The "Local Track" registration includes 10 selected events from the overall conference program; events which were thought to be of the most interest to potential attendees in the region. This registration option is being made available to Alaskans for $75.

Included in this registration package is the half-day workshop "Triage Training: Tools for Assessing the Condition of Legacy and Master Tapes," which will be taught by Peter Brothers (Specs Brothers) at the UAA/APU Consortium Library on the morning on Saturday, October 14 (see below for more details on this and other events in the "Local Track" program).

If you're interested in this registration option, please call contact AMIPA, and we'll e-mail you a PDF of the "Local Track" registration form.

To contact AMIPA, please call:

907.786.4980

amipa@amipa.org

www.amianet.org

Culture Keepers: Native Alaskan and Canadian Inuit Audio/Visual Collections

10:30am - Noon - Egan Conference Center

Alaska's Indigenous peoples and organizations, along with other Native American tribes and Indigenous peoples around the world, are taking the initiative in the collection, preservation and management of their own audiovisual heritage. This panel session will feature descriptions from Native Alaskan and Canadian Inuit organizations highlighting the status of their archiving efforts.

Regional Audio-Visual Archives Case Studies

2:00pm - 3:30pm - Egan Conference Center

With the 2006 Annual Meeting being held in Anchorage, Alaska, it seems a logical time to highlight the work of regional A-V archives. Worldwide presenters will profile their organization, highlighting the regional nature of their mission. Discussion will include issues/concerns that may be unique to the organization's region, the organization's mission, or regional archives in general; an overview of collections and collection types maintained by the organization; the organization's relationship with other cultural institutions inside and outside their region; and the organization's relationship with their community. We hope that this session will offer delegates an insight into the work of the regional moving image archive movement, its unique strengths and its relationship with the wider field.

Alaska's Public Lands Collections

4:00pm - 5:30pm - Egan Conference Center

Alaska is called the "Great Land". Its national and state parks and other public lands celebrate the grandeur and geographic span from rain forests in the southeast, to taiga in the interior, to the arctic tundra. Alaska's public lands total more than 300 million acres - an area more than twice the size of Texas. The archeology, culture and traditions of the state's indigenous people and the natural sciences are nurtured in these lands.

Presentations from panelists will focus on documentation and preservation of the collections in the past and today featuring curators from the National Park Service and Alaska State Parks and Recreation. Footage from 1918 to the present day will be shown, including Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes from Katmai NP, 1990's footage from Serpentine Hot Springs in Beringia, 1930's footage from Denali NP, footage from a 1918 travelogue from the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park, and other footage documenting the land and cultures of the varied and unique regions of Alaska.

Difficult Choices: Planning and Managing Preservation Projects in a Non-Profit Setting

8:30am - 10:00am - Egan Conference Center

Motion picture preservation always requires choices: which films to preserve, what elements to use, and what materials to create and vault. Preservationists working in a non-profit setting face these questions, plus an array of more difficult choices. Do you spend limited funds to fully protect the most difficult projects? Or do you spread your resources across the widest number of titles? Some institutions may have mandates that guide them to projects outside of their collections, and thus end up developing a preservation project with materials they don't actually own or control. Negotiating the complex relationships between institutions, both commercial and non-profit, as well as with individual film-makers, becomes essential. And while some archives have their own laboratories, at some point most archivists will have to send work to outside vendors. The preservationists on this panel will examine these issues, citing examples of preservation projects from their own archives.

Site and Sound: Recording Traditional Cultures in Alaska and British Columbia (1899-1980)

10:30am - Noon - Egan Conference Center

This session will examine 20th Century ethnographic filmmaking and audio recording in northwestern North America. Jonathan Wise will discuss the work of Harlan Ingersol Smith (1872-1940), a pioneering ethnographic filmmaker who worked among aboriginal communities of the Pacific Northwest during the 1920s. Smith's films documented a period of proud tradition and profound change among the Bella Coola, Tsimshian, Coast Salish, Shuswap, Kootenay, Nootka and Carrier peoples of British Columbia and contributed to an understanding of the cultures with which he worked, as well as the wider relationship between ethnographers and the people they study. Craig Coray will provide a history of field recordings of native music in Alaska, discussing both the recording equipment that was used, and the anthropologists and ethnomusicologists who made the recordings-some under very primitive conditions.

