amia student chapter at ucla

Welcome to the AMIA student chapter at UCLA web site!
Contact chapter officers via email.

One of the goals of UCLA’s AMIA Student Chapter is to educate potential students, current archivists, and other interested parties about the specific character of UCLA’s Moving Image Archive Studies (MIAS) program, est. 2002. There are several other programs designed to provide training specifically in the field of Moving Image Archiving, including NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program (MIAP), the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman House (GEH), the Film Studies program with Archiving track at the at the University of East Anglia (UK), and the Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image program at the University of Amsterdam. Each of these schools takes different approaches towards the education of future moving image archivists. And while we could only briefly touch on the others, we can say much about the focus, strengths and weaknesses of the UCLA MIAS program.
The mission statement of the MIAS program says that the program aims to place technical and practical skills in the context of the “complex social, philosophical and cultural contexts in which modern archival practice is grounded.” The intensity of the theory aspect of the MIAS program is a major departure from many other schools’ archiving programs. Students are introduced not only to a wide range and history of traditional archival theory, but read the vast majority of theoretical writing specifically in the field of moving image archiving.

It is tempting to dismiss such a focus in favor of a more technical education, but as we all enter our practica, we are continuously finding ways that this theory applies to the choices we make and see other archivists making on a day to day basis. The goal of the MIAS program is to provide the student with an education in two parts – 1) the history, theoretical background, technical and philological issues in areas of collection management, preservation, cataloging and access, and 2) Focused archival practica in the area of the student’s choice.
The practica are a key consideration in any student’s choice to pursue the UCLA program. Los Angeles is by far the richest center of potential work sites, with a large variety of archives, studios, libraries, and other repositories that hold moving image or moving image-related material. The list of sites where UCLA MIAS students have worked is impressive: UCLA Film and Television Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Archive, Getty Research Center, MBRS Branch of the Library of Congress, Human Studies Film Archive at the Smithsonian, Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Sony Pictures Entertainment, UCLA Oral History Program, UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology, Visual Communications, Women in Film Foundation, Chinese Film Archive in Taipei, & Producers Library Service. - MIAS Class of 2008.