AMIA Newsbriefs

Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling

Nolan pointed out that
The Dark Knight Rises was made on celluloid. That he is committed to shooting on film, and wants to continue doing so. But, he warned, 35mm will be stamped out by the studios unless people — people
like them — insist otherwise.
Read the story here: http://www.laweekly.com/2012-04-12/film-tv/35-mm-film-digital-Hollywood/

Doak Ewing is baseball's biggest private film archivist

He's now got 1,500 films, rarities like the only known broadcast of Don Larsen's perfect game in the '56 World Series, or a 1947 Boston Braves promo film - one of the first in color. He's got one of Mickey Mantle's first at-bat, with Mick
wearing number "6" instead of the "7" he later made famous.
 
Read the story here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-400_162-57410217/doak-ewing-is-baseballs-biggest-private-film-archivist/

Gloves or no gloves? The archivist's dilemma

The National Archives of the United Kingdom adopted the following policy: "At The National Archives, our policy is that staff and visitors are not required to wear gloves unless
easily-damaged material, such as photographs, is being consulted. Staff and readers are asked to ensure that their hands are clean and dry, and to refrain from applying hand cream or licking fingers before handling documents."
 
Read more here: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-04-06/news/bs-ed-bible-letter-20120406_1_gloves-national-archives-nitrile

Rockefeller Archive Center to House Ford Foundation Archive

The Rockefeller Archive Center, repository for the records of the Rockefeller family, Rockefeller philanthropies, and other nonprofit organizations, announced today that it will
house the archive of the Ford Foundation, the nation’s second-largest philanthropy.

Read the story here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/rockefeller-archive-center-to-house-ford-foundation-archive-2012-04-12

Traveling Back to His Life on Mars

Now 90 years old, New York filmmaker and archivist Jonas Mekas has spent a third of his life drinking at the Mars Bar. The dive at the corner of Second Avenue and First
Street opened in the early 1980s, when Mr. Mekas was busy renovating the future site of his Anthology Film Archives, a block away.
 
Read the story here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577338182013962386.html
 

Apace Launches OurTube, a Private YouTube for Business

Apace’s OurTube appliance enables users to provide YouTube-like services, while maintaining total control over their media data and access. As a scalable private media cloud platform,
OurTube supports creation of private channels for different groups, while giving users control over how media gets organized and managed at the file level. OurTube has streamlined workflow for iPhone/iPad and Android devices from upload, metadata editing,
commenting, to ingest and search. Further, built-in time-code level commenting facilitates use of video as a communication tool via fast upload over WiFi and IP networks. Unlike streaming media and web servers, the focus is on interactive, on-demand, two-way
delivery of video and other media data.
Read the press release here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apace-launches-ourtube-a-private-youtube-for-business-2012-04-10

Lee Strasberg papers headed to Library of Congress

Lee Strasberg, the acting instructor who promulgated the Method style of acting and nurtured
the careers of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Al Pacino and many more, left behind a wealth of documents and other archival materials when he died in 1982. Now many of those documents will be housed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
 
Read the story here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/04/lee-strasberg-papers-headed-to-library-of-congress.html

A new home for old films

The two gigantic construction cranes visible from Interstate 5 and the McBean Parkway off ramp are building a storage facility to house the University of California, Los Angeles film and television archive.

“We are the second largest moving-image archive in the United States,” said Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA film and television archive. “The Library of Congress is the largest.”

Read the story here: http://www.the-signal.com/section/36/article/62793/

A Startup 'David' Takes on Social Media Goliaths

ThinkUp now does a lot more. It's a free, open-source application that will run on just about any Internet-connected server. It connects with accounts
on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ and captures posts, replies, friends, followers, and links, putting them all in a user-controlled database. The archive is important because free Web services have a tendency to disappear. Geocities and Friendster have both
vanished into history, taking their users' creative output with them. ThinkUp gives people a social media activity archive that they control.
Read the story here: http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1976&doc_id=241583&f_src=internetevolution_gnews

Massive Demand for 1940 U.S. Census Data Crashes Website

Today's release offers a snapshot of the lives of the famous, as well as the ordinary. The 1940 census data, for example, indicates that then-actor Ronald Reagan was paying $135 a month
for the Los Angeles apartment he shared with his wife, actress Jane Wyman. It also reveals how much some of Hollywood's biggest stars were paying their live-in help.

Read the story here: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/demand-1940-census-data-crashes-website/story?id=16056775