For my Capstone experience of Interdisciplinary Studies, I chose to participate in an internship with War Eagle Creative (WEC), the branch of the Auburn University Athletic Department which focuses on sports post-production. WEC maintains the media archive of all Auburn Athletics video footage. The physical part of the archive recently moved to a new location. During my internship I had the responsibility to inventory all of the past film, video tapes, videocassettes, and discs containing athletic footage as well as other Auburn project footage from 1937 through 2016. Additionally, I created a catalog system to simplify video retrieval in the future. While there have been a few attempts at an organizational system over the decades, none have previously encompassed the entire archive.
These photos were taken on my first day on the internship. My first task was to label and inventory around forty 16mm football game films to be sent off for digitization as seen in the third photo. Auburn is able to digitize many kinds of media, but 16mm film is not one, requiring those films to be shipped off to a special company for digitization. Some tapes and film had already been taken out of boxes and shelved, but were not entirely organized. Shelves were labeled with green tape by sport or category, but each tape still had to be removed from the shelves for organization.
I conducted research on different kinds of organizational systems, particularly involving physical media. I even talked to the Library of Congress for ideas. The system that I eventually came up with took ideas from different systems to create one that fit the WEC and its needs.
Once everything was written down and a plan was created, I began physically organizing all media by kind, category, date, and entry. The biggest limitation to the organization of the media is space since there is a limited amount of shelves and drawers. Everything had to be executed in a way that made sense to anyone who came in.
Each tape had to be put into its specific category and then re-shelved. I decided to use manilla folders as a quick stand in for year separators. I started with football has the most media and therefore takes up the most space. Every other sport and category came after that.
The next step in the internship after a basic physical organization was a digital inventory. I decided to use my knowledge gained from my Informational Systems course and inventory everything into a custom excel spreadsheet. This step took a long time as there was a large number of tapes that did not have enough written information to categorize it without viewing. That is when I received help from a couple of engineers from War Eagle Productions to come put together the dismantled digitization station.
I worked with the engineers to make a makeshift area for viewing the different kinds of “unknown” tapes.
Inventory logging is very time consuming, but still good for the future use of the company. This process was sped up a little due to specific formulas that I wrote to read a cell and adapt that information to fit into a separate cell. Without those formulas each cell would need the data manually typed. While the formulas help for some information, other columns still required manual input.
I am still inputting information and finding a final shelf spot for media entries. Once that is completed in the next few days I will log each entries physical shelf location and begin to physically label them with their own custom unique identifier. I am excited to see this project through!
More photos and entries to come with the completion of the project.
Thank you to a couple of my friends at WEP for stopping by and saying hello. I happened to have my old polaroid camera on me that day and they were willing to pose for a picture. Thank you Nick and Alisha.