WGBH on behalf of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting is pleased to introduce our second cohort of fellows for the Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship (PBPF), a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The PBPF supports students enrolled in non-specialized graduate programs to pursue digital preservation projects at public broadcasting organizations around the country. The Fellowship is designed to provide graduate students with the opportunity to gain hands-on experiences in the practices of audiovisual preservation; address the need for digitization of at-risk public media materials in underserved areas; and increase audiovisual preservation education capacity in Library and Information Science graduate programs around the country.

Over the summer semester of this year, each fellow will inventory, digitize, and catalog a small collection of audiovisual media; generate technical and preservation metadata; and process the digital files for ingest into the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. The fellows will collaborate with a faculty advisor at their university to complete a handbook which was drafted by the first Fellows, and develop a training workshop for fellow students in the autumn semester. The fellowship will also support a digitization station at each university for the use by the fellows and future students enrolled at the universities.

Please welcome the members of our Summer 2018 PBPF cohort:

Fellow: Laura Haygood
Program: University of Oklahoma
Host Organization: Oklahoma Educational Television Authority
Host Mentor: Janette Thornbrue, Vice President of Operations, Oklahoma Educational Television Authority
Faculty Advisor: Susan Burke, Interim Director and Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Studies
Local Mentor: Lisa Henry, Curator/Archivist, Political Communication Center, Julian P. Kantor Political Commercial Archive

Laura Haygood is a graduate student in the University of Oklahoma’s Master of Library and Information Studies Program. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History, and she has a background in instrumental music. She works as a Graduate Research Assistant in the Government Documents collection at OU’s Bizzell Library. Laura has volunteered her time at the Moore-Lindsay Historical House Museum, where she wrote an NEH Preservation Grant, as well as at her local public library and local school library. She will complete her MLIS in May 2019. Laura hopes to use this experience digitizing and preserving audiovisual materials to preserve oral histories in the future. Upon completion of her degree, she plans to seek employment in an archive or academic library. Wherever she ends up, Laura’s overarching professional goal is to connect people with the resources they need.

Fellow: Riley Eren Cox
Program: Clayton State University
Host Organization: Georgia Public Broadcasting
Host Mentor: Ellen Reinhardt, Radio Program Director, Georgia Public Broadcasting
Faculty Advisor: Josh Kitchens, Director, Master of Archival Studies Program
Local Mentor: Kathy Christensen, former VP of News, Archives and Research at CNN

Riley graduated from SUNY Fredonia in May 2017 with xir bachelor’s in History, minors in Anthropology and Museum Studies.  After interning at the Chautauqua Institution for a season in 2015, xe decided to pursue a career in archives.  Riley is currently enrolled in Clayton State University’s Master of Archival Studies program.  Xe will be ending xir time of employment at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archive, and Rare Book Library at Emory University this summer and is excited to see where this fellowship takes xir.

Fellow: Steve Wilcer
Program: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Host Organization: WUNC
Host Mentor: Keith Weston, Web Producer and Back Porch Music Host, WUNC
Faculty Advisor: Helen Tibbo, Alumni Distinguished Professor, SILS
Local Mentor: Erica Titkemeyer, Project Director/AV Conservator, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Steve Wilcer is a graduate student in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a current focus in academic libraries and archives. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Music Performance and Composition at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois and his first master’s degree in Musicology from the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. His multifaceted background in music, research, and archival resources led him to explore and pursue library science and preservation, especially regarding audiovisual materials. In addition to music, he is also interested in history, literature, film, and electronic gaming.

Fellow: Tanya Yule
Program: San Jose State University
Host Organization: Center for Asian American Media in collaboration with the Bay Area Video Coalition
Host Mentor: James Ott, Director of Finance and Administration, Center for Asian-American Media
Faculty Advisor: Alyce Scott, Lecturer, School of Information
Local Mentor: Jackie Jay, Preservation Technician, Bay Area Video Coalition

Tanya Yule is a current MLIS candidate at San José State University, focusing on archives and photography preservation; she received her BFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute, with a background in traditional darkroom methods, and photomechanical printing. Tanya is an intern at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, and resides in San Francisco with her husband and adorable dog Otto.

Fellow: Eric Saxon
Program: University of Missouri
Host Organization: KOPN Community Radio
Host Mentor: Jacqueline Casteel, KOPN Community Radio
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Buchanan, Assistant Professor, Library and Information Science
Local Mentor: James Hone, Digital Archivist, University Libraries, Washington University in St. Louis

Eric Saxon is a graduate student in the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri – Columbia, where he is specializing in archives. His archival research/building interests include anything in danger of being forgotten by the collective memory, a predilection that has led to digital preservation efforts focusing on community centers, an outsider artist, and a WWII Monuments Man.  Eric holds a master’s degree in art history and graduate certificate in digital humanities from the University of Nebraska, and a bachelor’s degree in American studies from Stanford University.