More and more I’ve been hearing stories of activities that sound everyday enough, such as software upgrades and file transfers between servers, that go horribly awry. Upgrades are incompatible with older files or files created with a different software and those legacy files are corrupted or become inaccessible... Directory structures are changed during a migration or systems clean up and relationships or dependencies are lost... Important folders are not moved to a new server or are deleted during the application of a retention policy... read more

I believe that Congress passed a bill in 1992 stating that every article / news story / blog / etc that discusses audiovisual formats (and 'format wars' related therein) must, under penalty of law, mention how VHS won out over Betamax. I recently found this video for the song "Betamax" by the Filipino band Sandwich. ... read more

The rumor stops short of claiming that William Shakespeare was the producer on all of the recordings (or should that be that there is absolutely no way Shakespeare could have produced all of them), but the content-hungry nature of the internet demands that such attention-grabbing statements receive attention. read more

This dichotomous education either makes me very well-rounded or extremely useless. read more

This is where you, fellow archivists, professional small collections managers, librarians, students, history buffs, Americans, or American enthusiasts come in to help preserve America's history. read more

Ah, Memorial Day Weekend -- the traditional beginning to the marketing of summer. In New York this means one thing: the city will now be overwhelmed by the invasive stench of garbage being baked and steamed by the heat and humidity. read more

A caveat on my bona fides here -- excluding Jaws 3-D on VHS (with someone sitting next to me who had seen it in the theatre pointing out all of the awesome points that were in 3-D), the only 3-D viewing experiences I have had have been Captain EO and Beowulf. read more

The historical record preserved in archives informs us of What-Was, but, of equal importance, it reminds us that What-Is Wasn't-Always. read more

Because I care about you, dear reader, and because I care about the development of a more refined culture through the dissemination of audiovisual materials, I was perusing YouTube last night. I happened upon a video simply referred to as "Final Countdown -- Acoustic Version". I will not share that with you here. I feel that Arrested Development has completed the cultural work of that song and it needn't be further addressed (see -- I am looking out for you). read more

He even says "videos" instead of "movies"! [swoon] read more