Present at the Creation: A Memoir

There are facts and there are memories. One thing is certain: everyone involved with the creation of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) was focused on establishing an organization. That we would ever celebrate the organization’s twentieth anniversary never entered our minds.

AMIA was certainly not created in a day. There was never a Mickey Rooney–Judy Garland moment when we all thought, “Let’s have a professional organization,” and there it was. Creating AMIA was a multiyear, multistep process to which many people contributed and about which even more people had a say.

The growth of the field was one of the most important factors leading to the creation of a formal North American group interested in moving image archiving. Beginning as a trickle in the early 1980s, the mid-1980s saw a huge increase in the number of individuals and institutions caring for moving image materials. Suddenly people trained as archivists, librarians, and museum specialists found themselves responsible for film and video collections. Published information about caring for these formats was limited. Consequently, newly minted film and television archivists cast about looking for guidance. The lucky ones found out about the Film Archives Advisory Committee and the Television Archives Advisory Committee (F/TAAC), the informal but significant group described by William T. Murphy in his contribution to this issue. As Murphy points out, during its early years, F/TAAC participants all sat around a single table to share information and discuss common concerns. By the late 1980s, there were just too many people to sit around a single table and talk.

Murphy discusses the evolution in F/TAAC meetings as a growing roster of participants necessitated holding the meetings in larger venues as well as organizing panels with presenters and guided discussions. However, throughout its growth, F/TAAC retained its essential roundtable discussion quality. Meetings always provided the opportunity for updates, conversation about matters of concern, and information sharing. In addition, F/TAAC provided new and veteran film and television archivists—many of whom were considered seriously out of the mainstream in their home institutions—with a sense of community as moving image archivists. Attending F/TAAC meetings reaffirmed that moving images were primary historical and cultural documents that deserved archival attention. Despite its lack of formal structure, or maybe because of it, F/TAAC was a unique professional group in which everyone was equal.

By 1989, however, it was clear to many of us that we needed to consider how F/TAAC should move forward. There was the issue of pure numbers. Could the group continue to function as it had as more and more people became involved? There was also the issue of representing the field. Without any formal structure, it was impossible for the group to speak in support of film and television preservation. In fact, the group had no mechanism for voting on where to hold the next gathering, let alone for taking public stands on issues of concern.

The first Future of F/TAAC Committee was constituted in 1988 during a gathering in Ottawa. With Gregory Lukow of the National Center for Film and Video Preservation volunteering to coordinate the effort, the committee was asked to prepare a questionnaire to survey the field regarding the various options. Committee volunteers included Murphy (National Archives and Records Administration), Sara Meyerson (ABC News Library), Fay Schreibman (Museum of Jewish Heritage), Maxine Fleckner Ducey (Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research), Sam Kula (National Archive of Canada), Barbara Humphrys (Archives Center, National Museum of American History), Steve Davidson (Louis Wolfson II Media History Center), William Reader (U.S. Department of Defense), Sarah Richards (National Library of Medicine), and me (Human Studies Film Archive, Smithsonian Institution).

I have no memory of the meetings we held to develop the questionnaire. According to the summary of the survey results, basic questions regarding the size and type of the respondents’ archives were followed by the all-critical F/TAAC-specific questions: what do you want from F/TAAC? Exchanging information? Expressing positions on archival matters? Organizing workshops and seminars? Establishing standards? Publishing? Lobbying? Unified fund-raising...