive
2. Digitized material -- sending it out to a vendor, or in-house
AAPB:
- Work with your vendor to get that content into the AAPB
- And/Or, provide hard drives. Alternatively, if you are planning to
work with or have a vendor, we can work with them in getting
copies of your materials directly to us.
- Ingest them into the AAPB, LOC, and AMS systems, as well as
the Online Reading Room, as rights permit.
41. Steps Involved in Contributing to the Archive
3. Focus on material created digitally, “born-digital”
Stations provide us with:
- Unique identifiers spreadsheet (titles, a date, descriptions,
genres, guests, hosts, etc.)
AAPB:
- Provide you with drives. Alternatively, if you are planning
to work with or have a vendor, we can work with them in
getting copies of your materials directly to us.
- Ingest them into the AAPB, LOC, and AMS systems, as
well as the Online Reading Room, as rights permit.
42.
43. What’s Next?
Peabody Awards
Digitization Project –
University of Georgia/
Peabody Collection
Riverside Radio
WRVR New York
Digitization Project
AAPB partnered with Latino
Public Radio Consortium on
behalf of WIPR Puerto Rico to
develop and submit a National
Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH) grant.
44. Why Preservation Matters
Ernesto Aguilar
Membership Program Director, National Federation of Community Broadcasters
AAPB Stations and Producers Advisory Committee Co-Chair
47. Proven
Results
Radio Bilingue, Minnesota
Public Radio and more
Georgia Public Broadcasting, KOPN,
Oklahoma Educational Television
Authority and more
Louisiana Public Broadcasting
WRVR and many more
48. “The best part of livin’ is knowin’ people.
Talkin’ things over. Bein’ neighbors. Glad
you stopped in. Come again!”
– Wisconsin Public Radio
Inaugural FM Program, 1947
49. Stay in
Touch!
Ryn Marchese
AAPB Engagement and Use Manager
ryn_marchese@wgbh.org
Bill Siemering
Wyncote Foundation
bsiemering34@gmail.com
Ernesto Aguilar
National Federation of Community Broadcasters
ernesto@nfcb.org
AmericanArchive.org
@AmArchivePub
Editor's Notes
I would like to introduce my co-speakers: Bill Siemering and Ernesto Aguilar. BIOS, Bill is a member of the AAPB Executive Council, and Ernesto is on the AAPB Stations and Producers Advisory Committee, serving as a Co-Chair.
I’ll begin this presentation with a quick reference to the AAPB’s mission statement to help lay the groundwork of our organization, then I’ll pass it off to Bill who will speak from his experience with public radio and about just a few programs and people that have shaped the field. Then I will pick up the tread with how you can preserve your similar histories, and Ernesto will bring the conversation to a close with the importance of a community effort toward preserving your histories.
Ryn
The AAPB is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH which seeks to coordinate a national effort to preserve at-risk public media before its content is lost to posterity and provide a central web portable for access to unique programming that public stations have aired over the past 70+ years.
This mission comes from a linage of though within our field, namely how do public broadcasting stations across the nation organize an effort toward preserving their cultural heritage?
I’d like to introduce Bill with one of his quotes – the only definition of broadcast in 1901, 16 yrs before the start of broadcast radio was to sow seeds. Bill will speak about the seeds sown in Wisconsin, leading to NPR, and his work internationally.
Show the history of radio in Wisconsin – physics, early broadcasters, Professor Gordon with music.
Educational broadcasting to public broadcasting
Work on a farm and listen to the Farm Program
WHA 1948 – the beginning
Started working at WHA – 1952/3 (engineer)
Studio - 1954
Beginning to see diversity in radio…
WBFO - Buffalo - African Americans on a discussion of race. 1967
Bill with Karl, one of the founding members of NPR
Started working at WHA – 1952/3 (engineer)
Studio - 1954
Control Room NPR – 1971
Ranee Chaney
Linda Wertheimer
Mortinson
1969
2017
Susan – first woman to anchor a national news program – voice of NPR
WUHY – now WHYY 1978 - 3 hour local program
Present – national program
Philip Ross – recording
Terry Gross Award
WHA 1948
Africa – 2016 – Zambia – reporter interviewing a farmer
Karl wasn’t the only reader; he also created the Center of Audio Experimentation and produced radio plays by Edward Albee, David Mamet, John Gardner Archibald MacLeish and many others. He also became Director of Wisconsin Public Radio. He was on the founding board of directors of NPR with me.
