 All right. Thank you, everyone. We'll get started. Thank you again for joining us this afternoon. This will be our first workshop using NARA's online catalog for moving image research. My name is Alexandra Geitz, and I am a supervisory archivist in the moving image and sound branch. I'll be serving as a moderator for this session. It is my pleasure to introduce this workshop's creator and presenter, Ashley Bairinger. Ashley is an archivist in the moving image and sound branch, and she has prepared a pre-recorded presentation, which will then follow with some live demonstrations in our catalog. We will also address questions you may have towards the end of the workshop, so please feel free to write any questions you may have into the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen at any point during the workshop. And we can address them as time allows at the end of the workshop period, so let's get started. Motion Pictures in the National Archives Catalog, a Beginner's Guide to Research, Films of State Conference, April 2021. This presentation also has some information about sound recordings, because as we shall see, they are often directly related to motion pictures. Intro to the Catalog. The current catalog at catalog.archives.gov replaces the Archival Research Catalog, the ARC, which was retired in August of 2013. Hence, you'll see legacy ARC identifiers in the current catalog, and that's what they're referring back to. The catalog contains records from all NARA locations, including the presidential libraries. Moving image results may come from any of these locations, but this presentation focuses primarily on the National Archives at College Park, Motion Pictures, RRSM, where the vast majority of AV items are held. So the acronym RRSM, which is part of our formal title, is an internal agency code, and it appears in many places in the catalog in its previous format of RDSM, but they are both referring to the same branch here in College Park. The primary difference between our holdings and motion pictures elsewhere is in reference procedures. Each facility will have its own contact point and procedures for getting copies of materials. As of March 2021, there are approximately 20,000 videos available digitally through the catalog. The catalog will search not only catalog pages proper, that is items, series, and record groups, but will also find results from anywhere in archives.gov. Basic search and advanced search. So whenever you go to catalog.archives.gov, you'll get a nice background image from one of our holdings, and in the center of it is a search bar. If you click on the magnifying glass, that will conduct a basic search. The basic search offers a single general search field with options to refine and or sort the results after the search is conducted. Advanced search, you can get to it by clicking on the relevant field there and then it will give you many different parameters and fields to narrow your search before it is conducted. For example, you can search within specific fields such as title or geographic reference. And then even once the search is complete, you can still play around with the basic search refinements once you have your results. And just as some general notes, the asterisk is the walled card character in the catalog and you can use the and or and not operators in both basic and advanced search. The next three slides demonstrate three refinements which are used in the basic search after you click the magnifying glass and get your results. So just follow the red arrow. The videos refinement. The results from this are any moving image available online from any narrow unit. I have used this one heavily during the COVID shutdown when analog materials were inaccessible. But this is always a terrific research if you're searching a really broad topic, or if you're looking for a famous title, which is more likely to have been digitized. The odds of any individual title being digitized, especially if not famous, if the odds are rather low, unfortunately. So I would not turn to this refinement first if you simply want to know if Nora has something. Refine by location, specifically refining by National Archives at College Park motion pictures. This is a good way of identifying any moving image or sound recording held by RRSM, whether it is available online or not. This is useful if you're planning to order vendor copies from us or come to our research room because it will rule out materials held at any other location. Refine by type of materials moving images or sound recordings. So this will give you relevant results held by any narrow unit, whether it is available online or not. So this is useful if you are specifically wanting moving images or sound recordings or any other type of material. So it gives you all results nationwide. And if you look below, you can refine this search even further by file format. We have MP4s, MP3s and some legacy WMVs. These will be access copies. And of course, if something has not been digitized, it won't come up in the file format refinement. Advanced search shapes. So limiting your search by record group is useful, but it can be hard to identify the right record group or record groups for your search. Nor it does have a guide by subject available to help you identify relevant record groups. So most research topics will be spread over multiple record groups. And in these groups, they might have duplicate materials, related materials split over several different record groups or out of scope materials as collected by agencies. So I generally don't recommend that you start your search narrowed by record group because you'll likely will be missing out on many relevant results. One helpful tip which I use all the time is that if you have the NAID, the National Archives Identifier for an item, you can go directly to its catalog page, catalog.archives.gov.id. Now, dates can be difficult. The compilation slash maintenance date range for the parent series often extends decades before and or after the creation dates for the individual items contained in that series. In other words, there's a precise creation date and then a longer date range related to the series itself. If you use the basic search refinements, that will include all the date fields, including the longer range. Now, if you use the advanced search option, it will default to the more precise item level date, such as creation date, if such a date is available. So I also wouldn't recommend starting with a date range when you initiate your first searches. Due to this ambiguity and also the existence of multiple types of date fields such as creation date, broadcast date, coverage date, and the compilation slash maintenance date. RRSM also has motion picture related text and audio in the catalog. Our sound recordings can be found under defined by type of materials, sound recordings, and for the ones which are available online, you will not find them under the videos field, but in the general available online category. Our sound recordings include innumerable standalone materials like speeches and radio programs. But also audio associated with film either as a soundtrack or wild sound, and it has since become separated from the images. These can be really difficult to reunite. And unfortunately, a lot of the sound collections are not described on the item level in the catalog. So I would say sound is in general hard to work with in films. But digitized motion picture related textual materials. They have booned in number in the catalog recently, during the shutdown, lots of images uploaded and transcribed and tagged. So these textual materials are OCR'd, but we also transcribed them by hand when possible because the OCR can be quite flawed, as we'll see in the next slide. For multiple page items, generally the last image in the set of images will be all the pages together as a PDF. So this is a demonstration of why we still transcribed by hand. So if you go to any PDF, which has been OCR'd, you can copy and paste out what the OCR believes is the correct text. Clearly, there are many erroneous characters here, and it frequently changes ease to O's and O's to C, as you can see from what this very hungry dog is saying. And below I hand transcribed the text. So that's what it actually says on the card. So these textual transcriptions appear in two places in the catalog. It can be transcribed directly onto the image files as indicated by the blue ribbon. If you click on the ribbon, it'll take you directly to any tags and transcriptions. There is also a shot list field. This is at the very bottom below all the other fields of the entry. I've collapsed to them here, so it can be seen in the same