Events from the Information, Communication, Journalism, Media and Technology Symposium (ICJMT) continue to inform audiences about the importance of technology and digital media in journalism.
CU hosted New York University’s Howard Besser as part of the ICJMT series Tuesday at Old Main. Besser, an expert in the art of preserving, archiving and curating digital media, spoke about the content and context of digital culture.
Besser’s studies can affect many students across a wide spectrum of studies, from film and humanities to journalism and digital art.
Junior Andrew Hafnor, a film studies major, attended the lecture as per the request of his art professor.
“We’re studying archiving and this is a good example of digital film preservation,” Hafnor said.
CU Alumni Janet Swanson, a former journalism major, took this lecture as an opportunity to stop by her alma mater and learn more about digital media.
“I had some free time and saw the ad and the paper and was excited to come by,” Swanson said.
Besser stressed the issue that libraries are in charge of preserving documents and media for hundreds of years, and that they have to constantly deal with the question of how to make things viewable.
With continually changing forms of technology, being able to access documents composed on an older form of technology is a worry, and often results in mistakes being made, Besser said.
“Reformatting can really interfere with the overall message of the work,” Besser said.
Besser’s lecture offered many solutions to these issues and brought up interesting topics in archiving that could possibly help document the present for future generations.
“We have a responsibility to the preservation of work,” Besser said. “We need to make sure they’re always viewable and accessible.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Megan Moran at Megan.j.moran@colorado.edu.