Audible.com, but on the air.
Ryn
The Corporation of Public Broadcasting sought to answer this question in 2011 with an Inventory Project in which they identified 120 stations across the nation and asked them to inventory their records. From this Inventory Project, they identified over 3 million items dating back to the 1950s.
Subsequently in 2012, CPB funded 100 of these stations to digitize their collections and from this Digitization Project, around 40,000 hours of digital material was created.
At this point, CPB sought to find a permanent location for the 3 million item records and 40,000 hours of digital media, and in doing so, they selected the Library of Congress and WGBH as the permanent stewards of the collection.
Ryn
How does this collaboration work? The AAPB functions with mutual respect and cooperation between the Library and WGBH. The Library is responsible for long term preservation of the digital files. WGBH is responsible for maintaining the website for access, and outreach to participating organizations and users. We share responsibilities for the overall health of the AAPB, policies around access and use, collection development, ingest of files and decision around rights.
Ryn – as mentioned, the Library is primarily responsible for preservation and we work very closely with the audiovisual archivists at the Packard Campus – if you ever get the chance to visit, you should check it out. Here, the digital files of each participating organization is kept and maintained for posterity.
Ryn – You may also be familiar with programs WGBH has produced, but we are also the home of the WGBH Media Library and Archives in which we are actively preserving our content and staffed by professional archivists.
We consider ourselves a collaborate with stations across the nation for preservation and access through the AAPB. 50% of our collection is radio, mostly local radio programming from the 1930s to the 2000s.
Ryn – Additionally, stations that participate in the AAPB have access to their own content through the Archival Management System (AMS). This basically gives admin access to content you have contributed to the archive.
Ryn – To date, we have digitized 50,000 hours of material from over 100 public broadcasting stations and organizations. We launched our website in 2015 and have over 34,000 streaming video and audio files in our Online Read Room – more on this in a moment, but that means 38% of our collection is available online, and the full collection is available on-site at the Library or WGBH. Additionally, we have 2.5 million inventory records available to search online in addition to the digitized material.
The mission of the NAEB was to use communications technology for education and social purposes.
Additional Exhibits that feature public radio include - -
Additional audiences we are engaging with is the public with our crowdsourcing platforms. This is FIX IT+. …
Through a collaboration between with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, we have created ways for the public to help create transcripts for your content. Additionally, we just finalized an agreement with a digitization company in Philadelphia, George Blood, to do a year long challenge that if a station is able to correct 20 transcripts, they’ll be able to send George Blood new reels for digitization.
Stations that have hosted their own transcriptathon
Especially since this conference has touched upon new ways of engaging with your audiences, this has proved to be a easy and accessible way to be in-front of your audience in a way that they feel is contributing back to a larger goal.
Finished product with transcript
Ryn – how do we see ourselves fulfilling our mission? Our primary objective is to preserve public media and assure discoverability and access through a coordinated national effort. In doing this, we support content creators and current stewards of the materials, and facilitate the use of historical public broadcasting by researchers, educators, and students.
RYN – We’re committed to growing the collection by 25,000 hours a year. We’re currently working with stations that have already started grant collaborations, but we’re reaching our to stations that are underrepresented in the AAPB.
We are currently lacking content from 12 states and the territories, so that makes your participation that much more unique and significant. I’m going to pass the mic to Casey at this point who will finish my segment with a clarification on the rights behind content within the archive before we move on to Rebecca.
Nuts and bolts quickly to give some understanding of what we’ll be asking from you and what you will need to provide.
Patron Reuse option -- Choosing to assign a Creative Common License – 40% of organizations that have signed the Deed of Gift have opted a CC license
You need help obtaining funding to digitize it. AAPB works with organizations to get funding.
- THE VALUE YOU SEE IN IT -- important for the grant proposal in describing the value and significance
Ryn
Karen: Any magnetic tape that is storing video signals, or even data, is subject to decay. A study conducted recently stated that the audiovisual records of the 20th century are increasingly at risk. We have roughly 10 years to preserve this material before this recorded historic moments are lost. And as we all know – every picture or sound tells a story, it’s own story, very different from a writer’s interpretation that one gets from an article or book..
