Progress on Outreach Video

As I may have discussed in a prior post, one of my tasks for my internship is the creation of an outreach video for the IU Archives designed to persuade IU student groups to donate their records for the archives.  Over the past few weeks, I have spent some of my time at the archives compiling an outline for the content of the video.  The video will be relatively straightforward and informative, and will feature the archives staff on camera discussing various aspects of the archives and our collections with the goal of persuading students to donate student group records.  The target length of the video will be 3 to 5 minutes.

In creating an outline, a determined various objectives for the video and various ideas that should be communicated.  Firstly, the video should provide a basic explanation of what an archives is and what services an archives provides as well as a basic understanding of the mission of the IU Archives. Also, the video should explain why student records are valuable in the documenting of student life, student activities, and student perspectives from various historical periods.  The video should discuss specifically what types of records from student groups we are interested in collecting (minutes, correspondence, photos, publications, recordings, flyers, posters, etc) as well as various classifications of student groups and how much (or little) material has been collecting from those areas.  Since the IU Archives has fewer student group record collections than it would like, one key will be to emphasize this particular collecting need in order to communicate the importance of student record collection to IU's repository.  The video will also provide examples of interesting student records we already have, with an emphasis on visual records, with hopes of increasing student interest.

Yesterday, I met with Phil Bantin, the head archivist at IU, and my supervisor, Dina Kellams, the associate archivist at IU, to discuss my plans and outline for the video.  Phil and Dina provided very helpful suggestions and feedback, and we also discussed which archivists would speak about which specific topics.  Our plan is to do the actual filming of the video late next week.  This will allow the archivists time to specifically prepare to speak about certain topics and will allow us time to identify examples of previously collected records that we would like to include in the video.