Ignite
Not Fading Away
8 February 2010
Last week marked the anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and three others. I’m a fan of Buddy Holly’s music, but I’m not a fan of the nostalgia induced stagnation of people and historical events. As the memory of that period continues to fade away, our mental definition of someone like Buddy Holly shrinks and becomes more conceptual. A few images that highlight the thick glasses and goofy, youthful grin, a handful of songs (albeit excellent ones), and some vague notions of unfulfilled promise and rock n roll tragedy are what mostly remain.
Of course, I’m not innocent of participating in storage habits that contribute to the degradation of memory. I had Buddy Holly tucked away in a certain sized file drawer, very content to continue enjoying him in the way I had defined. Pleasurable contentment, but certainly nothing exciting. This is where the power of archives can change things.
Thanks to the archival work done at Universal Music Group and their Hip-O Select imprint, a master collection of Buddy Holly’s studio and personal recordings was released last year as Not Fade Away: The Complete Studio Recordings And More. And thanks to the power of Lala I was able to check out the recordings I was unfamiliar with (and purchase some), and really learn something about Buddy Holly. There are a number of cover tunes where you can really hear what his influences were, but also how he picked them apart and reconstituted them into his own sound. Also extremely valuable are the in-between moments of just messing around in the studio and the personal recordings. You hear the creative process, and understand a mind that is playing around with music and sound trying to find some new direction with it.
And even more interestingly, there are just plenty of weird songs. My wife is a knowledgeable fan of 50s-60s rock and soul, but when she heard what I was listening to she had to stop and say, “That guy is whacked out. Who is it?” It was familiar, reliable, stuck-in-time Buddy Holly, stripping away our preconceptions and expressing himself fresh once again.
Check out my playlist on Lala here or in the player below (may need Lala sign-in to listen). (Ack! Lala is no more! Obsolescence strikes again.)
— Joshua Ranger
The Limits Of The Archive
5 February 2010
It was with not a great amount of trepidation that I attended the first in the series of Discussing the Archive panels at NYU last night. It wasn’t the usual trepidation associated with having to venture out of my UV-protected, temperature & humidity controlled house, but rather a slight concern after noting that a majority of panelists participating in the series come from the research side (professors of History, English, etc.) and not the archiving side of things.
At the time I wasn’t clear on why this situation was an issue with me. Maybe it had to do with the fact that my archiving program was housed in a humanities based department. When our paths crossed with supra-departmental students and professors in shared classes it was apparent that we, as budding archivists, had a different mindset about materials, facilities, and operations of archives than did those budding researchers. Not different bad, just culturally different.
Attending the panel last night clarified the foundations of that difference I think. As I listened to the panelists discuss the idea of The Archive and their interactions with Archives I heard what seemed like a severe disconnect with the materiality, the day-to-day of archives. There was discussion of power and control; of going to these cthonic, isolated, fragile locations full of crumbling materials, uncomfortable furniture and curt staff; of these inhuman institutions that define and defend what is considered culturally significant knowledge and can act as oppressors to unapproved subcultures.
This is why I distinguish between Archive and archive, because it felt like they spoke of it in the capital A sense, as a social concept, as an entity that was hooked into the cultural power structure and did its work silently, frustratingly, and without accepting outside input. Did I really choose such a monstrous profession? This did not sound like the archives and the archivists I know.
But before you start to think I’m sounding too offended — well, okay, maybe I did feel offended at first — I should say that hearing these reactions made me examine the relationship between researcher and archivist, and made me think that maybe this conflict arises out of having such similar desires that are pointed in slightly different directions. The panelists were urgent about the need for a record of the everyday, of the “voiceless”. I feel archives are concerned with preserving this kind of material, but, also, in my work I am greatly concerned with the everyday of the archive and archivist: workflows, communication, resource allocation, funding, advocacy, access, preservation. Researchers don’t see these mundane or toilsome actions that go into establishing and maintaining an archive. They see the public interface where there are large gaps between request and retrieval, strict safety rules, and, especially in the case of audiovisual materials, sometimes an inability to access. And all of this takes place in the midst of their own everyday concerns and worries about doing their own work. Ultimately the overall concerns are the same — to preserve, share knowledge, and make materials useful — but the professional practices associated with these goals differ.
