Footage Courtesy of Rhode Island PBS Weekly
Preservation is Resistance.
—Jocelyn Robinson, Founder HBCU Radio Preservation Project
I’m an independent archivist and curator of moving image and recorded sound. My work is committed to centering access, collaborating with the communities that an archive represents, and reducing silences in the historical record through preservation, education, and discovery.
I advise cultural heritage organizations how to care for and learn from their audiovisual materials, balancing best practices with the reality that archives are better used “imperfectly” than left unused. One of my passions is demystifying audiovisual archiving in order to empower holders of archival AV to jump in and handle their materials. My other passion is local television news collections — I’m currently spearheading an initiative to establish an audiovisual news archive in my home state of Rhode Island, and I’m a core member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists’ (AMIA) “Channel US Project” that seeks to preserve local news nationwide.
Before earning my M.A. from NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program, I worked as an archival producer in documentary films for over a decade, specializing in African American history and culture. My archival work for film and television productions — including the Emmy-nominated PBS series Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise and the Peabody Award-winning Chisholm 72: Unbought & Unbossed — gives me unique perspective into balancing the needs of researchers and archivists and, more generally, into getting things done.
Selected projects
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![WTEV Rhode Island TV news archival photo]()
Rhode Island News Media Archive (RINMA)
Founder of an initiative to establish the Rhode Island News Media Archive, a publicly accessible statewide repository dedicated to preserving local news in all moving image and audio formats—including commercial radio and television broadcasts, public media, independent video journalism, podcasts, and emerging news media.
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![Cold storage shelving with mixed audiovisual materials]()
Institutional and Individual Assessments
Independent consultant for audiovisual collections held by institutions like Rhode Island School of Design, Nantucket Historical Association, Mississippi State University Libraries, and others. Services include on-site assessment and detailed report on care and access protocols for all analog and digital moving image and audio formats.
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![Student DJ at WSHA (Shaw University) radio station in the 1970s.]()
HBCU Radio Preservation Project
Lead training developer and preservation specialist contracted through the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) to support a multi-pronged project to preserve the vibrant historical and contemporary audio of 30 Historically Black College & University radio stations. Funded through a $5M grant from the Mellon Foundation.
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![Person watching a black and white film of a man wearing a hat and glasses on a Steenbeck vintage film editing machine]()
Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS)
First staff A/V archivist in decades, responsible for over 5 million feet of film and thousands of audio and video recordings in various magnetic formats. Established the digitized audiovisual collection, including this 1961 Malcolm X interview, and introduced new users to RIHS via public programs, conference presentations, and collaborations.
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![Still frame of Albert and Elsa Einstein sitting in a small vintage car, smiling at the camera. The person on the right has curly hair and a mustache, holding the steering wheel, while the person on the left is wearing a hat and fur coat.]()
Leopold Godowsky, Jr. Collection
Uncovered Kodachrome co-inventor Leopold Godowsky, Jr.’s personal film collection featuring home movies with luminaries like Leon Trotsky and Arturo Toscanini and a long lost reel of Albert Einstein in Hollywood in 1931. Reunited this collection with the Godowsky family and Einstein Archives before shepherding it to the Library of Congress.
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![Screengrab from 2022 RIHS Archive Film Festival. Buddy Cianci and another man talking inside the Providence Arcade.]()
Archive Remix Film Festival
Co-founder of a unique film festival which invited creators to remix digitized footage from the Rhode Island Historical Society's Moving Image and Audio Collections into their own 3-minute short films. One prong of my approach to “activate the archive” at RIHS and render collections more available and useful to the communities they represent.
Professional Affiliations
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Member of the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) Advisory Committee, a group made up of colleagues and peers from the cultural heritage community that advises NEDCC on preservation, conservation, digital imaging, and audio preservation services and programs.
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Core member of the Channel US Project, an initiative supported by the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) to save local television materials like news, neighborhood commercials, and local programming that remind us of our regional differences and, equally important, our national commonalities.
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Member of working group for the Community Archiving Workshop (CAW), a model to share skills, knowledge, and resources that help to empower under-resourced, community-held audiovisual collections to increase visibility and support shared authority.
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Active member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), an international nonprofit association dedicated to the preservation and use of moving image media.
Testimonials
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As academic archivists who do not specialize in legacy audiovisual preservation, Becca’s expertise was invaluable. In just a short two-day visit, she provided us with an individualized overview of our holdings that will help us decide next steps for preservation and digitization. Her ability to identify even the rarest of media formats and her knowledge of best practices for storage and conservation alleviated some of our worst fears. This visit resulted in a detailed guide that addressed the main concerns with our collections and provided us with attainable steps and tools to improve the care of our materials. Rather than giving generic advice, Becca empowered, equipped, and educated us to be better stewards of our valuable audiovisual archives.
—Lauren Geiger and Kate Gregory, Mississippi State University Libraries
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Becca has been indispensable to me on so many projects during my years at WPRI. We first met when she was at the Rhode Island Historical Society, and she had a passion for ensuring that archival materials were not only preserved but shared with the public - she would make discoveries in our old film reels and share them enthusiastically with us, stuff we didn't even know existed! Becca was also a huge help to me when I worked on our 70th anniversary coverage. I don't know anyone who has a broader understanding of audiovisual archives across the Rhode Island media market, not just at one outlet but all the major news outlets, and I'm excited about her ideas for preserving that material for future generations.
—Ted Nesi, Reporter WPRI
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I met Becca at the Project STAND conference in Rhode Island, and that conversation changed the course of my life. First as her intern and now her mentee, she has continued to support me as I have found my footing in the A/V archiving field. What stands out most to me is that while Becca is technically proficient, she is also profoundly human in her approach. She does not simply preserve records; she works to bring them back into conversation with the people who created them and the communities that surround them. Becca’s understanding of the richness of multicultural communities and her ability to create meaningful exchange between them are extraordinary. She has a way of dissolving barriers and making the archive feel like a shared, living space.
—Rai Terry, AMIA Pathways Fellow and Community Archivist