page. This item is quite unusual that it has both that it will rarely be the case. Also, you'll see that there are four pages of text. You only see four thumbnails there, but there are five image results. The fifth one is where you'll find the PDF combining all the pages. It's always important to remember that not online is not the same thing as unavailable. We may have a reference file available. If you inquire at mophics.nard.gov, we'll let you know if we have that. And then you can request it. You can request up to five files per week from us. These are files which live in our research room computers. They are reference quality results. Many of them are made to replace the umatic tapes which were previously available in the research room. So they'll be low quality and have a time code burned into them. But some of the files are new and gorgeous. It's just a very mixed lot. Sometimes our YouTube channel has different videos from what's in the catalog. For example, our public programs division or some other location has uploaded AV materials to the YouTube channel for one of their own purposes, as opposed to what we in our RSM have been adding to the catalog. And then you'll see many catalog entries contain a link to Amazon. So these purchasable discs were created in a partnership in 2007. So they're prints on demand DVD ours for a lot of our most popular titles. For example, productions of the United States Information Agency, which can be well made documentaries on a variety of culturally relevant subjects. And for these last two points, there'll be more information forthcoming in the subsequent presentation on the reference room. So this relates to the vendor order process. And once we reopen, you can hire a researcher to come to College Park for you, or you can come here in person and to view and copy films which are not available online. The catalog is fully searchable without registering, but registration is useful if you're going to do any sustained or complex research. It allows you to save relevant results into lists. And it also allows you to export large number of results as a bulk download. As an example, say there's a series of 13,000 items. And you can export the descriptions of these items as a CSV spreadsheet. And then all in one place, you'll have access to all 15,000 titles, scope and content notes, local identifiers, and any other information in their catalog pages. Registration also allows you to add tags and transcriptions to help fellow researchers. Our citizen archivist program periodically sends the public out on so-called missions to transcribe and tag under described groups of records. Now, if you really want to be a power user, you can play around with the application programming interface or API. The API is unnecessary for most searches, and it can be hard to use without some knowledge of structured language. That said, the API is open source metadata from the catalog available in JSON and XML. This allows you to create more complex and detailed queries than what the catalog interface allows. For example, you want results in which there is a shot list. You can create a query in which it will only return results in which there is a value in the shot list field. One simple demo of something the API can do is to pull up metadata for a series of given names. So you would simply, after the equal sign, list several names separated by commas and then the results will be the metadata for all the items listed. You can also use a post request in the API to post tags and transcriptions from the API interface, which will require registration, as it would in the catalog. This is useful if you want to apply the same tag to a series of items. Please ask us questions. We don't bite. We're not astronauts in training. It's mopics.nara.gov. Ask us anything related to motion pictures, sound, the use of the catalog, rights issues. We get everything here. You'll see in the archived copy section of each catalog page an email contact point. If it's mopics.nara.gov, it's us. If it's an email address for a different location, such as a presidential library, I'll go ahead and contact them instead. This is the last of my slides. I'm going to go live imminently to demonstrate these various functions of the catalog and living moving color, which will hopefully make them a little easier to understand. And at the time, I can also answer any questions you may have. Thank you for your attention. So there's just a few aspects of the catalog that are really hard to capture in screenshot format. I actually had to do a lot of collapsing of fields to make even the ones that were available in the slideshow. So I thought I would demonstrate a specific example so we can see the different components. There's a type in this number here. That you saw the picture of fashion, not my Collins about to bite in the last slide there. I made it into a gif, but it didn't quite survive the transition. Well, here's the full film if you want a lot of biting action. So you see here, the file, it's downloadable. You see it has a PDF shot list as well. And it is a tagged and transcribed item. You see this blue ribbon here will allow you access to the tags and transcriptions. Well, in this case just tags that were generated by either the public or staff. If staff have created a formal shot list for the item, it would appear at the bottom of the screen, but this one doesn't have one. So this item falls within 255 FR that's NASA fall roll as an absolutely enormous series and one thing I'd like to do when I'm researching is to move between the different levels in the records hierarchy. So here we have this individual item and now let's move on up to the series. So 255 FR and then we can click here to pull up all the different items in this big series of 13,013 of them. So I mentioned before that you can export titles as a PDF list. The option is right here. So let's export up to 10,000 results without registering. I'm not logged in now. So let's just send out 10,000 you get the option for CSV and various other formats. Let's just pull PDF here. The loading circle image is very familiar to anyone who uses the catalog regularly. If we don't get results in just a few seconds, I will abort. How about I go log in anyway, because then I can show you the list function as well. Maybe we'll move on to, oh, here we are. That's me. I'm logged in. Now, I have a pending bulk download, which should be able to see in the background, even though it's all thinking still, this will be my list of all 10,000 top items in that series. And this also is where I can create lists and save a series of items, series, any sort of catalog page or search result. You can save to the lists here. You can also see that I've been adding tags and transcriptions. These are all collected here as well. And I think that's it for the things I wanted to show you in the catalog. If Alex, if you could share any questions that have been submitted, or you can keep going submitting those as well. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Ashley. That's a lot of very helpful information that I know our audience is hopefully has a lot to think about when they go back to use the catalog on their own, and we do have some questions that came in. So I'll start off with the first one. Does narrow hold newsreels and how do you suggest searching their content. And I will just say, before you answer that this is actually a great question, not only for this workshop for the next workshop where we talk about our research I'd be I'd like to hear Ashley's take on what you would you know how would you search the catalog just to find our mutual holdings. Yes. There's a terrific portal for newsreels available on the main motion pictures page on archives.gov. Now, ultimately, you will be doing searching in the catalog and all the search techniques that I presented in the presentation will be helpful for this. If you just want to broadly familiarize yourself with what sort of newsreel content we have. Here is the bottom. Yes. This is a link. These are links to series of newsreels and there's also newsreels and other series as well. These are just some of the big ones. These are really popular and just use constantly a lot of them have been put online as well. So if you click here for the online results you can see that just within the universal series there are 106 videos in the catalog and generally these newsreels series have seen and shot lists or transcriptions that give more detailed information, which you can find just through using the basic search bar in the catalog. Great, thank you so much in that first web page that you went to I just wanted to shout out that that was on