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Every Wednesday for the last few months, I took the Metro North from 125th street in Harlem to Tarrytown. It was always the best day of my week. From the train I was able to see the bunches of gold and red leaves as they progressively got brighter and bolder through the changing seasons. When I think of my time at the Rockefeller Archive Center, the first image that pops into my head is that of the morning autumn light streaming through the yellow leaves of an oak tree. The second image is that of the intern’s office, an oasis of quiet and calm—a deep contrast to the bustling city only 45 minutes away.

The International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES) held its 20th annual gathering in Ghent, Belgium between September 16 – 20, 2024. This conference gathers digital preservation practitioners from around the world to present and discuss theory and practical applications in our work to ensure the longevity, authenticity, integrity, and accessibility of digital materials.

The National Association for Media Literacy Education held their annual conference remotely this summer. The conference offered a range of useful sessions for K-16 educators, community educators, librarians, and archivists. Our lab school partner, Marina Lombardo-Pisto, and I had the opportunity to present our unit focused on misinformation titled The War of the Worlds, Fake News, and Media Literacy that was developed in 2019.

Audiovisual Media Literacy Education

In 2021, upon my graduation from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, I received a Fellowship at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) to work alongside Audiovisual Archivist Brent Phillips. I began the Fellowship in June 2022, immediately becoming included with the Collections Management team and meeting the Assistant Directors of the RAC. The remote workflow quickly revealed an opportunity to pursue a project directly in line with my interests: media literacy education and legacy audiovisual material.

Introduction

While archival audiovisual material is frequently utilized to further media literacy education, archives themselves are often absent from the greater discourse. Archivists, especially audiovisual archivists, are tasked with preserving; digitizing; describing; and making accessible these archival motion picture films, videos, and sound recordings and thus represent important stakeholders in media literacy education. While audiovisual archivists often house material considered to be aesthetic wonders, archivists also recognize that not all audiovisual media are created equally. Archivists must reckon with collection items that contain offensive language, images, or broadly contain harmful messaging. Understanding these materials through an archival lens not only necessitates placing them within historical context, but also recognizing the state in which these materials have persisted to exist. Why is audiovisual media preserved, what methods are used, and what factors determine these reasons? Audiovisual archivists could provide lengthy answers to these questions if given the opportunity, and yet they are rarely posed as a matter of media literacy