A digital archive is born: Revisiting the Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain Collection

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dc.contributor.authorMcDowell, Julia
dc.contributor.authorNissen, Annie
dc.contributor.editorErcole, Pierluigien
dc.contributor.editorGennari, Daniela Treverien
dc.contributor.editorVan de Vijver, Liesen
dc.date.accessioned2021-08-04T09:17:35Z
dc.date.available2021-08-04T09:17:35Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.description.abstractThis paper explores the opportunities offered and the challenges involved in digitising, presenting and preserving data and materials on cinemagoing during the interwar years collected in the course of Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain, a pioneering inquiry led by Professor Annette Kuhn. The Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive (CMDA) project team is tasked with archiving and digitising the extensive materials that were originally collected in the 1990s: which include over a hundred audio-recorded interviews with 1930s cinemagoers and a wealth of related correspondence, documents and contemporary publications, along with postcards, diaries, scrapbooks and other memorabilia donated by participants. The primary focus of CMDA is to make these existing materials available online, applying the most appropriate formats and standards to make them accessible and engaging to a global audience of both scholars and the general public. In so doing, the project has placed an emphasis on developing logical and transparent systems for indexing and accessioning, collaborating to create a bank of shareable digital assets to help ensure interoperability between the project's own website and remote systems such as Lancaster University Library and Cambridge Digital Library. Drawing on our experiences as a close-knit research team, we describe the development of the project from two distinct perspectives, that of web developer and that of archivist. Identifying key issues, we highlight initial impressions and detail ongoing experiences and knowledge gained in the fields of cinemagoing history and memory studies, examining decisions taken in the early stages of the project that have enabled progression towards its goals. The challenges inherent in bringing such a valuable and unique set of resources ‘back to life’ and into the realm of digital humanities are immense; and we conclude by reflecting on lessons learned and offering fresh perspectives and insights to researchers undertaking similar work.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationMcDowell, J. and Nissen, A. (2021) 'A digital archive is born: Revisiting the Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain Collection', Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 21, pp. 144-159. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.21.09en
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.21.09
dc.identifier.endpage143
dc.identifier.issn2009-4078
dc.identifier.issued21
dc.identifier.journalabbrevAlphavilleen
dc.identifier.journaltitleAlphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Mediaen
dc.identifier.startpage131
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/11651
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherFilm and Screen Media, University College Corken
dc.relation.urihttp://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue21/HTML/DossierMcDowellandNissen.html
dc.rights© 2021, the Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectCinemagoingen
dc.subjectArchiveen
dc.subjectDigital humanitiesen
dc.subjectDigitisationen
dc.subjectPreservationen
dc.titleA digital archive is born: Revisiting the Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain Collectionen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
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Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. Issue 21: Mining Memories: New Explorations in Cinema, Memory and the Past