archives.gov it's our motion picture informational page. So as Ashley, watch you through we have a number of topic pages that you can link to on that website that will bring you back to our catalog which lists items and series descriptions. So thank you so much for sharing that aspect of our description as well. Let's see what else do we have. Another question for Ashley, are you aware if there are any tutorials on using the API search option, I think specific to the catalog. Yeah, the API is pretty complex. I can't claim to understand it, especially well, but from what around I played around with it on you access it directly from the catalog on any pages just right there at the top API. And there are some basic instructions. It basically gives examples. I'm not I'm not seeing exactly what the page I was working from but for example to get the sample I mentioned about how to get results for a list of needs within the materials about the API there are some. Yes, here it is. It's not a tutorial, but it's about the best you'll get as a crash course and how to use the API. And this is all an external website hosted by GitHub. Great, thanks so much and actually yeah so that's, you know I will just say that is you know kind of, as Ashley mentioned in our presentation that's you know, research, you know, extra extra effort research. So if you have you know the basic search functionality of our catalog will give you results that you're looking for. But again this is if you wanted to take your research to the next level. That's a road to go down. But one of the questions another question we have in the last five minutes the workshop is actually if you don't mind one of the questions could be, how do you look up a film if you already have the item number so as many of you probably know the other panels are items. Each of our films have a local identifier number, which we use to store in our stack area and also to run our vendor orders and make sure we have one identifier for each title that we have. So each of those films should be searchable in our catalog using that item number so let's see if I can think of an example or if actually you have an item number that you could just use to search our catalog for audience. Let's see. So, earlier I pulled up this item. Now this time I had the name but let's suppose I actually had a different type of number, the National Archives identifier. This is the, in many ways, a more day to day useful number the name is, it's a unique identifier and part of the URL, but the local identifier has a basis in the record group, the series, and then a specific ID number. And this is how, for example, you would order a vendor duplication order using this number. And if I had just this number. The simplest thing of all is generally just to search it in quotes but sometimes that'll pull up something else instead first that happens to make a cross reference in this case that doesn't happen so we're good to go. But we can go to the advanced search here, and we can narrow it down that we want just a individual item, you can specify us motion pictures, and let's say, just see what happens here. So you only have that number, let's see how quickly this comes up. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that that worked. Sometimes it's not quite as reliable but as you can see if you have all the necessary information, even if it's sort of spread over several different fields it'll still pull up your bike video. Thanks, thanks for that demo Ashley and yeah as Ashley was saying it when you were looking at that it the advanced search page or even the basic search bar any keyword search bull entries will come up as Ashley was pointing out so if you have just a bit of a title or if you wanted to look into the context again, you know the broader the keyword the more hits you're going to get in our catalog. But again that's just a, you know, kind of a one of the many ways you can go looking through our holdings is not only with the local identifier, which will bring you right to that specific title but if you wanted to see more topic based or subject based items you can search by keyword. In the interest of time, I want to make sure we wrap this up so we can move on to our second workshop right at 330. So I just wanted to close out by saying if you have any, you know again specific questions about searching our catalog or the items that we have, if you want to find something an item of interest in our catalog please reach out to us at mo pics at narrow.gov and we can give you information about the film you've identified or help you, you know, search our catalog or search some of the finding aids that we do have available in our research room or just digitally but not uploaded in the catalog yet circling back to that question about newsreels. We do have as an example of finding aids we have available in the catalog we do have this universal newsreels we have a large collection of newsreels that we we have at the archives. We have the subject card catalogs digitized and available in our, in our online catalog. So you can search for that, using our, you know, the basic search bar, as well, and, you know, use that to start your research into those newsreels as well. So on that great, hopefully great segue into our, you know, finding aids and what we have available in the research room I'm actually going to, again, thank Ashley for her great presentation on how to use the catalog. And we're going to turn things over to our colleagues, Ellen Mulligan and Caitlyn Husik who will talk a little bit about our next workshop so Ellen take it away. All right, thank you. Thank you, Alex and Ashley for that presentation. I'm Ellen Mulligan, I'm the Chief of the Moving Image and Sound Branch, and I'll be moderating questions for this workshop, which will be about the research room and the types of research we currently currently have available remotely. I'm pleased to introduce Caitlyn Husik, who will be leading this workshop. Caitlyn is an archivist in the Moving Image and Sound Branch, and she's prepared a short overview that's recorded for visitors, first-time visitors. Please feel free to enter questions in the Q&A window at any time and we will address them after the presentation. Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us today for this workshop, where we will be discussing the Moving Image and Sound Research Room at the National Archives. I'm going to cover remote and in-person research and how best to prepare before visiting our location in College Park, Maryland. I will also explain some processes we have for obtaining digital files and requesting reference copies. Please keep in mind that due to the current COVID-19 situation, we are close to the public and staff are working from home. We are making the best of this situation and have increased the number of items available digitally in our online catalog and have updated some processes for obtaining already digitized materials. It is currently unknown when our facilities will be open to onsite research and what that process will look like in a post-pandemic situation. Because of this, it is possible that the processes we discussed today may look slightly different than when you come to conduct your research in person. You can find more information about reopening procedures on the NARA website, and please feel free to email us before your next visit to inquire about any updated research policies at that time. Our current socially distanced world requires us all to work a little differently. Researching with NARA is no different. The best place to start your research is NARA's online catalog. While not all records are available digitally in the catalog, we are constantly working towards making as much material available in the online catalog as possible. This includes not only digital copies of AB materials such as film, audio tapes, and videos, but also finding aids, production files, and shot cards. Some finding aids and preservation books previously available to the public in our research room have been digitized. If an item you are interested in is not available digitally in our online catalog, please contact us to see if a previously digitized file does exist. Some other great places to check for materials are the NARA YouTube channel and the Unwritten Record blog. To understand what types of materials are available to researchers and why every item in our holdings may not have an existing reference copy available for research, we need to discuss copy types and the motion picture holdings. The Moving Image and Sound Branch at NARA maintains moving image records in what we refer to as an archival set. In the perfect archival