The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on university life has spawned a number of questions about what the future of learning can look like. How has online instruction shifted the way students learn? How has it shifted the way professors teach? Is online instruction more equitable and accessible? Is it viable post-pandemic? While these questions may seem abstract, for professors at the School of Information like Clifford Lynch, they are pressing material concerns. On September 10, 2021, in a virtual (and unrecorded) seminar titled “Policy and Strategic Issues in Managing the Flood of Video Coming from Universities,” professors, administrators, and students gathered to tackle issues of data storage in academic institutions. These issues have forced universities to consider the importance of pedagogical archiving and accessibility when facing barriers of financial cost and privacy concerns. 

Seminar participants included prominent UC Berkeley figures like Jenn Stringer, the associate vice chancellor for IT and chief information officer; Michael Buckland, professor emeritus at the School of Information; and Jeanette Zerneke, the technical director for the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. The subject drew a number of national and international participants outside the University, too, including Cathy Marshall, a former researcher for Microsoft and current adjunct professor at Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of Digital Libraries, and Wayne de Fremery, a professor at Sogang University, whose own written work concerns digital humanities and cultural preservation in the digital medium.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic led campuses to turn to online platforms, universities were producing significant amounts of video content that required proper storage and access policies. With the advent of digital and hybrid learning models, the amount of data coming from these institutions dramatically increased, thus prompting the administration at the School of Information to ask how and what Universities store. The most pressing concern for academic institutions is the financial cost. During the height of the pandemic, tech companies offered data storage at drastically reduced rates, but as the days of strictly digital learning come to an end, universities face the rising cost of storage for the flood of video archived during that period. 

Putting finances aside, Stringer raised essential concerns about property and privacy rights. Who really owns recordings of lectures? If university policy dictates that these video lectures belong to the professors, is it their responsibility to store their own data? On the one hand, this would put a considerable financial burden on professors, as storing hundreds of hours of lecture content would require purchasing private storage. On the other hand,  professors’ ownership rights over lecture videos would allow them to maintain access to a factual record of class conversations, which would be especially useful in partisan discussions. Today, it is virtually impossible to keep contemporary political discourse out of the classroom. In order to embrace relevant discussions, however, professors run the risk of being misconstrued in politically charged situations, which can incite backlash and negative career consequences. Having a clear, quotable record would instill some assurance that professors’ words or opinions can’t be taken out of context. Students, too, would be able to hold instructors accountable with tangible evidence if they do cross a line. The modern capabilities of technology to accurately archive lectures and discussions give universities an unprecedented clarity in previously obscure situations. 

If individual professors own their own content, this raises further questions about whether future professors teaching in similar circumstances of social crisis will have access to these videos. In considering the advantages of storing these lectures, archiving a record of how classes were taught during a period of global shutdown is an appealing prospect. Especially in the humanities, where pedagogical methods are dynamic and constantly revisited, the ability to look back on this unique period ten, twenty-five, or fifty years from now may prove to be hugely valuable. But who, if the university subsumes the rights to access and distribute their content, should pay for the storage of those archives?

In the same vein of accessibility, there are plenty of practical benefits in archiving and digitizing lectures and discussions. The ability to replay and revisit class content would be a significant improvement in accommodating students with learning disabilities like dyslexia and students for whom English is not their first language. A hybrid digital model would also allow students who are unable to live close to campus for financial reasons or family obligations to access course materials without spending the time or money to commute regularly. The perspective of accessibility can be expanded even further, especially considering Berkeley as a public institution. If the University devotes significant financial resources to keep this content accessible to students, should it also be accessible to the general public? A public approach to archiving has the potential to expand the scope of demographics that the University reaches. People who are unable to pay the full tuition or don’t have the time to commit themselves to being a full-time student might have access to world-class lectures and discussions through the digital archive. While the necessary funds to maintain such an expansive flood of content is a considerable price to pay, the potential to increase and reimagine accessibility through this archive is truly unprecedented. 

Ultimately, participants of the seminar were left pondering the question of data curation. Regardless of whether institutions or individuals own the rights to these videos, there is no way that the entirety of this content can be — or should be — saved. Thus, how we develop specific criteria, prioritize these videos, and craft regulatory policies remains uncertain. The very concept of curation itself challenges the notion of perpetuity that is seemingly intrinsic to the archival practice. In most pedagogical approaches, there is not much development in the framework for Calculus I or Introductory Physics — but this begs the question of how the University approaches the humanities. Assuming that curators ascribe a more ephemeral quality to humanities courses in contrast to the more enduring axioms of scientific disciplines, which courses are afforded the privilege of perpetuity? How does this affect the classification and legacy of the humanities in the context of a wide-ranging University? These questions, and the ones concerning cost and accessibility, could not be solved by the end of the two-hour seminar, but it was clear that professors and administrators at Berkeley and across the world are taking them seriously. University policy on data storage and access remains to be defined, but the pandemic has provided the opportunity for administrators to contemplate these pivotal concerns and craft a strategy that reflects Berkeley’s values.