Portrait of Cas — 1:1 · arrives separately
About
Cas Brown, archivist
I got into this work because of a box. Someone I loved kept one — photographs, a few letters, two reels of film nobody could play — and when they were gone the box was all that said who they had been. Nobody knew what was in it. I decided to find out, and I have been finding out for other people ever since.
Brouillette Archival is my private practice. Every collection that comes through it is handled, described, and returned by me. There is no team behind the name, and I would rather you know that than assume otherwise.
Draft opening — the personal reason is Cas's to tell. Replace with his own three or four sentences.
Training
Trained twice: once in film, once in archives.
The film degree came first and it is not a detour. Ten years in projection booths taught me how film behaves in the hand — how it shrinks, where it breaks, what it smells like when it is in trouble. The archives degree taught me what to do about it, and how to describe what I found so someone else can find it again.
- 2025
MA, Public History
University of New Orleans. Archival and preservation specialty.
- BA
Film & Communications
University of New Orleans.
- 2018
AMIA Projection Workshop
University of Chicago. Association of Moving Image Archivists.
Where the work has been
Every entry is checkable
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2023–present
LGBT Archives of Louisiana
Oral History Chair, Archivist, and Board Member. Recording, transcription, and preservation of the oral history program; digitization and cataloging of the physical collections.
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Data archivist
Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
Data Archivist and Curator. Metadata created and applied across thousands of born-digital public submissions, with accessibility and usability review.
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Archivist
Louisiana Museum of African American History
Institutional archival work on a founding collection.
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Archives
Invisible Histories
Archival work with a regional LGBTQ history project across the Deep South.
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AV technician
The National WWII Museum
Exhibit-grade audiovisual technical work.
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Curator
The Front Gallery
“At Home” — 100+ hours of 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8 found footage of New Orleans inspected, repaired, digitized, researched, and curated into a public exhibit.
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2015–2025
New Orleans Film Festival
Print Traffic Coordinator. Projectionist at Sundance, True/False, Seattle International, Indie Memphis, and others — a decade of handling other people's irreplaceable prints.
Standards and tools
The same standards an institution would hold me to.
You do not need to know what these are. A grant officer, a university archive, or the next archivist to touch your collection will recognize every one, and that is who they are for. It means what I hand back can go straight into a repository without being redone.
- Description
- Dublin Core · PREMIS
- Cataloging
- AtoM · Omeka
- Digital preservation
- Archivematica · Archive-It
- Mapping
- ArcGIS
- Rights
- Working knowledge of US copyright, and release and consent procedures for oral history and photographs of living people.
- Referral
- Items that need true conservation treatment — chemical or structural — are referred to a conservator. Knowing where the line is counts as a skill.
Why “Brouillette”
The name on the sign is not mine, and that is the point.
Brouillette was my grandmother's maiden name. Her family came from Marksville, in Avoyelles Parish — the kind of name that, in most families, survives as a signature on the back of a photograph and not much else. I put it on the practice so it would be said out loud a few more times, and because it is a reminder of what the work is for.
Marksville, Louisiana · Avoyelles Parish
Start with a free consult.
Tell me what you have — even if “a closet, I think” is the honest answer. No obligation, and I'll tell you if you don't need me.
Book a consult