world, we would have three copies of every film in our holdings. A preservation copy referred to as a P copy, an intermediate copy referred to as an I copy, and a reference copy referred to as an R copy. P copies are like they sound. The copies will keep for preservation purposes. These copies tend to be the most original copies and we try to limit the use of these items. If we only have one copy of an item, it automatically becomes a P copy. Intermediate or I copies are the copies we provide to vendors so that they can make copies for researchers who order them. These copies are also what we try to make reference copies from. Reference or R copies are the copies we provide to researchers. These copies tend to be the most beat up since they are heavily used and we try to focus more on allowing access rather than preservation for these copies. Here you can see what a typical reference film looks like while in use in our research room. To make the most of your onsite research, allow enough time with deadlines and plan for your visit to take more time than expected. Your first visit should include enough time to meet with a consultant, familiarize yourself with the research room itself, procedures, records and equipment, and unexpected dead ends such as an item not having an existing R copy. All of these take more time than expected. If at all possible, try to narrow your topic. For example, World War II era films cover a very wide range of topics. The more narrow you can make your research, the better. Instead of knowing you want World War II footage, ask if it is World War II military footage. Can you narrow your branch of the military that you're interested in? How about Theater of Battle type of machinery, military unit or civilian job? Having a more specific idea will help you spend your onsite time wisely. Conducting basic research before your visit using our online catalog will help you understand what records are available on your topic. When using the catalog for research, please make note of the local identification number and film title if there is one. Each item has a local identification number and that is how you will locate the film and our finding aids and how we locate each film to be pulled. For example, the still on this slide is taken from a World War II era film covering the end of the war and its local identification number is 18SFP9149. Another thing to keep in mind is if an item you're interested in may have copy restrictions. This deals mainly with some donated collections that have donor restrictions. If this is the case, you will either have to contact a donor before making copies of these items or use these items strictly for viewing purposes. An example of this is the Paramount Newsreel Collection. When researching this collection in our online catalog, the use and copyright notes do indicate this restriction. When researching in the Motion Picture Research Room, you will encounter items in a variety of formats. Film, Umatic, VHS, DVD, CD, Audio Reels, Cassettes, and Digital Files are all formats we serve to researchers, each requiring slightly different equipment to save the footage for your personal use. Helpful equipment to bring would be a video camera, smartphone, tripod, external hard drive, thumb drive, blank DVDs and CDs, a personal computer, headphones, and a scanner. Do keep in mind if you are filming large amounts of footage, shooting from a smartphone will take up a good amount of memory or storage space. A limited number of public computers are also provided on site. These computers hold our digital reference files so they can fill up quickly with researchers. If the room is not busy, you can use these computers to access personal cloud services to save digital files too. The Motion Picture Research Room is located on the fourth floor of Archives 2 in College Park, Maryland. Prior to the pandemic, a shuttle service was offered between Archives 1 and Archives 2. We are unsure what this service will look like in the future, but updated information will be available on our website if anything changes. Archives 2 also has a parking garage that offers free parking as space allows. Once you arrive and go through security, if it is your first time at Archives 1 or Archives 2, you will need to register for a researcher card before making your way to the Motion Picture Research Room. All bags, coats, and outerwear will need to be stored in a quarter-operated locker. Once on the fourth floor, you will check in with a staff member who will then direct you to our consultants office. Our consultants will provide you with a brief overview of records relating to your research, the location of finding aids, and self-service records, and introduce you to the equipment used to view records. When using our equipment, please don't be nervous. While the equipment and records should be handled with care, remember the AV materials you are working with are reference copies, not originals. Our consultants will first have you use our self-service area of the research room. This area includes preservation binders and finding aids, as well as DVD and computer file reference copies. Once you locate the items you are interested in from the finding aids, the next step is to check the self-service DVDs and computer files to see if they are available in that format. Only after checking both of these areas is it necessary to complete a pull request for additional items that may be kept in the Secure Stack area. Items kept in the Secure Stack area include reference copy films, Eumatics, and VHS tapes, as well as any items that may have associated copyright or restrictions, as well as related textual records such as shot cards and production files. Textual records do not exist for every item in our holdings, but it is always best to ask a staff member to check for you. These records can provide additional information, which is useful for research purposes such as the year of production, who was involved in the item's creation, if the material is unedited or edited, where material was sourced for production and rights information. Here is an example of a blank pull slip. These are needed to access any material that is not in the self-service area of the research room. We're not going to spend time discussing pull times and material limits today because they may change post-pandemic. However, the basics of a pull slip should not change. You will need to fill in your first and last name, researcher number, and item and the item's local identifier and real numbers if those are known. This example demonstrates how you would ask for an AV item. This could be served to you as Film, Umatic, VHS, or DVD. You will notice that this item has 13 reels. It is possible that one item has multiple reels and will take up your entire pull limit. If an item you are requesting is a sound format, that would also be helpful for staff to know. You can include additional information like that in the large bottom section of the pull slip where the example has the local identifier and real numbers. For requesting related paper records such as production files, shot cards, or any related textual records, you will still need to include the item's local identification number, but you also need to include the type of textual records you need. This example is for production files. This process is for requesting new reference copies and is different from the process we discussed earlier for requesting existing digital reference copies while NARA is closed to the public. This process is currently on hold because staff are unable to access the NARA facilities to create new reference copies. So what happens if you come to research at NARA and an item you are interested in does not have a current reference copy? The first thing I would suggest is to check with Research Room staff to see if any other items covering the same topic may be available. If a specific item or items are needed, you will be able to submit a reference request for those materials. Each researcher can submit requests for 10 items per month. This can be 10 separate single real items or one item with up to 10 reels. Once a new copy is made, it will be available on our public access computers and you will receive an email notification that the order is complete. This process can take anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks depending on the difficulty of the request and the location of items needed to fulfill the request. Here is a list of our most helpful resources. The online catalog and the Moving Image and Sound Branch website are going to be extremely helpful for starting your research. We have been working to update our webpage and now include