How We Work

XFR Collective partners with individuals and organizations to provide low-cost digitization and to develop sustainable models for managing and providing access to audiovisual materials.

What we can do

We seek partners in three core areas:

1. Digital Preservation and Transfer: We are always looking to partner with organizations and individuals who possess analog video materials in need of transfer. We usually make 6-month-long agreements with these partners, during which time we transfer 6 tapes for a nominal fee. We are not a repository and put all digitized materials online on the Internet Archive (IA). For more information on why we use IA see here. We have the capacity to transfer the following formats: Video – VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS, Betacam, BetcamSP, DigiBeta, MiniDV, DVCam, HDV, DVCPro 50, Hi-8, Digital8, Video8, 3/4″ U-matic, DVD, DVD-R and Audio – Compact audiocassette, 1/4″ open reel audiotape, CD, CD-R. Check out our Resources page for help on identification. 

2. Education: We also seek to partner with grassroots organizations, artists, and others who wish to learn how to use audiovisual archival principles to support their work. For example, in January of 2019, we conducted a Digital Transfer Workshop with Westbeth Artists Housing to discuss care and identification of analog media, converting analog media to digital, and what to do after a recording has been digitized.

3.  Research and Cultural Engagement: We seek other kinds of partnerships as well–with, for instance, archivists, curators, and others interested in hosting XFR-related  public presentations and written work of benefit to the community. For example, in September of 2018, we hosted an event with Secret Project Robot to digitize analog video and audio on site, offer advice for preserving personal and community media, and present a screening of past transfers.

What we don’t do

We are not a video digitization vendor. We offer small-scale digitization, consulting, and educational services within a partnership model. If you are looking for a vendor to digitize your analog tapes or film, we suggest you look elsewhere. (We can provide recommended vendors upon request.)

If you are interested in partnering with us, please visit our Contact Us page and fill out the appropriate form. We will do our best to respond to your inquiry within 2 weeks – but please be patient with us – XFR members are all volunteers with demanding full-time jobs and other responsibilities.

Before contacting us about digitization partnerships, please consider the following questions:

  • What types of media do you have?
  • How many of each type?
  • What condition are they in?
  • How is your media stored?
  • What type of access do you want for your materials? How do you want to use your material?
  • Can you store large digital files? Can you back up digital media?
  • What are your long term goals for saving this media – both physical and digital?

But don’t worry: It’s OK not to know the answers to all these questions at this point.

XFR Team

The XFR Collective team comes from a variety of backgrounds with a multitude of combined experiences and skills, including  video and media arts production, collection management, teaching and research in the humanities, archiving and preservation services, records management, and project development.

Active Core Members

Brendan Allen is the archivist at Democracy Now! Productions.

Andrea Callard (Founding Member) is an artist and filmmaker preoccupied with how life feels inside each landscape. Her early films and videos from the 1974-1984 have almost all been preserved and are being screened around the world. Her industrial work documents the inventive recycling practices of Green Planet 21 in the western United States. In New York City, Callard works with the XFR Collective, Inc. to keep early audiovisual work by artists and activists visible. Still a member of Collaborative Projects, Inc. (COLAB), her 1980 photographs documented the iconic Times Square Show and have been published in numerous works of art history.

Sarah Gentile is an archivist with a specialization in cultural heritage. She works in the Conservation Department of The Museum of Modern Art, specializing in media conservation. Prior to that, she was Assistant Archivist at Brooklyn Museum’s Digital Lab and later worked at Brooklyn Academy of Music as Digital Archivist project managing the BAM Leon Levy Archives site. She holds a BA from UMASS and an MLIS with a certificate in archival studies from CUNY. Primarily concerned with archival access, she strives to think professionally about forever and a day.

Caroline Gil is a media archivist, with experience working with artists, cultural heritage institutions, private art collectors, and non-profits. Caroline is currently a Fellow in Media Conservation at The Museum of Modern Art, and has worked at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklore and Cultural Heritage, the New Art Trust, New York Public Library, Third World Newsreel, Allied Productions, Filmoteca Cataluña, and with media artists’ personal collections. She is a graduate of NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, holds a Director of Cinematography MA from Universidad de Barcelona-ESCAC and BA in Visual Arts.

