‘Lost’ films are not the result of inevitability (unless you believe that humans will inevitably mess things up), but are lost through our own decisions at action or inaction. The celebration of their discovery turns irresponsible behavior into an applauded activity.

When the world ends next December, all of our blathering and fretting over the best way to preserve archival materials will prove to have been in vain. In spite of it all, we trundle ahead with our work like the Sisyphean hero. Normally, I imagine the hill decades or centuries long; if asked my opinion about a new movie or album or current event, I say ask me again in 50 years. But, considering the circumstances, the normal timeline needs accelerating. Thus, the 2011 Archives Year in Review.

So my associative experience with 16mm film projection? Some combination of awe over moon landings, malnourishment (70s health food was a much different [soy-based] beast than what is available today), and primarily discomfort and slight concerns over my safety in case I made a reference to Loni Anderson or Soap. In my mind, viewing a film film in a non-theatrical venue equates to nervousness, low level fear, and hunger.

This seemed to be the point at which some dawning realizations gelled, at which a nagging thought in the back of my head became a lens projecting truth onto the screen of my mind. Archive is a word that should be archived. Archive is a word that is dead.

Integration and collaboration between departments is an essential component of organizational success today -– sharing resources, eliminating redundancy, and open communication help prevent the waste and lack of innovation that can doom an organization to irrelevancy and worse. However, the people who should be in control of setting policies for file management and for selection and implementation of asset management tools — the archivists and records managers out there — have ceded too much ground to a pure IT mindset.

As we sit under the Heritage Eucalyptus Tree amongst our non-destructively opened and carefully unpacked and documented acid-free gift boxes, beaming with joy over finally getting that relapped 4-track 1/4″ audio head, that PAL 3/4″ U-matic deck which just needs a little bit of soldering work, or that secreted away barrel of 1,1,1-Trichloroethane, I feel [...]

However, though this one issue is somewhat resolved, it points to the emergent concern of privacy in this age of accessibility. In the past, the combined issues of distance, a closed/secretive tradition, and format obsolescence helped keep archival materials little accessed and difficult to locate. Digital archives, online catalogs, and electronic finding aids have changed that, but, equally influential, is the shifting cultural paradigm towards greater sharing of information.

In the field of film preservation, cinephilia has often been a driving force. However, there has been a gnawing concern in the back of mind that the worm will turn…or has turned. It seems that fetishization of the object – the reification of film, video, or whatever carrier – can equally be a detriment to preservation.

I make a differentiation on collection of physical items here because the other thing I unashamedly admit to collecting is running across bridges. There is no memento, no photo, no selection of a commemorative key chain/bottle opener/thermometer. It is just the experience.

In Lotto’s rubric, visual clues are information, and to paraphrase him, there is no inherent meaning in information; it’s what we do with the information that creates meaning.