I’m not sure this is anything that can be changed. In matters of great passion, such conversions are not common. Researchers will always want to use materials, and archivists will always want to protect them, but maybe some détente can be achieved, perhaps along the lines of an idea put forth in a recent post I did on communication transparency and also the general concern I have about better promoting the important work archivists do. It seems that frustrations can easily arise out of inability to access materials, and then those frustrations can easily be transferred to thoughts that the archive is being uncooperative or perhaps even incompetent. Lack of access can more often be tied to lack of funds to preserve, create access copies, or fully catalog materials. Researchers can be an agent in the preservation of materials because it is their demand that can help prompt funding, and maybe their improved knowledge about the everyday workings of the institution and their participatory role in it will make them an even more vocal supporter, enabling us to better support their work in turn.
— Joshua Ranger
Archivonomics
3 February 2010
Interesting article in the New York Times this morning (interesting hmm-that-deserves-some-further-thought, not interesting well-think-of-a-thing-like-that-!) about the legal status of the personal papers belonging to FDR’s former personal secretary, Grace Tully (“Bankruptcy Complicates Deal for Roosevelt Papers“). The donation of the papers to NARA / the Roosevelt Presidential Library has been held up for years in court cases, and now it has been further complicated by the bankruptcy filing of the current possessor of the papers.
This reminded me of the recent story about Billy Name’s archive of photo negatives from his years as the house photographer for Andy Warhol (“In Search of an Archive of Warhol’s Era“). The collection was under the management of a third party for many years, but over the past two years, possibly due to economic issues, the third party became less communicative, the archive inaccessible, and there is a fear that the collection is in someone else’s hands now and may not be recoverable.
We’ve all been aware of the tightening of budgets and funding resources due to the economic downturn, but these situations with the Tully papers and Billy Name’s works have me thinking that there are other kinds of threats to archival collections that will be rippling out for some time from the various financial troubles. This problem of the dumping or loss of works has been an issue before when film labs have gone out of business, but those have been related to the collapse of a certain business model. Recent issues of receivership, bankruptcy, or just financial mismanagement touches a wider range of entities.
I certainly wouldn’t propose not trusting third party management systems, storage vendors, and other businesses. Not every producer or holder of materials has the knowledge, wherewithal, or space to store, maintain, or manage collections, and experts in these areas are necessary to help. I would propose that any life-cycle vendor one is planning on contracting with be thoroughly researched and vetted, and that proper agreements be drawn and insurance considered. Trained archivists are well aware of this need, but perhaps it is something we need to better express to creators, collectors, and the general public. But even for ourselves, perhaps we need to keep reminding ourselves that a holistic preservation strategy involves greater considerations than destination formats and microclimates.
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There is a traditional poetic genre that speaks of the poet as parent to a poem, this thing they fret over and nurture until, finally, the poem goes out into the world on its own. It captures the sentiment well and is something I’ve felt about my own creations — once they are done I let them go to take care of themselves and move onto the next thing. However, a work can only “go out” and “make it” in the cultural milieu, it cannot fend for itself physically and maintain itself. The responsibility of caring for the work continues throughout our lives and beyond.
— Joshua Ranger
Lead, Follow, Or Go Out Of The Way To Visit
1 February 2010
In case you decided to be a little crazy today and not check your twitter feed, you may not have noticed that it’s Follow A Museum Day. (It’s also the anniversaries of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in, Texas’ secession from the Union, and the establishment of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police. See — don’t you feel bad about not checking your tweets now?) To catch you up, Follow A Museum Day is an effort started by Jim Richardson to draw greater attention and support to museums worldwide.
I did my obligatory re-tweet on the topic because, hey! I support museums, and then I easily moved on to seeking out my next bit of information, building out some data collection tool, writing a report, or whatever it is I do to fill my days. But I’ve been mulling over some ideas lately about how to improve advocacy outcomes, about how to move from agreement to action. I’m still working out these thoughts, but I started to feel that this then was the wrong moment for me to not follow through on some of the very concerns that are occupying the back burners of my brain.