topic pages for our most used resources. I also want to point out that our email is at the bottom of the list. If you have any specific questions or want to inquire about digitized reference materials or paper records, please contact us at this address. Before we start the question portion of the workshop, I just want to remind you that any policies and procedures we discuss may change or look slightly different when we reopen post-COVID-19. If you have any questions after we are done here today, please feel free to contact us at mopixatnora.gov. Thank you, Caitlin. So we can kick off some question and answer period. So we have a question, what is the difference between the textual records that you mentioned are held by the motion picture unit and those that are held by the textual records unit? Good question. Typically speaking, textual records in motion pictures deal more with the making of the film. So we have anything from cast list to how much it costs to how the films were cut and edited. We also have some behind the scenes photographs in our textual records, as well as scripts. And a good amount of the military films, some of the textual records include directed questionnaires that they would include when they were showing the film to military personnel. Great, thank you. Can you talk a bit more about, you mentioned some catalog cards, the kinds of catalog cards that might be available? Sure. So obviously each record group has different catalog cards that can be included. A lot of the military films have from, it depends on the era they're from, if they're from World War II era, they tend to have more information, even sometimes specific soldiers names. Generally speaking, not specific soldiers names, but that does happen sometimes. And then as we get to more present day, it includes mainly location and what is happening, usually the military, like the military action that they're taking at that time, and the country and city around which it was taken in. So that's the military cards. Our newsreel cards tend to give information of locations and the event that's happening in the newsreel at that time. And there often are multiple sets of catalog cards that will accompany different series of records. So you could have subject cards where the film citations will be organized by subject and then numerical cards where it's like the master set of the cards for all the films. And that's true of several of our series. We have multiple sets of cards. So depending on how you're approaching your research, you'd want to talk to a consultant and find the right resources for your research. Yeah, it can get confusing also finding specific items in some of the card catalogs just because they're arranged differently depending on the originating organization. So could you talk a bit about how to cite nearer records nearer films particularly. Yeah, we actually, if you would search the archives.gov web page there is a PDF publication on there for site, citing sources. And I believe it's on page 10 of that. It's a rather short PDF document are non textual records. I actually have a pull up on my phone if you forgive me for grabbing this off my phone. But typically you would write the type of records so this example given is for a sound recording. And then you would write the local identify and identification number and then the title. Obviously if this is known the title is not always known the data publication which is also all not always known, and then the the originating agency, and then the record group, and that you accessed it from our location which would be national archives at College Park Maryland. All right, that's all the questions for now. If anybody has any other questions. Thanks Audrey, the link is in the chat for the citation. Here's a question someone is asking if we happen to know which citation software is better at pulling the most relevant metadata from the catalog. That's a great question I personally am not aware how citation software interacts with our catalog has anyone does anyone have experience with that do you. I have not personally know. That's a great question we can check in with our catalog staff. All right well if you think of more questions you can put them in the q amp a or we can just move on to the next workshop and you can still put questions in the q amp a we can circle around at the conclusion but if that's all the question I will pass it off to Billy Wade with the still picture unit. All right. Thank you, Caitlin and Ellen. Hello everyone on Billy Wade supervisory archivist in the still picture branch. I'll be moderating questions for our next workshop, which is an overview of how to perform still picture research which includes types of research that can be done remotely. We'll be leading this workshop. There is an archive specialist in the still picture branch. Please feel free to enter your questions into the q amp a window at any time. And we will address them after the presentation. And thank you for coming to our closing workshop on still picture research. My name is Sarah and I am an archive specialist in the still picture branch at the National Archives and Records Administration. At the still picture branch, we do a variety of functions to support the overall mission of the National Archives. Primarily, we appraise, accession, process, preserve and provide access to the permanent photographs and graphic materials of the federal government. The photographs we receive from various federal government agencies are arranged by a record group number and the donations we receive are arranged by alphabetical collection identifiers. The still picture branch also assigns unique alphabetical designators to each series of records within those record groups and collections. We have a large, diverse holdings with over 4,000 unique series of records and approximately 390 donated series of records. Within those series, we have a total of 14 million analog photographs including prints, negatives, slides and more. 3 million digital photographs and 50,000 posters and other graphic works. However, these numbers are always changing as we accession new materials every year. Our research room is located at the National Archives at College Park on the 5th floor of the facility. The still picture branch and our holdings attracts a wide variety of researchers such as documentary filmmakers, publishers, media representatives, military veterans, museum curators, historians, professional researchers and the general public. We're currently working 100% remotely. However, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, we served approximately 5,000 researchers per year in our research room. In our research room, researchers are allowed to bring their equipment such as scanners and cameras to digitize the photographic records. We also have a few freestanding scanners and other equipment in our research room for public use. In general, after our staff have digitized an original analog photograph, researchers must obtain permission from the still picture branch supervisors to view the original image in the research room. This is done for preservation purposes, so we may best conserve and care for our holdings since we do have a large number of fragile and historically valuable photos. Our staff provide a variety of reference assistants outside of the research room, including general guidance and access to the records. Every year, we receive approximately 3,400 requests from researchers via emails, phone calls and letters. We're currently 100% teleworking due to the pandemic. However, we are still responding to requests as much as we are able. Overall, roughly 50% of our requests are for military records, with the majority of those requests being for military personalities. Typically, a family member looking for a portrait of another family member who served. Requests for reproduction, including digital copies or printed copies of our records, are handled by independent researchers. However, depending on the format of the record, our staff will complete the request. Usually, if the record is particularly fragile, such as glass plates, staff will handle that request. I'm so happy to share that we just revamped our webpage. We've added a lot of helpful information for your research, including a general overview of our branch, sidebars with helpful links, and a list of special research topics. Each of our topic pages goes into detail about related records, research methods, and highlight specific photos and our holdings. In addition to our webpage, Still Picture staff have also been continually posting blogs on the Special Media Division's blog, The Unwritten Record. We post a variety