In James’ P. Walsh’s essay, Organizational Memory he asks, “...of what consequence is it to organizations that they are able to preserve knowledge of past events and bring it to bear on present decisions?”

I think of this question when I meditate on the state of digital video assets relating to the institutional memory of The New School. What does it mean to for an organization to know itself? What is the added value for institutions to be able to go into it's past and extract meaning to inform its present, and its future? What are the long term consequences when an organization does not know?

There is a tradition of public programming at The New School that dates back over fifty years. In order to elucidate role and the importance of institutional memory as it relates to public programming, I feel it is important to discuss one of the earliest examples of public programming The New School has: The Race Crisis Lecture Series from 1964. (See Exhibit A).

The project option I have opted for in the Digital Archives Studio class is to facilitate the cataloging of videos following metadata best-practices that cover public programming and special events at The New School in order to make them more accessible. These public programs hold significant historical and cultural relevance not only for The New School, but for society at large. They could be used for research and other pedagogical purposes that have not yet been fully explored.

Currently, the videos reside on a server managed by The New School’s information technology department, and most of this content has been uploaded to the university’s YouTube channel dating back 5 years. Other videos are found going back 10-12 years when special events were on campus were called “webcasts”, and currently suffering from link rot on a now defucnt New School website. Some of these videos have been restored, and posted onto the YouTube channel.

Since there currently is no system in place to determine the long-term strategy concerning the place for these digital records, I am experimenting with contextualizing digital video content to determine use case scenarios that can best serve The New School community using the class's Scalar site.

Video takes up a lot of storage space, and the costs of enterprise grade server technology is costly. Thus, it makes sense to experiment with video contextualization using Scalar and YouTube to determine potential outcomes, and perhaps reflect to university leadership the value of a more centralized, holistic, and curated system; one that can serve promotional as well as pedagogical purposes.

Since 2012, the office of public programs now resides within the department of communications and external affairs that oversees branding, public relations, website development, video production, photography, and marketing. Prior to 2012, public programming was randomly scattered throughout The New School’s myriad divisions, departments, and programs.

Originally, I offered to develop a living database that can organize and catalog digital video content relating to public programming and special events. The aim was to help determine what platform would best serve the content, and to aid the Archives and Special Collections in determining what has historical relevance for long-term institutional and pedagogical goals.

The project’s themes focus on preserving knowledge of past events through metadata, and digital video assets covering a range of topics that connect to any and all degree plans offered at The New School. Originally, my goal was to catalog these videos using a proprietary software called Extensis Portfolio that is licensed and operated by the communications office. However, I ran into technical issues using this software, and was unable to ingest the content into a more proprietary database outside of YouTube.

The other paths below are links to curated content from the YouTube channel that holds relevance for the context of the class, The New School, and for The School of Media Studies.

Please note that these categories are by no means definitive. They are meant simply as a simple way to organize certain content for the purposes of learning.

1. Exhibit A: Race Crisis Lecture Series
2. Exhibit B: Artist, Laurie Anderson
3. Politics and Culture
4. Media Studies, Digital Humanities, Film, and the Arts
5. Media Management