So, at least as a start, I began to think more deeply about not just about why supporting museums is generally a good thing (uhm, duh), buy why supporting something specific like their twitter feeds is important. There are plenty of arguments against blogging and micro-blogging and vlogging and whatnot — that they are frivolous, flippant, and generally inferior forms — but still, they reach people with ideas and content that seemed highly inaccessible before the spread of networked distribution systems. I consider myself very lucky to live so close to so many museums in New York City, but it’s still quite an undertaking to get to the Smithsonian museums, and even further afield to make it to the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, the Walker in Minneapolis, the Archway Museum in Nebraska, or back to the Douglas County Museum of Natural and Cultural History back in my hometown.
I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but I’m a strong believer that online access to cultural materials is an excellent thing and I wholly support it. What we often don’t consider is that the way we can support these efforts further is to utilize them. Funders will look at many aspects of an organization when determining whether to donate or award a grant, and one of those aspects can be use metrics. A Development department may put together reports showing the numbers of website visitors, downloads, newsletter subscriptions, testimonials, Facebook fans, twitter followers. We may not like to think about such things in association with Art or History, but being able to display significant use and consistent growth in use can be an important factor in an institution gaining funding for further development and access.
One of my mantras is a collection of materials is useless if it cannot be accessed, but I could also say that if a collection of materials is not being accessed it appears useless, and a useless seeming project is not going to receive further financial support. So become a fan, a follower, an inveterate site browser. It’s small, but it’s a start to moving from saying, yes, I support Cultural Institutions to performing an action that supports a cultural institution.
— Joshua Ranger
Transparent Plea
28 January 2010
Maybe I’m just in one of those rare moments of clarity that life brings, but the concept of transparency seems to have been popping into view a lot lately. There has been the recent open government directives in England and the US; a recent article in The New Yorker about Obama’s relationship with the Press that discusses the political promise of a transparent White House (“Non-Stop News”, January 25, 2010); and let’s not forget the high-power x-ray machines we’ll have to start going through at the airport security check…
Now audiovisual archivists deal regularly with transparency, ranging all the way from providing maximally possible access to the simple act of holding film or tape up to the light to identify the base material. All in all I’d say we’re pretty invested in the concept. But of course such an assumption makes me start to pick the idea apart to examine that commitment more closely.
I started out by thinking about the different kinds of transparency we strive for. At a basic level, there is a transparency of Data — formulating and exposing information in such a way that makes it readily available for search and analysis, such as in catalogs or campaign contribution records.
A level up from that we might have Workflow transparency — an openness about how work is done or how funds are allocated, such as might be required in scientific research or a grant funded project.
Finally, at perhaps a more meta level, we could define Communication transparency — the dedication to the idea of maintaining and expressing openness at all levels.
In some ways I think this last can be the most key…as well as the most overlooked. Overlooked not because it is ignored on the conceptual level, but overlooked because it becomes neglected in the real life practice of communication. Even organizations that are utterly committed to the idea of open records and organizational transparency can have difficulty in maintaining open communication among departments and various stakeholders. It isn’t that they don’t want to keep communication open, it’s more that in the day-to-day hubbub of the workaday world those lines can be easily dropped. Emails go unread or unanswered, messages unreturned, and interaction is subsumed by the focus on the thousand little fires that pop up and need our attention on top of the blazing inferno we’re already working on.
I like to think that archivists, despite our focus on the past, are typically a step ahead of the general culture because we always have to have the future in mind at the same time. That being the case, I feel we should already be thinking ahead of where initiatives like the Open Government Directive are and be considering how we can be more open in ways beyond content and access.
Why, ultimately, does this matter? If I haven’t already stretched yet another metaphor to its breaking point, I would say that transparency enables clarity, and clarity enables transference: The transference of materials, of skills, and of knowledge — which are all inter-dependent. Of course we are concerned with this transference externally in dealing with patrons, users, and funders of archives, but it is an idea that needs to be considered more strongly internally as well. How we communicate with our colleagues and institutional cohorts is equally important as proper storage and handling to the work we do to collect and preserve. Access is dependent on discovery via data as well as being dependent on properly cared for and handled materials. Increasing opportunities for access and increasing the opportunities to fund data collection and archival workflows can only be positively influenced by increasing our communication about what we do, how we do it, and where our challenges and ultimate successes lie.
