Governors Evan Bayh and Frank O’Bannon Video Digitization Project

By David Adamson and Jill Weiss Simins // Images courtesy Howey Political Report

Historical Context

When Hoosiers elected Evan Bayh as Indiana’s 46^th Governor in 1988, he was the nation’s youngest governor, an “ambitious beginning” to a long career in political service, according to political analyst Brian Howey. Bayh made increasing education funding a priority and signed the biggest tax cut in state history. Yet he was fiscally conservative, maintaining a billion-dollar surplus for the state. His Republican colleagues joked that the budget-conscious Democrat should be called a “Republicrat.” When Bayh won a second term as governor in 1992, he won with the largest margin of any modern Indiana governor, and he finished his governorship with an unheard of 80 percent approval rating. He went on to serve in the U.S. Senate from 1999 to 2011. (Read Howey’s summary of Bayh’s accomplishments as governor via the Howey Political Report.) [1]

Indiana voters elected Frank O’Bannon as governor in 1996 and again in 2000. He was known as “a tenacious consensus-builder” and “believed in open government and freedom of the press,” creating the office of the public access counselor to better serve the public, according to the Indiana Historical Bureau. Like Bayh, he prioritized education, creating the state’s first community college system. His talent for consensus-building helped bring Indy the new NBA arena for the Indiana Pacers and extensive renovation of the Colts’ RCA Dome, preventing the two teams from leaving the state in 1997. Likewise, his legacy includes bringing the NCAA to White River State Park as well as an 18% increase in worker compensation, and a cut in the inheritance tax. The “heart of O’Bannon’s agenda,” according to Howey, was an economic development policy that “flowed from the ground up,” empowering local communities to improve themselves by providing the necessary resources. When he died in office in 2003, Mitch Daniels wrote that the reason O’Bannon never lost an election (whether for Indiana Senate, Lt. Governor, or Governor), was because “he was likeable, period, end of report.” (Read Howey’s summary of O’Bannon’s accomplishments as governor via the Howey Political Report). [2]

Scope and Significance

The Bayh and O’Bannon video collection is composed of100 individual objects documenting significant periods during the Evan Bayh and Frank O’Bannon administrations. The collection was recently entrusted to IARA by a private donor. The bulk of the collection is made up of videos, but includes some CD-Rs and paper documents.

Turning a video-based collection into a digital collection is an appropriate, even symbolic, method for representing the governorships of two leaders whose terms serve as a bridge between a paper-based and largely digital record of government. Bayh’s early time in office predated the use of the Internet, but later in his tenure his administration introduced the Access Indiana website to create greater government transparency for the public. And as the first governor to put a computer on his desk Governor O’Bannon embraced internet communication during his terms and spoke about working out of his “hot-wired barn,” aka his Corydon house updated with an internet connection. In short, compared to the boxes of letters and paper proclamations that compose the governors’ collections from earlier periods, this collection represents the transition to a faster-paced modern era where technology and governing are inseparable.[3]

To project manage the digitization of this unique and important collection IARA’s State Imaging & Microfilm Lab (SIML) chose Records Analyst David Adamson because of his experience in the A/V Digitization field. Adamson began by documenting and evaluating the collection and choosing a vendor for digitization. He explains below.

Overview from Project Manager David Adamson

I began this project by assessing the collection at the Records Center. The collection is mostly Betacam SP format, a cartridge-based videotape format similar in appearance to VHS that was introduced in the 80s and was used in professional applications through the 2000s,  with a handful of other formats. There were eighteen large format Betacam SP videos, fifty-three of the small format Betacam SP videos, one Digital Betacam, one D3, two Mini DV, one DV cam, one regular Betacam, five DVC Pro, and three VHS. Also included in the collection are two CD-Rs, ten 8.5x11 sheets of paper, and an envelope containing a mailer from a Bayh campaign.

The collection was in good condition overall. The materials were slightly dusty like they had been sitting in the same place for a while, but overall, the videos looked to me like they could be digitized without much of an issue. We approached three vendors for quotes, and a couple of them pointed out that the D3 format is something they either could not digitize or would have to outsource.

Our chosen vendor, Memnon Archiving Services, asked several practical questions about barcodes, metadata, file format and delivery, and media delivery. They estimate a total file size of 2000-2500 GBs for our project, based on the inventory spreadsheet, and recommended a 4TB drive to allow some additional room for possible future files.

I was able to watch the three VHS tapes with equipment in the Electronic Records office at the Records Center, and they all played through without issue. (One item of note is that the actual run time on the VHS tapes was significantly less than the total duration.) Memnon specifically asked if we want them to capture the entire duration of the videos, which is common in the preservation community, or only the program run time. We chose to capture the program run time, which required trimming in post, but saved some storage space and is a better access strategy.

As of the time of this writing the bulk of the collection has been digitized by Memnon, except for the D3 format video. Memnon’s D3 player ran into some issues and is in queue for repairs. We’re currently discussing the best method for delivery of a hard drive with digitized files for the rest of the videos. Once we receive the files we will import them into our digital repository, and they could then be requested for viewing by the public from one of our research archivists. Until then, email us if you'd like to learn more: arc@iara.in.gov.