Adapting university education in a digital and globally networked world

Since 2003, the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program (MIAP) at New York University has graduated nearly 90 new moving image preservation professionals. Practices for moving image archiving and preservation have changed dramatically since the programme began. In addition, ‘born-digital’ productions have become the norm. Thus, MIAP has needed to continually adapt to the increasingly broad nature of heritage collections, and to new approaches and practices aimed at maintaining perpetual access to moving image works. In addition, MIAP has encouraged these professionals to understand their work in a global context and to approach international collaborations in a spirit of exchange. Changes in MIAP have been informed by a set of principles present from the beginning of the programme, by an early and continued emphasis on a full spectrum of media types and by projects and initiatives undertaken by faculty, staff, students and alumni. The Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program (MIAP) at New York University was initiated in 2002 under the leadership of Professor Antonia Lant in the Department of Cinema Studies, a part of the Tisch School of the Arts. Cinema and television scholars were acutely aware of the need for perpetual access to moving images that serve as primary research materials and critical teaching resources for their disciplines. These scholars also were responding to national studies commissioned by the Library of Congress that had called for the creation of educational programmes to address audiovisual collections (Melville and Simmons, 1993; Murphy, 1997). The reports noted that archival, library and conservation training programmes did not cover the care and management of these collections, which were severely endangered due to obsolescence, deterioration and neglect.

Cinema and television scholars were acutely aware of the need for perpetual access to moving images that serve as primary research materials and critical teaching resources for their disciplines. These scholars also were responding to national studies commissioned by the Library of Congress that had called for the creation of educational programmes to address audiovisual collections (Melville and Simmons, 1993;Murphy, 1997). The reports noted that archival, library and conservation training programmes did not cover the care and management of these collections, which were severely endangered due to obsolescence, deterioration and neglect.

A solid grounding in real world collections
As noted above, MIAP has always balanced theories of preservation and access with hands-on work in real world collections through project-based learning and internships.
In addition, we have always attended both to collections held in 'official' archives and to those that are held by creators and collectors, as well as accidental archives. Every collection and/or collector poses intriguing questions that force students to contrast best practices and ideal scenarios with less-than-ideal settings and a variety of needs, conditions and belief systems. There are fewer situations more instructive, for example, than trying to apply concepts of Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) to emerging repositories where resources are scarce or non-existent, or beginning an inventory process for media where there is no metadata system in place.
Because students take three internships, their experience with a resource-challenged organization can be balanced with an internship in a major institution where a student is exposed to highly developed metadata schemes or preservation processes.
Having students working in a variety of internships and projects with a range of institutions also means that MIAP must stay current; the education of our students must match the new tools and methods being adopted by

Care and preservation of complex media works
The inclusion of complex media works -those going beyond single channels or screens, works containing multiple digital file types and/or presented as installations or in networksjump-started our involvement with digital issues. To analyse multimedia for preservation and access, we needed to teach about file structure and sustainability even before digitization or digital repositories had become the norm.
Using methods that may now be called 'media archaeology', students dissected and analysed complex works that contained audio, video, still images and text, all in digital form.
Thus, from the beginning of the programme students learned practical skills with identification and risk assessment for file-based works and were exposed to various software for creation, display, description and storage.
This aspect of the curriculum involved us immediately in teaching about -and trying to give hands-on practice withpreservation strategies just gaining attention, such as refreshing, migration and emulation. Feeling strongly that the students needed to experience older complex media works in their native environment, I created an Old Media Lab with legacy hardware and software. The lab has grown to include not only stations for analysing obsolete multimedia but also for teaching disk imaging and forensics software.

Creative research at micro and macro levels
In

Learning from new professionals
No programme, especially one as small as MIAP, can stay current on every single change and innovation that is occurring in our field. MIAP has been strengthened through an openness to listening and learning from our graduates (and our students) and their allies. It is exciting and inspiring to see new professionals crossing disciplines, melding practices and using new social networks so fluidly. They are immensely creative in their approaches to problem-solving digital matters. For example, in 2013 our alumni organized the first AMIA/DLF Hack Day, bringing archivists (from the Association of Moving Image Archivists) and programmers (from the Digital Library Federation) together to work on issues facing audiovisual digital preservation. 6 They tackled practical problems -for example, how can we make a software that can move technical metadata about a file extracted from a tool like Media Info into our collection database? A number of our graduates also teach in our programme, and their voice in curriculum planning is crucial.
With regard to international networking, former student organizers of APEX projects have helped shape and improve the annual programme, and they generously serve as mentors for those who come after them.