— Joshua Ranger
Media Based Media
26 January 2010
I’m not sure what this newish song by The xx has to do with VCRs (besides being one more thing that makes me feel old when seeing that what is familiar to me has become a reference point of retro cool to a younger generation), but I’ve been digging this song. Is it too early to proclaim an audiovisual anthem of the year?
Also makes me wonder about a playlist for other songs inspired by formats or media types. “Watch The Tapes” by LCD Soundsystem? “Brimful of Asha (on the 45)” by Cornershop? Any other ideas? I wonder if Tamagotchi could be considered a file format…
—Joshua Ranger
Ratings, Rankings, & Rantings
25 January 2010
Complaints about the movie ratings system as overseen by the MPAA have a long tradition, both from those who think the ratings board is too strict and those who think it’s not strict enough. What these two sides do agree on is that the poor assignation of moving ratings is destroying the fiber of American culture, a polemical kind of stance that has been so often repeated that both sides are tuned out now. But in a recent article New York Times film critic A. O. Scott, prompted by the hulabaloo over scenes of smoking in Avatar, takes a more level-headed and more novel approach to the issue (“This Article Is Not Yet Rated”).
The typical arguments are present (The prudishness about sex, drugs, and swearing seems very unadult…Why isn’t there the same level of concern regarding violence…). These kinds of arguments fall along the line of “What’s wrong with showing ‘real’ life with all of its grime up on the screen?” The more novel take I cite seems to have been developed from some ideas Scott was pushing around in an earlier ArtsBeat blog post that is more specifically about smoking on film (“Movies and Vices: Made for Each Other”), part of a line of reasoning that I found a bit more compelling and better expressed.
What I gleaned as one of the core argument from each piece is that the greatness of cinema is in the beauty of the image, the beauty of storytelling, and the creation of a dreamworld of sorts that we access through viewing and are able to keep segmented into its proper place as fantasy and not real life. The other half of this argument is that there isn’t really much evidence that people are compelled to imitate the acts they see on screen, which is one of the big arguments for ratings and censorship. There’s some nice paradoxical reasoning here: You can’t say that moving images dig into the mind and inspire people to do ill, but moving images dig into the mind and inspire people.
So how can this claim be valid? Is it just self-serving, preaching to the choir argument that the prudes are wrong about the power of cinema but the cool kids are right about the power of cinema?
I would say that there is a difference here that is based in temporality. The Negative Effects side assumes immediate inspiration: Someone will see something and copy it. The Positive Effects side is about a long-term inspiration, one that’s associated more with the nebulous concepts of art and culture. The results of this kind of inspiration cannot be easily measured or defined in a cause and effect manner, and therefore are more difficult to make a claim for against the immediate.
Relating this more closely to the audiovisual archiving field, the outlines of this argument can be related to the argument of why it so important to save materials that do not necessarily seem culturally relevant now. In the here and now, one type of content – one inspiration – is defined by what seems important…now. Preserving all materials in spite of their immediate importance instead takes into consideration the long-term growth and persistence of culture, of an organization, or a society.
What is happening now is our culture, and we cannot exist outside of it, but it’s a living thing that continues to change and grow. It is our responsibility to maintain the works of the present as well as those of the past that have influenced it so that future generations will continue to be nurtured by culture and continue to nurture it themselves.
— Joshua Ranger
Collective Individualism
22 January 2010
New York Times Columnist (and fellow Oregonian) Nicholas Kristof was interviewed on WNYC’s On The Media last month about his approach to being what they termed an “advocacy journalist.”