Video Preservation Training - Development of Resources and Tools

2:00pm - 3:30pm - Egan Conference Center

There is general consensus that moving image archivists need hands-on experience with the media itself to accomplish preservation, but there is a lack of clear understanding as to what degree of experience is appropriate. Video preservation training should attempt to resolve this question and offer new toolsets and resources to the video archivist - those which borrow from, but do not simply repeat, traditional technical training or archival education. The session will open with key concepts, theories and lessons learned in teaching video preservation in a lab setting, in an effort to define the framework for a syllabus that matches the evolving role of the moving image archivist. The panel will then present a "straw-man" compendium of concepts, resources, practices and tools that support such a syllabus. There will also be ample time left for questions, feedback and input from the audience.

Public Screening: Quad Videotape at 50: An Anniversary Salute

7:30pm - 8:45pm - Egan Conference Center

Between 1956 and the mid-80s, quad was the medium for the recording of thousands of hours of memorable - and not-so-memorable images, people, and events. The screening will open with a short original video presentation demonstrating the workings of a 2" machine, a fascinating operation few archivists are able to see firsthand. Working with archives to showcase preserved material, as well as the remarkable image quality 2" quad tape afforded, the screening will then highlight the unfamiliar and undiscovered--from training tapes for quad machines, to network spectaculars, from early local children's programming to syndicated country music television--not to mention materials from Alaskan collections.

Public Screening: Anchorage's Emerging Media Making Community

9:00pm - 9:15pm - Egan Conference Center

Every region in the United States has a unique media making community. Exhibition venues, funding, the physical and cultural landscape affect the way media is produced. Exploring the work of local media makers inspires greater understanding of the independent production community at large. Anchorage is rife with independent filmmakers and emerging media organizations that regularly screen films, educating and activating budding image makers. This screening will feature a rich cross section of films and videos, a taste of Anchorage's distinctly independent media making community. The Anchorage Film Festival highlights gems from their annual festival; SprocketHeads, a group of professional independents, will screen clips of their PBS WWII documentary "Aleut Story" and other shorts; and MEDIAK (the Media Education and Development Institute of Alaska co-sponsored by Cook Inlet Tribal Council) will screen shorts by tribal youth who will introduce their short films from this newly instituted media arts program. Bob Curtis-Johnson will also be on hand to screen clips from his "Bob's Shorts Moviemakers' Throw Down."

Triage Training: Tools for Assessing the Condition of Legacy and Master Tapes

8:30am - 12:30pm - University of Anchorage

The International Standard on Care and Handling of Magnetic Tape contains a recommended, basic 7-Step Physical Inspection to identify tape that is "endangered and needs attention." This inspection is considered "essential to prevent premature loss of materials." The examination is designed to be able to be performed by anyone at a collection and can be performed without playback equipment.

In this workshop, the instructor will present a step-by-step breakdown of the Inspection procedure, with visual examples of problem tapes, and will review the reasons behind each step so that the results can be easily understood and applied to a collection's preservation efforts.

The workshop will also include a section on material recognition to assist in identifying the types of tapes/formats in collections and will include a section on essential tape handling and preventative maintenance.

Attendees are encouraged to bring sample tapes from their collections for actual hands-on experience in applying the inspection techniques.

On Screen: A Celebration of Diverse Identities and Cultures in Amateur Film

2:00pm - 3:30pm - Egan Conference Center

This screening will showcase amateur works that feature under-represented groups of people from both inside and outside points of view. The works shown here exemplify the depth and breadth of diversity that exist in amateur moving images and will present viewers with untraditional perspectives of a variety of different peoples and human experiences. This screening includes works that were created by and that depict indigenous people (from Alaska, New Mexico, and Hawaii), African-Americans, LGBT people, Asian-Americans, the disabled, women, international cultures, and young people.