Preserving Science Through Storytelling: MLIS Student Supports Audiovisual History at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives - College of Information (INFO)

Preserving Science Through Storytelling: MLIS Student Supports Audiovisual History at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives

INFO Staff - June 5, 2025

MLIS student Jamila Hinds helps preserve and inventory decades of STEM media at NBLA

A large and a small Betacam SP (or Beta SP) Tape which were used for professional Video Recording in Standard Definition in Broadcast. The big one captures up to 60 minutes, the small one 30 minutes.

Soeren - stock.adobe.com

As part of her Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) field study at the University of Maryland (INFO), Jamila Hinds spent the spring semester working with the Niels Bohr Library & Archives (NBLA), focusing on a unique collection of audiovisual materials from Inside Science – a nonprofit science news service that ran from 1999 to 2022.

Hinds contributed to the processing of dozens of Betacam tapes from the Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science (DBIS) series, which delivered 90-second STEM news segments for local television. Her work involved creating an item-level inventory and conducting a preservation assessment of nearly 300 AV materials, bolstering NBLA’s ability to manage and share this important science communication archive. Drawing from her multimedia experience, Hinds also supported social media outreach and reviewed updates to the collection’s finding aid. Reflecting on the experience, she described the NBLA team as “technologically savvy” and praised the opportunity to work hands-on with archival materials.

🔗 Read Jamila’s full reflection on the NBLA blog here.


The original article was written by Jamila Hinds and published by AIP on March 29, 2025.