of topics, including instructional blogs, which overview how to use our records, as well as detailed overviews of how to research specific military units. We also share record spotlight posts about specific series of records or specific research topics. Even prior to the pandemic, the Still Picture branch puts an emphasis on digitizing our holdings as much as we are able. We typically prioritize the digitization of highly requested records and fragile records. During telework, our staff has continued to stay extremely busy. We provide a distance reference assistance based on the materials we have available digitally. We have updated and maintained our online catalog descriptions. In addition, we've completed metadata for various digitization projects. We've also created item level and file unit descriptions from existing finding aids. We've continued the processing of newly accessioned, born digital records. And as I mentioned before, we are still posting new blogs to The Unwritten Record and updating information on our new webpage. With all these tasks, we are focused on making our materials accessible to the public, even as we work 100% remotely. Since we've been making so many updates to the catalog, I would like to cover a few different methods you can search for Still Picture branch holdings. For all of the information I'm about to cover, you can find a detailed step-by-step tutorial on The Unwritten Record. The main methods of search are keyword searches, series searches, and file unit searches. The most straightforward way of searching the catalog is simply entering a keyword into the search bar and clicking on magnifying glass. Once you see a results page, you will want to narrow your search by filtering by type of materials and location of materials. This will ensure your search results only show photographs and holdings of the Still Picture branch. I've talked a bit about series of records, so what does that actually mean? A series is a body of records that were accumulated and used together for a specific purpose during a distinct period of time and are usually arranged in a particular order. So, an example of a series of records would be a group of color army photographs from the Vietnam War. It helps to search by series because it will help narrow your search. By searching in one series of records, you will know you are looking at the records that are most related to your research. To search a specific series of records on our online catalog, you will want to note if the series has been fully digitized. Usually, you can see in green right under the series title. If a series has not been fully digitized, you may want to consider visiting us when we reopen to view the records. As you're looking at the series description on our catalog, simply click the blue button labeled search within this series. Then, you will see search results that only show the records in that specific series. You can then use the search bar at the top left to search for keywords related to your research. Similar to a series search, some of our records are organized into file units in our online catalog. File units function similar to a physical folder in a box. Usually, file units will be grouped by a specific subject or topic. Once you view a list of file units after hitting the blue search within the series button, you can click into the file unit description. The file unit description will have a similar button labeled search within this file unit, which will show you all of the photographs listed under that specific file unit or subject. After you've found the specific photograph that you're interested in, you will typically find an individual item description that looks similar to this. In an item description, you can typically find a lot of helpful information about that specific image. You should note the local identifier number or the National Archives identifier number usually referred to as the NAID, because that will lead you back to this catalog record. In the description, you can also find caption information such as the date, any known copyright information usually found under the use restrictions, and the media type, which will note if the image was reproduced from a negative, photographic print, or another format. Since our catalog has entries for the entirety of the National Archives, you should also note the unit contact information at the bottom in case you would like to ask questions about that specific record. If you'd like to download a digital copy of the photo, simply click the blue download arrow below the thumbnail. Since we're currently working remotely, I would like to discuss a few of our series of military records that can be found on our online catalog. If you're interested in viewing a specific series that I mentioned in our catalog, make a note of the NAID number and enter it into the search bar on our online catalog. You should then find the series within the first page of search results and you can then use the search methods I previously mentioned. Our series of Army Signal Corps photographs is one of our most popular records requested and is found under the series designator 111SE. The series is broken up by time period into a World War I section and a World War II and after section. We have almost completely digitized and uploaded our World War I section to the online catalog. We are working through the final scanning and metadata process, but the scans available on our catalog have been OCR'd and are searchable. OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, means the caption information available on the physical print will return in the search results. There's also a very small selection of our World War II and after section available online. As I mentioned earlier, some of the most requested records are photographs of specific service members. Generally, to find photographs of specific people, we will search a personality index. We are currently working to digitize our personality indexes and we have already successfully digitized our Army Signal Corps personality index, also known as 111PX. If you're looking for a specific person who searched in the Army during World War II or the Korean War, you can find a helpful guide of how to use 111PX on the unwritten record. Another series we have completely digitized is 165WW, or our series of American Unofficial World War I photographs. The series is arranged by a file unit, so you'll want to use this file unit search methods I mentioned. You can find a variety of photographs such as military parades, equipment, and activities, but also some cultural photographs such as libraries, universities, and the American Red Cross. We have also digitized a few series related to the Army Air Corps and the US Air Force. The series 18AA has been completely digitized and mostly captures aerial views all across the United States and abroad. The views range from historic areas, buildings, airfields, and general terrains. Our largest series of Air Force photographs, also known by the series decedentator 342FH, was digitized in a partnership with Ancestry's Fold 3. While the whole series is not fully digitized, the majority of the World War II section of photographs are now available on our online catalog. These scans have also been OCRed, so you can use a search feature for specific keywords related to your research. To switch gears to the Marine Corps, we have a couple of fully digitized series of records that may be useful in your research. First, the general photographic reference files specific to World War II in Korea used by the Marine Corps can be found under the series decedentator 127GR. The series has been fully digitized and is organized by file units. It covers a variety of subjects such as specific battles during World War II, views of Marines in combat during the Korean War, and other general subjects like the Marine Corps band, communication equipment, commandants, and more. Also scanned with the help of Fold 3 is our series of black and white Marine Corps photographs during Vietnam found under the series decedentator 127GVB. Again, the series is organized by file units. You can see an example of the photographic cards and available caption information on the bottom right of the slide. All of our military photographs from 1982 to 2007 are digitized and grouped into one series known as 330CFD. That means that all photographs from the various branches of the military during that time period can be found on our online catalog in this series. The series has both scans of analog photos as well as born digital images. Born digital means that photos were produced and only exist in a digital format. You can use the series specific