The gist of it is, advocacy seems to be much more effective when approached as the story of a single individual, that the desire to give aid or help dampens when faced with too many people to think about. I was reminded of a section in Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being where she writes of the difficulty of trying to comprehend the thousands of deaths caused in a South Seas ferry accident. Overwhelmed by the numbers, she experiences more pain over not being able to feel for their suffering than she can muster for their actual suffering. However, as the research study Kristof cites suggests, that decrease in sympathy and the impetus to help doesn’t even need that many people to start taking effect; it begins when the number of people rises to two.
Now I’m not sure if we should be patting ourselves on the back or preparing a suit for copyright infringement, but Kristof’s take on the issue is the same as the base building block of our YADA! initiative — to tell individual success stories about archivists as a means of advocacy and of inspiration to others.
But seriously, it’s a widespread concept used across many sectors in various approaches. We chose to tell success stories because there seems to be plenty of focus on the opposite as people get caught up in the list of problems laid out ahead, almost inversing the old quote about success having a thousand fathers. Making people aware of the challenges faced in media archiving has its place in garnering support, but maintaining that backing and further encouraging its growth means showing the positive results of support.
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I think the idea expressed by Kristof and in the study can be extrapolated out to other areas of conceptual disconnect. We’ve written before about using specific examples or designing smaller scale, more quickly accomplished projects when starting out with your advocacy efforts to administration or funders. It can also be a way to not feel overwhelmed by 100 Paige boxes full of generic blank audiocassettes, by finding ways to think about them as “individual” segments to be approached one at a time. Every piece of media has a story — both as an object with a history and as content — but that’s something that can be lost when faced with the masses of reels and cassettes and unorganized file structures. Maybe stepping back to “listen” to and relate the individual stories of our media will help us better be able to listen to our media content into the future.
— Joshua Ranger
AVPS Releases New Grant Tracking Calendar (YADA!Cal)
20 January 2010
We all know the drill: an e-mail comes through the listserv reminding us that the deadline for the Such & Such Grant for Thus & Thus is two weeks away. This sends us barreling headlong in a mad dash to ferret out some project, any project to cobble together some sort of application for…Or we sit and, before deleting the e-mail from our inbox, think, “Aw, man, I gotta apply for that next year…”
With this in mind AudioVisual Preservation Solutions, as part of our Your Archive Deserves Advocacy! (YADA!) initiative, has developed a free internet calendar that lists deadlines, reminders, links, and short descriptions of grants available for media archiving and preservation related projects. Using the .ics file format through the assistance of iCal Exchange, you can subscribe to the calendar and its updates through iCal, Outlook, Google Calendar, or a number of other calendar programs. Subscribing to the calendar feed will insert the “events” into your calendar program of choice so that you can more easily track and plan for future granting cycles. Events will be defined as their own set within your calendar which you can display or hide as you see fit through your program’s settings. As new deadlines are announced or new granting opportunities discovered we will update the main calendar. Those changes will be reflected in your own subscription.
Check out our Tools page or the Subscription Instructions for more information about the YADA! Archiving & Preservation Grants Calendar (YADA!Cal).
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Sometimes it seems funding opportunities do arise suddenly and require a quick reaction to capitalize on. However, any Development Department will tell you that those opportunities are a result of planning, cultivation, and engagement, and that the overall approach to establishing sustainability must be proactive, not reactive. Becoming a better advocate for your collections means becoming more aware and communicating more about the issues that can affect your collection both negatively and positively. One way to start filling in some of the gaps in awareness is to be prepared, and help prepare others in your organization, for funding opportunities before they flutter by again.
— Joshua Ranger
WEB On The Web On MLK
18 January 2010
I’ve been happy today to see / hear all of the newly found or released recordings of Martin Luther King, Jr. I think it speaks a lot to the importance of audiovisual materials and archives to the formation and continuity of society. I also think Martin Luther King, Jr. would be the first to admit that his work and success was built upon the work of many others that came before him, and would need to be continued by many others after him. In that spirit, from the Dept of Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst, a documentary of the dedication of W.E.B. Du Bois’ homesite in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1969:
One person can be an inspiration and symbolize much that is beyond his or her original reach, but history is built by the millions. Hopefully that singular inspiration will also create a desire to dig deeper and discover more that history has to offer. Happy researching, and Happy MLK Day!
— Joshua Ranger
