In this interview, I speak with the director of media archivists at the largest archival facility in the area of Miami Dade County. He has taught at the largest college in Miami and leads a staff of 7 to 10 preserving history in film and video for Miami.
If you could introduce yourself briefly. We’d like to get to know you better. Just give us your name, your title, and what you do.
My name is Rene Ramos and I am the Director of the Miami Dade College Archives Department. The Archives Department has two main divisions. We have an institutional archive for Miami Dade College, and we have the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Film and Television Archive with materials dating back to the early twentieth century. I oversee those two collections and we have a staff that ranges from seven to ten people depending on whether we have contractors working with us.
We are located in Downtown Miami, and we have actually been a center since about 1984. So, the Center has been in operation for quite some time.
Does the Center have archival materials that were previously held at the History Miami Museum and the library?
We are a distinct entity from History Miami. We were co-located with them in the Cultural Plaza. We were located in the basement. The more that I learn about archival procedures, the more that I learn how archives are usually placed in the most compromised positions. It’s usually because that is where they are placed and because they are given a low priority.
We were in the basement of that facility from the beginning. On one hand, we were grateful to have any space, but we just had at times to contend with severe weather fluctuations.
Did the moisture cause a problem?
It was a challenge. It was an air-conditioned area, but what happened was that it also served as a shipping and receiving facility for the library. So, when you opened the door to our facility, you were exposed to all of the dust and the truck exhaust and basically truck waste from that facility. It was kind of like a warehouse area. I’m not going to say that it ruined the film, but it’s not ideal, not what we would like to have for an audio-visual collection.
So, what is your new building like?
Oh, it’s quite nice. We’ve been here since 2012. The facility that we are in now was built to suit. We had a hand in designing it. And we asked for the sky and we got the moon. We didn’t get the entire sky, but . . . We asked for refrigeration for the film and video. The institution was not able to meet us there, but we have been able to keep the film at sixty degrees with 45% humidity most of the time when everything is working properly.
That has bought us a certain amount of time in terms of preserving the collection and doing our main work which is digitizing. We’ve been in a basically pedal to the metal project in particular with the videotape in the case of digitizing them because the technology to play that material is not being manufactured anymore. No one is making videotape players or videotape recorders any more. So, we are kind of a window that is closing a little every day so that we can transfer that material so that it is accessible in the future.
What is in your collection and what have you done in the digitization process so far?
Well, the core of our collection is a news film collection from the main and the first television station here in South Florida, the television station called WTVJ. The station was in operation since the mid-1940s. The bulk of that collection dates from that time period to the early 2000s. The first thing that we did was identify parts of the collection that were physically vulnerable, that already had some damage, or were on the verge of having some damage.
There were materials that we should prioritize so that over time we wouldn’t lose [them]. The early part of that collection was film, but during the 1960s the television station switched to videotape. That part of the collection is the most vulnerable because the medium was not intended as a medium for the ages. It’s a medium that is magnetic.
There’s not always the greatest quality control in how the medium was made, so you will have some loss in the actual physical integrity of the tape over time. So, we focused on that part of the collection from that time frame. With film, we have the luxury of a little more time because film is a more stable medium. It costs a little more, but we can still get our hands on some equipment to transfer that material. The videotape is what we are most focused on and is probably what is most vulnerable.
What training do you have to have to be an archivist?
There are general archival skills that are important. There are skills like proper handling of artifacts. Just an understanding of how not to damage when you are handling it. We are in a specialized area of archival. We generally do not find people that have the specific skills that we need here. So, as long as someone has a general aptitude for this type of work, we generally hire people who can learn what we do and are able to do the work.
What is your interaction with the librarians? Do you provide resources for them?
Oh, sure. We provide services for them as well. Again, we’re very specialized. We're one of the few archival facilities in the state of Florida. We’ve done capacity building here so that we can handle just about any audio-visual medium. There are other institutions with smaller audio-video collections so they have never had the justification to spend money on this specialized equipment. Miami-Dade Public Library is a good example of that, so is the University of Miami and Florida International University.
We’ve spent some time with other archives. I wouldn’t call it bartering, but there is an exchange of services, knowledge, and of expertise. There is nothing formalized, but there is the understanding that if we have something that would help out with a particular collection, we will lend our services. And, we have done some transfers of videotape collections for Miami Dade Public Library, so that they can access that material and make it available to patrons. And, when we run into times when we don’t have the expertise.
I’ll give you an example, when we had need of large book scanners and were doing large-scale digitization work, we have an informal arrangement where we will go over there.
It’s like your building community. That’s great.
Absolutely. I think that it’s easy because it’s enough to contend with the challenges of keeping these materials alive so we kind of band together and reinforce each other’s weak spots.