Periodically, the EVIA Project issues a call for depositors, which involves participation in a summer institute. The EVIA Project does not currently have an active call for depositors, but at such time applications may be accessed through a link on this page. The application will require completing an online form and submitting a hard copy of the form together with a five-minute video sample.

When the EVIA Project holds a Summer Institute, approximately 12 depositors are selected by the EVIA Digital Archive editorial board comprised of scholars with extensive experience in ethnography and field video recording. After selection by the editorial board, depositors annotate digital files of their video recordings during an intensive two-week Summer Institute held at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. The eventual publication of a depositor's annotated collection in the EVIA Digital Archive Project is dependent on successful peer review following the completion of the depositor's annotations. For successful applicants, the costs of preservation, technical support, and summer institute travel, room, and board are borne by the EVIA Project.

Because preparation of materials for a group of 12 depositors takes a significant amount of time, the application deadline for Summer Institute preparation is February of the year prior to the Summer Institute. Data collection, tape ingestion, and digital transfer begin shortly thereafter. A few months prior to the Summer Institute, depositors have access to their digitized materials as processed. During the months leading up to the Summer Institute they also have the opportunity to take part in a series of online interactive training workshops for the Annotator's Workbench, the EVIA Project's video annotation tool.