EVIA Digital Archive Project

The EVIA Digital Archive Project is a collection of digitized, unedited videos representing ethnographic research and corresponding scholarly documentation. EVIA’s video content poses challenges similar to those of other digital archives including establishing the infrastructure for migration and long-term preservation of the item. However, the EVIA project has had to develop standards specific to preserving video formats and also to integrate its peer review management and stylistic conventions for publishing scholarly documentation. The EVIA project, therefore, illuminates the importance for designing metadata schemas and preservation infrastructure specific to the content and purpose of the archive. EVIA’s combination of an open-ended collection of ethnographic material with scholarly publication requires extensive peer review before uploading the content—atypical for most digital archiving projects. The preservation of content is closely integrated with its scholarly purpose and is of value, not only to the public, but also for the academic careers and continuing revisions by the scholarly community. Thus, peer review and preservation of content are key functions of EVIA, that despite causing delays in accessing the rich material, has resulted in innovative software and standards for preserving ethnographic videos.