In the next few posts we will be recapping some of the exciting developments for The Media Ecology Project in the year since we held our opening symposium at Dartmouth College. This is the first of five installments focusing on conference presentations about MEP in 2013-2014.

In November of 2013 we were honored and pleased to present a panel about The Media Ecology Project at the annual conference of The Association of Moving Image Archivists in Richmond, Virginia.

Dartmouth’s own Mark Williams chaired the proceedings, introducing the project to the assembled specialists in a panel discussion that focused on the goals of our project and the resources we have already assembled. Our esteemed panel members were MEP architect John Bell (University of Maine), Mike Mashon (Head of Moving Images for The Library of Congress), Jan-Christopher Horak (Director, UCLA Film and Television Archive), Karen Cariani(Director, WGBH Archive and Libraries in Boston), and Dan Streible (NYU, Orphans Film Symposium).

We presented MEP as a way of extending discoverability within each participating archive but also expanding discoverability and reach across archives (two different kinds of value-add).  Work on MEP contributes to and advocates for renewed interest in the dedicated historical and cultural work that the archives pursue.

We were delighted to meet with various AMIA members who have been and will be crucial to the success of the project.  The Media Ecology Project would not exist, after all, without the support of the archival community and AMIA’s vision of leadership to promote both preservation and access to marvelous and historic moving image collections.

Thanks to Mac Simonson for help with this post!