Two of the most important aspects of archival work that have stuck with me over the course of my time in this program have been the importance of language and fluidity of memory. In specific tangible archival contexts, they take the form of descriptive metadata, the choices made in creating access, and the role of the user. For my purposes, they have informed both how I have moved through my education and how I reflect on this journey. Qáni is a verb in my Indigenous language, Cahuilla, meaning to grow or to be formed into. It is truly remarkable how incredibly short two years can be and simultaneously the amount of growth and development that can occur in that time. I did not come to the MLIS program with any prior archival knowledge or skills, but with fascination, passion, and a goal of doing film restoration and preservation work that I discovered through the credits of many of my favorite films. I brought my background as a lifelong classic film fan and experience as a filmmaker and hoped that these skills could be transferable. Within the classroom, I had a chance to develop these skills to supplement my education and provide support within shared spaces of learning. Working alongside my peers in my cohort has been indispensable in what I consider success in my educational pursuits. Their perspectives have broadened the archival field for me and have benefited my growth as a media archivist through moments of trust and collaboration. 

I look forward to new opportunities that will become available beyond graduation day and welcome the continuation of those pathways I began to develop as a UCLA MLIS student. Doing the work itself for and with the community—whether the people represented or my fellow archivists—will always be the crucial focus in seeing this career as impactful and meaningful. As such, I plan to continue volunteering for Home Movie Day LA, hearing the stories of the community and serving them with my skills and knowledge to help them preserve and pass on their memories and legacies. I will also be devoting time to volunteering with the nonprofit T.A.P.E. (Teach Archive Preserve Exhibit), as their goals to provide digitization, hands-on training, and access to equipment to create align with mine as an enthusiast-filmmaker-archivist. Further, I will seek out other opportunities within the same scope as the mentioned events and organizations that emphasize the interconnectedness of creating, community, preservation, and education. 

My main goal has remained the same since the beginning, but now holds a new sense of reality. I would delight in the opportunity to return to the UCLA Film and Television Archive to continue to do the work I began there during the Summer of 2023 amongst the people who validated my decision to pursue this work and continually inspire me in my career trajectory. Their mission aligns with the work I find most fulfilling and interesting, and to contribute to furthering their goals would represent the combination of things I value within a profession. Even with this defined goal, notoriety of title or organization is not the focus of my career goals. I’m centered on wherever I can be most useful, contributing to necessary work that is generative and positive. It’s important to me to be hands-on, establishing a connection with the material and with the people and communities that created or are represented by it. With such an expansive wealth of moving image material in every corner of our world, the field presents a continuous stream of work to be done and the compelling ability for discovery. 

My courses have given me the chance to make use of my interests and background and discover new avenues within AV archiving. During my first quarter in the program, I was in Professor Anne Gilliland’s INF STD 431 Archives, Records, and Memory class in which I first learned about the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) through writing an administrative history on the organization. The process of researching AMIA opened a world of knowledge, research, and community that solidified a love for the field. Two course I took with Professor Shawn VanCour—INF STD 289 Audio Archiving and INF STD 289-2 TV History and Preservation—provided both historical background and hands-on skills, giving me the opportunity to learn the way that works best for me. Professor VanCour’s guest speakers illustrated the various professionals and job pathways the field contains. TV History and Preservation helped me discover an interest in the development of television and the landscape of the first Golden Age and the network era. I brought that interest further into Maya Montañez Smukler’s FILM TV 298A Researching the UCLA Film and Television Archive course where I completed a curatorial proposal using titles unique to the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s catalog, grounding the paper in additional archival collections. I had the opportunity to do archival research using material onsite at UCLA Special Collections and the Margaret Herrick Library and digitally, working with a reference librarian at the Library of Congress. The class academically challenged me to complete research in new ways and gave me the chance to expand areas of focus from other courses.

While I reflect on the privilege of having the structure of academia as a space of exploring interests, I believe my most valuable experiences have occurred outside of the walls of the classroom. In December 2022, I joined the AV Preservation team of UCLA Library’s Preservation and Conservation department. My time working there has been one of the most enriching experiences in my educational journey. I’ve had the chance to receive one-on-one mentoring and hands-on instruction from two knowledgeable and welcoming AV archivists. Their influence has been a vital driver in my desire to expand my skill set into vast areas that contribute to being a better, more rounded AV archivist. I also attribute my internship experience with the UCLA Film and Television Archive to having a profound effect on the expansion of my career goals. I entered this program to be as close as possible to the work the Archive was doing and to have had a role there was an actualization of a dream I carried for many years. I’m grateful for the knowledge sharing of the Archive staff and the space they supplied my peers and I to make informed decisions on the process of restoring and preserving a film. The process reinforced the role of patience and confidence in decision making that is needed to accomplish the goals of preservation. The experience was important to me specifically in that it championed the abilities of a filmmaker as an asset in archival work—a facet that remains a focal point of my professional development.

During my entire time in this program, I have been involved with the UCLA student chapter of the AMIA as a board member. The organization has allowed me to both learn and teach and has provided me the opportunity to strengthen my community here on campus through leading workshops, attending tours, and collaborating with the Archive on programming. Additionally, I’m a current member of the parent organization of AMIA and plan on continuing such to attend AMIA’s annual conferences and network with my community. Getting to know the people behind the names attached to projects and articles I continuously came across in my education will be an appreciated experience, which will hopefully lead to new stimulating avenues of research and development. I will also pursue involvement in working groups within AMIA that advance the work within the field. In collaboration with Melissa Dollman and Devin Orgeron of Deserted Films, we will be presenting a session on the importance and care of Indigenous home movies for the 2024 Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums Conference in November. This will be my start of giving conference presentations and of foregrounding my cultural background within my work amongst other information professionals. 

The landscape of the media archival field is in both a daunting and fascinating transition with a stream of new questions arising constantly and new challenges being posed. The digital age provides a vast amount of opportunities to reimagine and adapt the work being done to exhibit, access, preserve, and restore moving image material. The ability to have many points of entry into the field is an exciting prospect as I enter the professional sphere. I strive to increase the visibility of this work, both as a general career path and as an Indigenous artist, so that our community grows with the next set of passionate media archivists bringing their unique skills, training, and stories. I welcome whatever comes next in my experience with this field. My goals converge in a single phrase: to do the work and to do the work well.

Downloadable PDF of this professional development statement can be accessed using the button below.