Disgruntled Blogger Frowns at Mr. Scorsese
They say once something is on the Internet, it will last forever. But is it. If you asked a librarian if something on the Internet will last forever, she would probably say, “What, no. Are you insane. Who’s going to maintain it?”
One curious and maddening aspect of technology is that it becomes outdated and useless much, much faster than traditional media. Language barriers aside, a book from the 12th century still functions the same way now as it did then. We need no new additional tools or hardware to use it. But a floppy disk from 15 years ago? Hope that 1.44 MB of MS Paint bitmaps weren’t too important. And even if you upgrade your digital items from the floppy disk to a CD, all you’ve done is moved it from one dying technology to another, requiring preservation of preservation and backups of backups. A book will be happy for a long long time in a cool, dry place, but even those vertical-shot Youtube videos need a dedicated server which requires money and maintenance. Thus, media preservation presents unique challenges for both preservation and maintenance.
AudioVisual Preservation Solutions is a consulting firm that handles preservation and access for audiovisual materials. On their company blog, Joshua Ranger recently wrote on The Elitism of Film Preservation. Certain materials, like films, carry more cultural cachet, and are privileged when it comes to preservation resources. In Ranger’s view, too much time and energy is spent preserving the “Great Man” materials, or Hollywood or auteur films. This is at the expense of materials from people on the ground or from less-popular time periods. Ranger is particularly responding to Martin Scorsese’s Jefferson Lecture (an honor established by the National Endowment for the Humanities) in D.C.
An example of a “film.”
In his speech, Scorsese implores that we be careful to preserve everything: we may not know what will be significant in the future. The box office hit of today may be less meaningful to future culture than the film that opened fifth. He says,
“We need to say to ourselves that the moment has come, when we have to treat every last moving image as reverently and respectfully as the oldest book in the Library of Congress.”
Although Scorsese states we should preserve everything, Ranger isn’t quite buying it. The problem is, Scorsese’s speech only speaks in the context of film and movies, and ignores all the other less glamorous media that should also be accounted for. Ranger writes,
“To me this smacks of a hierarchical view of the moving image, one where Cinema is at the top, deserving of the most respect, the most resources, and the most concentrated effort (regardless of how much money it generated in release, of course). “ [emphasis original]
Ranger observes that there are massive amounts of material that, because it is not a single completed item (like a film), tends to be ignored by film preservation projects. These items include broadcasts, production videos, home movies, interviews, field footage, etc. Why are these valuable? Although they may be amateur or incomplete, these videos still capture moments and eras in history. They are raw documentary footage. Even events that happened recently are at risk of being lost because of the fast march of technology formats. By the time someone gets around to finding those items interesting, it may be too late. Right now, film archivists are trying to preserve outmoded technology that was considered state-of-the-art at the time. The time in the future when thumb drives, Blu-Ray, and even Twitter Vine videos become outmoded and inoperable is approaching faster than we think.
How do we decide where to spend our time and energy? As a commenter observes, this is true of all archival and preservation fields, not just film. Last semester, I looked at the archival processing technique More Product, Less Process. It emphasized processing at the box level rather than meticulously cataloging each individual item. The point is to get as much material accessible as possible, even if the records aren’t as detailed as would be ideal. Although originally meant for physical archives, it has applications for digital files and digitization projects as well. Some archivists criticized the the method because they wouldn’t be able to find important documents (treasures) if they didn’t review every item. It is a valid concern: treasures are treasures for a reason. They bring prestige, attention, and hopefully, funding to your institution. However, if archivists and librarians focus too much on the cool stuff, they risk missing out on the view from the ground: the way most people experience history.
We saw just this week in Boston how valuable Twitter and social media are when a crisis strikes. The FBI has asked that spectators share their photos and videos with them to aid in their investigation. It may very well be that amateur videos and photos will lead law enforcement to the perpetrators. They are all over the Internet now, but the Internet doesn’t mean forever and it is not a preservation system. Five, ten years down the line, will these items be properly preserved?
Note: This post originally appeared on a private blog for my Information Technologies class at Pratt SILS.