IASA 2018 Annual Conference

Documentation strategy is a collaborative appraisal methodology designed to expand archival holdings through identifying gaps in the documentary record. Documentation strategies acknowledge the inability of a single archives to document the complex relationships between records creators and the breath of documentation associated with any one subject or locality. This paper will frame the data-driven Mapping the Independent Media Community (MIMC) project as documentation strategy, exploring the potential to expose the archival networks preserving the distributed collections of the Media Arts Center Movement and Independent Film and Video in the United States and abroad.

MIMC seeks to historicize the Media Arts Center Movement through an analysis of the social networks that emerged between moving image makers and the institutions that supported the production, distribution, exhibition, preservation, and study of their works. The MIMC database aggregates data from primary source materials, but also draws linked data, including authority records and EAD/EAC encoded archival data. Uniting disparate pieces of archival collections and placing them into historical context, the project seeks not to collect, but to understand how archives were collected, identifying gaps in the archival record, and acknowledge both the traditional archival institutions and non-archival organizations that serve as the de facto repositories for these collections. This paper will explore MIMC as a work of digital scholarship and appraisal tool for archivists, suggesting ways in which the affordances of the semantic web can be exploited to undertake documentation strategies and unite time-based media collections held within traditional and non-traditional archival spaces.