This project’s goal is to nurture AMIA membership and goodwill by conducting outreach
internationally through professional development, networking, and service to community
archives, particularly in the Balkan Peninsula region of Southeastern Europe.

While rich in culture and history, there is little to no formal infrastructure for  documenting regional culture in the Balkans and former Yugoslavia. Many collections are in homes, in storage, are actively destroyed, or passively abandoned. While there is little to no formal training in digitization and preservation of media and audiovisual materials available, there is a movement toward grassroots and regional preservation.

Starting in 2022, several AMIA members worked on the planning, fundraising, and teaching of intensive, introductory media archiving workshops held in Zaječar. These events, called Timok Digital, were organized and hosted by Zaječar regional archive SKVER, with attendees from several cultural heritage organizations in the Timok Valley Region of Serbia, including public libraries, historical museums, and the Yugoslav Film Archive.The workshops utilized aspects of the Community Archiving Workshop model to focus on inventorying and assessing SKVER’s collections, while training participants in identification, metadata, care and handling, and digitization of 16mm, 8mm, MiniDV, photos, slides, negatives, and audiotapes.