Personally I wouldn’t really want to rely on that scratched up copy of The Gods Must Be Crazy IV: Crazy in Hong Kong or a variable quality, cut-up YouTube version of Teen Witch as the sole formats to maintain my cultural heritage. read more

I can't call that an endorsement as I'm not so sure I agree with many of his cinematic tastes (sorry, dad, still haven't watched the DVD of Tombstone you sent), but then again, I'm not so sure I would be going to things like Hausu at the IFC or W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism at BAM without having been exposed to his glee at certain films (Raising Arizona, So I Married an Ax Murderer) or without my mom's feeding of a precocious five-year-old's interest in Hitchcock, Godzilla, and Universal horror films. read more

And I thought audiovisual archivists were the only ones who got that heated up about choosing formats! read more

Only the successes (or the mega failures) from the deeper past are recalled, giving an skewed sense of what actually happened if one doesn't do proper research. Without that research, the half-remembered past is not a valid touchstone to base an argument on. An incomplete picture of the past creates a false interpretation of the present. read more

Here at AudioVisual Preservation Solutions we scour the world for microtrends so you don't have to. More efficient access to YouTube time-wasters means more things to waste time on. This week, cassette scratching from France. A little of the first goes a long ... read more

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 ... read more

There was discussion of power and control; of going to these cthonic, isolated, fragile locations full of 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. read more

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. read more

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. read more

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 data.gov are and be considering how we can be more open in ways beyond content and access. read more