Kelly Haydon is a project manager at CUNY TV. Previously, she was the Audiovisual Archivist for NYU Special Collections and the Preservation Manager at Bay Area Video Coalition. She holds degrees from NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program (where she is also an adjunct professor) and School of Visual Arts. In addition to XFR Collective, she is a volunteer archivist at Third World Newsreel.

Marie Lascu is the A/V Archivist for Crowing Rooster Arts, a non-profit that has spent 20 years documenting the arts and political struggles of Haiti, Digital Archivist for Ballet Tech, an NYC public school for dance, and Project Manager for the Regional Media Legacies project. She also works as an independent archival consultant with organizations such as Third World Newsreel and the Community Archiving Workshop subcommittee. She is a graduate of NYU’s M.A. in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program (’12), and is the 2016 recipient of the Society of American Archivists Spotlight Award.

Robin Margolis is a graduate from UCLA’s Media Archival Studies program (MLIS MAS), where he received the 2017 MLIS Award for the Advancement of the Profession. He regularly consults for WITNESS Human Rights Video and the Oral History Projects department of the Academy Foundation. He co-coordinated (with fellow XFR core member Kelly Haydon) the DIYCA (Do-It-Yourself and Community Archives) symposium at the 2016 AMIA Conference in Pittsburgh, where he also received the Sony Pictures Scholarship. He regularly teaches workshops and classes including community based archival storytelling, activist centered frameworks for police accountability video, and personal digital archiving as tool for labor history.

Lorena Ramírez-López is a full-stack web developer with an extensive background in film, television, and media. She specialize in web archives as well as the preservation and conservation of digital and software-based artworks.

Members-at-Large
  • Ashley Blewer
  • Nicole Contaxis
  • Carmel Curtis
  • Walter Forsberg
  • Rebecca Fraimow (Founding Member)
  • Ethan Gates
  • Michael Grant
  • Dinah Handel
  • Joan Jubela
  • Rachel Mattson
  • Ana Marie
  • Traci Mark
  • Christopher Nicols
  • Noa Kasman
  • Mary Kidd
  • Julia Kim (Founding Member)
  • Melanie Kruvelis
  • Samantha Levin
  • Kristin MacDonough (Founding Member)
  • Karl McCool 
  • Regan Sommer McCoy
  • Yvonne Ng 
  • Pamela Vizner Oyarce (Founding Member)
  • Benjamin Turkus
  • Treva Walsh
  • Andrew Weaver

Interested in becoming a collective member?

XFR Collective has developed a specific structure to support our mission and goals. Collective members are expected to adhere to this structure. If you are interested in becoming a collective member, please read about our structure, and if you feel you are able to commit, send us an email at xfrcollective @ gmail.com.

If you would like to be involved but cannot commit to being a Collective member or you want to help remotely, please consider becoming a volunteer. Please fill out our volunteer form so that we know how to best contact you, what you would like to help with, and what your schedule looks like.

To Be a XFR Member, you’ll need to be able to:

Attend Monthly all-member meetings: XFR collective meets once monthly as an entire group, with all current members present. At these meetings, we check in about the work that has been done throughout the prior month within subcommittees, determine what new tasks need to be accomplished, and create and assign ourselves to new subcommittees for the next month.

Participate in Subcommittee work: Subcommittees are determined depending on the projects, workshops, events, and partnerships XFR undertakes, as well as the internal needs of the collective. There is always an administrative subcommittee, which is responsible for administrative and project management tasks relating to the functioning of the collective. Subcommittees typically have 3-4 members, and determine their own meeting schedule and tasks based on the project, event, or workshop at hand.

Participate in Weekly transfer sessions: In addition to monthly meetings, collective members sign up for a transfer session, which currently take place on Mondays. Each collective member is expected to attend one transfer session per month.