search methods I outlined earlier to find any specific photographs within this series of records. An honorable mention of our military records are our poster series. I'm sure many of you have seen the We Can Do It poster also better known as Rosie the Riveter. We house a great number of government produced posters and graphic works. You can find a blog highlighting our specific World War II poster series on the unwritten record. Our largest series of World War II posters is 44PA. You can find famous posters such as Uncle Sam, Loose Slip Sync Ships, and many others in this series of records. I'd also like to note that we just recently updated our digital scans of the posters to high resolution copies in our online catalog. Posters like Rosie can be found in the series 179WP, which are all posters produced by the War Production Board. Also included are posters promoting the war effort through war bonds, ride sharing, scrap metal collection, and other activities. I want to thank you for joining us today. I hope that I've provided a helpful overview of our digitized holdings at the Still Picture Branch. If you have time, I encourage you to take a look at our new webpage and blog post on the unwritten record. If you have any questions beyond this presentation, please contact us by email at stillpicsatnara.gov. Please note that at this time we are 100% teleworking and may be unable to respond to your request in full at this time. You can also explore and ask questions on the History Hub, a research support community. Okay, thank you, Sarah. If you have any questions, please type them into the Q&A box. I know we received one asking if we had an estimated timeframe for reopening in in-person research. When this decision is made, how will the public be notified? All the panelists, part of this presentation and workshop are not part of that decision-making process, so we actually do not have an answer for you with those questions. I think we had another one come up. You mentioned some aerial photography in your presentation. Is there some ambiguity between which custodial unit serves this between the Stills and Cardiographic Branch? Actually, that's a great question because we do get a lot of requests for aerial photography. And actually, at NARA, the Cardiographic Branch holds the majority of aerial photography. So while we do have some in our holdings and we're more than happy to search our holdings for any requests for those materials, you'll find way better luck with the Cardiographic Branch. Yeah, we generally for Still Pictures, you have high altitude aerial photography in Cardo. We have a lot more low altitude oblique aerial photography. So you definitely will find the majority of it in Cardiographic. All right. Is there any way to determine if an item's scan is the highest resolution available? Is it safe to assume that if it's digitized and available for download, that is the highest resolution? If so, does that apply to both photos and video? This is actually an excellent question. Yes, it is a good question. We have a lot of legacy materials in the catalog. So there are some things that were scanned at an earlier date that could be scanned at a higher resolution now with the technology that we have available. But generally, if we put it online, we try to provide the highest resolution copy that we have. If you have any requests for an even higher resolution, you can either contact us or generally would you recommend that you come in and scan the materials yourself? Obviously when we're open. But usually it's probably better to come in yourself and get the highest quality that you need for your purposes. Yeah, I think with that too. Generally speaking, what Sarah mentioned, the older material, you might see a lower resolution version. If you see a JPEG in the catalog, it's generally going to be the highest resolution in terms of pixels. But it is possible that we have a TIF version of that. It's not in the catalog. So definitely email stillpixanard.gov to ask that question. Same thing goes with more digital photography. And I can chime in just quickly on the video. We have specific specifications for the reference quality videos that go in the catalog. And they would be the highest quality currently that we would be distributing or that you would get like in the research room. If you need a higher quality than that, you would order through our vendor process. I also want to note that the image quality on a reference file may not be reflective of the quality of the original because we have different copies for different purposes. Some of our digital reference copies were made from like a umatic reference tape that's already several generations away from a film. Or may have come from the agency and may have been like a distribution print. So it might have been in circulation and might be kind of beat up. So I would just, you know, caution not to assume that the image quality of a reference file or tape or print reflects the quality of the original. You'd want to consult with us and we tell you what the available formats for the preservation copies are. And yeah, that would be a better indication, although we can't guarantee the quality from like if you're getting a vendor copy. So a note of warning and yeah, there are higher qualities available. There's a process available for that. And if we have something I know in still pictures, if it's born digital, definitely check out the series description. Because we will give the different formats and resolutions that we have available. I do not see any other present questions over here. I do not see any other questions at this time. So we did have a couple more come in. For Caitlin. So circle back around just further questions about what we have in the way of catalog cards. Sorry, I'm having a little trouble scrolling to the question there it is. Are there other cards from agencies in the research room. For film and video audio research have most of them and scanned and put into the catalog, and then they list a couple specific examples like the Ford film catalog and the 111 ADC. And Ellen chime in if I forget any. So for the cards, a great deal of them have not been scanned. There's an example of this is our 255 NASA series. There are so many cards, it would probably take us several years to get them scanned. We are working towards scanning our cards, but not all of them have been scanned now. So I would also just add that, you know, we talked a little bit about the different kinds of cards. When we scan the cards, we generally scan those master numerical cards, and then we can upload them into the item descriptions for the catalog. So that it's a nice, you know, shot list or subject list to accompany the local identifier information and the other hierarchical series information in the catalog. On some occasions we will scan the subject cards. Alex previously mentioned the universal subject microfilm microfilm of the subject catalog cards. So those we scanned and entered as their own series into the catalog for keyword searching. But in most cases we'll go with the numerical cards because they match with the items. So for 11180C, we've uploaded those to the catalog. 428NPC, which is the Naval Photographic Center series. It's a very large naval film series. The cards aren't attached in the catalog, but in the early days of NARA's foray into electronic cataloging, those cards were transcribed. And they show up down in that bottom shot list that Ashley showed you. So if you are looking at an item description and you don't see like the little images of the cards at the top, don't despair. Scroll down to the bottom and see if there's a shot list because in a lot of cases there will be a shot list transcribed down there. The 18SFP series, which is the Army Air Corps Special Film Project series, we recently added those cards to the catalog and they're in the process of being transcribed. That is a project that may have already wrapped up or be close to wrapping up. Those are being transcribed by staff down in that lower shot list window also. So there you have both the images up at the top and then some transcription down at the bottom. And the stock collection, what used to be the old NARA stock collection. We've scanned those cards and we have a project right now working on prepping the scans for the catalog. And that's a series of stock films that includes a large quantity of NASA films. But it also has some cards for other films for unedited footage that came in from agencies in the period where NARA was combining them all into a single stock series. So you'll find some footage from Fish and Wildlife there, some public health service, and several others. I