Workshop on Understanding Audio-Visual Archives as Historical Sources

On the 10^th of October 2025, the Northeast India AV Archive conducted a workshop in St. Mary’s College. The workshop was attended by the Bachelor students of the History Department. The workshop consisted of a presentation on the importance of archiving and the various methods and techniques that go into archiving material.

The second half of the workshop was an interactive session where students were shown the methods of cleaning various photographic and film materials. The students were put into groups and each given folders containing original photographs. They were tasked with grading the condition of the materials after which they had to proceed with the cleaning of the items.

The students were then shown how to use scanners to digitise the materials they cleaned and allowed to try it for themselves. Then finally, students were shown how to catalogue the digitised images. They were explained the importance of cataloguing images then shown the various fields of data required during the process. Students were again tasked with cataloguing the images they scanned.

The entire workshop was setup to be interactive, was met with positive feedback from both teachers and students. There were many questions asked on ways of entering into the archival field, career opportunities and how students could continue in their own way.