The Yale Film Archive and DHLab are partnering to hire a graduate student Film Metadata Assistant. The DH Film Metadata Assistant will work on a variety of tasks related to the Yale Film Archive’s video files in order to make them more searchable and accessible to users of the Film Archive. Tasks include but are not limited to: creating a workflow to pull data from the Film Archive’s internal database, creating records in ArchivesSpace, and ingesting files into Preservica. Future tasks could include: providing access to film scans in Aviary. Highly motivated and interested candidates may, after the data has been more fully established, participate in the creation of data visualizations or other transformative projects with the newly generated database.

Initial job responsibilities for the student supporting this project may include:

• Working with data, in particular translating between the data fields of records in internal and public-facing databases 
• Importing and moving files and data from one location to another 
• Documenting workflows and processes to support the ongoing move of film files and their data between locations

Project background: The Yale Film Archive holds a treasure trove of digital files that would be of great interest to researchers but which currently remain inaccessible except in specific instances. The Film Archive has a collection of more than 7,000 titles on film. Many of these are unique, small gauge (8mm, Super 8mm, or 16mm) reels that the Film Archive has been systematically transferring to digital files over the last five years, using its in-house film scanner to make roughly 2K digital files. Additionally, the Yale Film Archive undertakes film preservation projects, working with film laboratories, using original materials in its collection to create new film elements and 2K and 4K digital masters. Between these two efforts, the Yale Film Archive creates hundreds of digital video files each year. At this point, files are available to researchers individually and by request. However, we plan to change our storage system to offer these files to users and researchers in a wider and more sustainable manner.  Beyond the basic steps of ensuring that these files are part of Yale’s digital preservation efforts and making them accessible to patrons, the possibilities for creative projects using these films are endless.