don't have it at the top. EPA I think might be included. And I don't recall off the top of my head what the other agencies are in that series. But there are several. NASA is by far the largest. And again, that's an example of where it's the numerical cards that we're able to scan the subject cards, as Caitlin said, are way too voluminous to, and it would be hard to, you know, they're not as amenable to cataloging to match up with our items. So, but who knows who knows what the future holds where we'll go with that. Another question that came in was how complete is the catalog. And I think that was in terms of, I mean, I know in terms of our moving image items, because I ran these numbers for my opening presentation. That of the titles that we've processed so that we have archival process, archivally processed into our holdings management system for physical control. We have about 330,000 titles in that system. And in the catalog, we have, I don't remember the exact number but it came out to 58%. Of the titles that we control copy types for the item descriptions are in the catalog. And 6% include digital video files. And I can also just mention for stills we probably have it's less than 10% for item descriptions in the catalog. For actual scans of analog, probably we scan less than 7%. I was actually looking at some of the numbers the other day. For digital photography, that's a little different. We put that up after processing. So that's closer to 100%. But when it comes to analog traditional photography, it's a lot less. We're definitely working hard scanning a lot more. We're also putting up more item descriptions. Even before we have scans completed, we should not do that, but actually during the pandemic, with us being at home working, we're actually doing a lot more. And I think we've added thousands, if not tens of thousands of items to the catalog during the closure. Yeah. Yeah. And that's 6% that I mentioned with digital copies. That's moving images only. I haven't run the statistics for sound recordings. Yeah. And as Ashley mentioned earlier, the quality of the reference does vary. That's available in the catalog. And that just depends on what we have taken it from. So here's another question. Is this Joe? That's, we've addressed that one. So that might wrap it up. There's a question. What's the total size of motion picture and sound holdings? I can say motion pictures. We're 83,000 cubic feet. If that is meaningful to anyone. It's kind of an abstract way to say it. We're over half a million film reels. We have 350,000 sound recordings, and that includes, you know, various formats, discs, magnetic tapes, wires. We even have some wax cylinders. We've got different kinds of discs. 350, what's that? The belt? Yeah. Yeah. Amber tapes. That's a fun one. And then for videotape, we're at about 200,000 and increasing a lot of our more recent transfers that we have yet to process include a lot of video. So that's a number that's going to explode in the near future, I think. And for stills, we have, I mentioned it at the beginning of the presentation, but we have roughly 14 million images and then there's some more digital as well, which are completely digital images and we have roughly 50,000 posters and graphic works. So it's like panoramic photographs and those other types of graphic materials. We even have some original drawings and cartoons for some of those posters that we have, which are great to look at in companionship, but yeah, that's roughly about what we have in stills. I have a question for Sarah and Billy, if I may. If someone was interested in finding still photographs that are related like to a particular film or film unit, like do you have any advice for beginning that research? Probably, as was mentioned earlier, an earlier presentation is to start with the record groups. Like for example, if you know that it's a Signal Core film, you could look in the companion file of Signal Core photographs, 111 SC, so you can kind of start there. If you know what specific government agency was involved, you'll kind of want to look in those records and still pictures, but generally I think that's kind of a good place to start is the record groups. Yeah, and you could definitely once you get to the record groups, then looking at the creating organizations in the actual descriptions can sort of lead you sometimes because a lot of cases, the same offices are generating the motion pictures and the photography for some collections. So you can definitely look at the creating organizations for that. And how about like this is, I don't know if this, if you are, if this falls into that same group, but like for the distribution of films, I remember seeing a photograph of like a movie theater. Yeah, it was like a dust bowl movie theater and there was a Department of Agriculture film advertised outside of it. So it was like documentation of the distribution of the films. Is that something you see very frequently or was that just the fluke? Um, I think and Billy can follow up with this as well with his knowledge but I think that again it's like kind of the record groups that were involved in the production of it but then also you kind of want to think about where it landed so to speak so if it was a agricultural film but it was meant for the general public perhaps you want to check one of our more cultural record groups for example, USIA United States Information Agency, that's where we find a lot more of our cultural photographs of just kind of slice of life in a way. So it could be that you look into different avenues and how to access that material where you see it in use for the general public so then you're going to go towards one of those record groups necessarily and maybe not the exact creating organization. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely a good answer. Also, I mean the photographs generally are documenting the activities of the agency. So a lot of cases you will see motion picture related images, you know, in some of these collections. So you definitely will find it throughout. All right, so if that if that wraps up our questions I think we're going to hand it off to Oliver at this point is that correct. Yes. All right, thank you. It has fallen to me to say goodbye to thank everyone who has presented and everyone who has attended for your for your time and your interest and I would actually like. The organizers are willing to come on camera for this final bit here Audrey and Heidi and Brian and Martin. If you don't mind. I certainly don't want the final suggestion here to be that that I was a singular point person for this far from it. I've gotten a lot of compliments for how smoothly this has run. And I agree. And I also don't want to take credit for that. I think there's been a lot of invisible labor that went on for this conference. And I think Heidi Holmstrom and Audrey Amidon deserve a massive share of the credit for this. It has been a delight to work on this project with you this conference. So, I think that's how I'd like to close this by thanking you, especially, and I'd love to hear more from people as this go as as as time goes on. If you have thoughts, things that come up as a result of these, these panels and and workshops we'd love to hear about it. A number of people have asked about the recordings. And I don't know exactly when they will be posted. They will be posted to the National Archives YouTube channel. I think the most important work that has to be done on them is that the closed captioning has to be cleaned up and some other related technical things have to happen. But yeah, it's been great. Thank you all for attending anybody want to say anything else. No, just thank you very much everyone. All right. And I would just say thank you our presentations have been so so great and this would not have happened if that if those people hadn't produced that work like this, we wouldn't have anything. So, thank you so much to everybody who produced these wonderful wonderful informative presentations. So I guess one of the core premises of the of the conference idea was that a lot of interesting work has been happening, especially in the last decade or so, and wouldn't it be great to find a way to showcase that work. And I think, you know that that premise has been borne out. So thanks again to everyone and we look forward to seeing you some point in the future. One more thing. Yeah, I believe that the screening night program is still available to view on the milestone Vimeo page so if you missed that the first night of the conference, I would recommend checking it out. Sure, maybe even watch it again. Yeah, it's worth it. All right, take care everybody. Hi.