Free your workflows (and the rest will follow): community-driven AV solutions through open source workflow development
Much of our work as librarians and archivists is devoted to researching, planning, documenting, and implementing workflows based on our knowledge of best practices and locally defined needs. However, this documentation of workflows rarely leaves the institution it is created for. Instead, we share our processes at THATCamps, unconferences, and local and regional association conferences, and occasionally post them on personal or institutional websites. These exchanges are integral to the development of our field, and anecdotally, we hear from our colleagues that these encounters are some of the most useful and rewarding events to attend professionally. Our presentation will consider how this sharing of workflows could be supported on a regular basis through the open-sourcing of documented workflows, software, and hardware. We will explore how “open-sourcing” AV digitization and digital preservation workflows, software, and advocating for open file formats and standards for audio visual archives has the potential to empower and build community among AV archivists. Further, we will look at how this might provide greater transparency and insight into how exactly materials are processed, and encourage collaboration among institutions, organizations, and archivists. We intend to ground our presentation in concrete examples from the field, such as the implementation of open source micro-service scripts for archival processing at a broadcasting station and work on the open source digital video file conformance checker software, MediaConch (a PREFORMA project).
