Resources
Maintenance Culture is a project by Myriad, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and aims to address the challenges related to preserving complex-born digital creative works.
Maintenance Culture is a collaborative project at its core. Its curriculum and resources were developed by several working groups, composed of both experienced digital preservation professionals and artists who work in the digital sphere. The Maintenance Culture Field Guide is intended for two separate but overlapping audiences/user groups and has been divided accordingly into two sections: Portfolio Preservation for Creators and A Collecting & Preservation Workflow for Collection Maintainers.
These resources can be used by artists who work in new media (Creators) as well as by a broad swath of institutions, from small community art foundations to university art museums and archives (Maintainers).
Creators are those people who make born-digital works of art: installation artists, software artists, graphic designers, filmmakers, etc.
These resources offer guidance for artists who want to preserve their legacies, exhibit their works, and/or transfer materials to a collecting institution for future stewardship.
Maintainers of born-digital, creative works are those people who work with and care for collections. This may include conservators, registrars, archivists, av technicians, and other similarly positioned workers at museums, libraries, archives, historical societies, and other cultural heritage institutions.
Resources for all
The Maintenance Culture Field Guide aims to provide practical guidance, providing an achievable digital preservation workflow and a series of workbook exercises. Maintenance Culture seeks in particular to support and empower individuals, groups, and institutions that have not had access to these kinds of comprehensive resources and accessible tools in the past. The project seeks to democratize the work of preserving complex works of digital art in all its forms.
Articles & Conference Presentations
Maintenance Culture birthed many resources, among those are articles and presentations. Created and presented by Myriad, below is a list of their contributions to Sustaining Digital Creative Works.
Articles
- “White Paper”
Presentations
- Southeast Museums conference 2023
- Association of Moving image archivists 2023
- American Association of Museums 2023
- Poster at Registrars meeting 2022
- ARLIS 2024
