The shift to digital workflows has necessitated a major shift in how we conceptualize the use and storage of assets. Creators, owners, records managers, and archivists are no longer the sole stakeholders in how documents and materials are taken care of long term. There is now a greater need to understand data management, technological infrastructure, and the particulars of software, hardware, files types, codecs and more. Likewise, the ease of creating and versioning digital works has led to an explosion in the number of files (as well as the number of network, local, and detachable drives to squirrel them away on), resulting in an overwhelming bevy of content to track and maintain. In a corporate or institutional environment, a creator or overseer of digital assets must either educate oneself on these topics or rely to a greater degree on IT departments to help manage their materials.

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 I see it, providing solutions to problems means applying one’s areas of expertise to derive something that attempts to approach a balanced mix of functionality, efficiency, usability, and elegance. In the world of archives and media collections, this means, among other things, making decisions about metadata, file types, storage systems, and distribution systems that support findability, longevity, and flexibility for current and future use. Under an IT mindset, solutions hinge, among other things, more on processing speed, maximizing storage capacity, decreasing time to market or implementation, and monitoring data flows. Of course these things matter to people using or providing access to digital assets, but the paths to the end solution — compression or low resolution, out-of-the-box asset management, decentralized or uncontrolled metadata creation, etc. — are fraught with hazards for media. By not taking a more active role in the policy and decision making process, caretakers for media collections put the safety and usability of their assets at risk as well as their own ability to perform their responsibilities to the collection and to the organization.

At their core files are just data, but the ways we manage, use, interact, and create with them rely on intellectual, humanistic, or organizational structures that step away from data and back into nuance, language, and user experience. When we bandy about terms such as digital archive and digital asset management, we are actually using broad categorizations to simplify references to a host of complex and distinct solutions for working with file-based collections, solutions that vary greatly depending on the avenues of access and the functional needs of the organization.

This is especially true with audiovisual content, which presents much different needs and distribution methods than straight text files, including considerations for time-based presentation, aesthetic quality, and the management of very large files. For example, distributing assets publicly over the Internet may utilize lower-quality, “access copy” versions of content in a system designed to promote simple search and playback through streaming. Distributing assets internally to a marketing or development department may instead utilize high-resolution copies of content that can be downloaded and edited into new assets, retrieved through a system that promotes advanced search and integration with editing software. But both of these solutions only support findability and usability for media collections; they do not represent the needs of preservation for the highest resolution originals or preservation masters. These versions are infrequently accessed and, for audiovisual content, may range in the hundreds or thousands of gigabytes per file, thus solutions may include offline storage and ought to include redundancy and geographical separation of backups.

This is one area where the interpretation of what an archive is and what an archive does come into conflict. In environments such as email programs, “archiving” has traditionally been used to mean moving data off into deep storage so it is not eating up active space needed for incoming information. This is considered to be data maintained primarily under retention policies and is not meant to be quickly searched for and called up. Deep storage has its place as a strategy, but it should not be confused with the true sense or value of an archive or collection. An archive is a living resource within an organization, maintaining legacy assets but also bringing in new creations, and providing accessibility to both…If the proper resources and support are allocated to the archive itself. Archives are long-term investments, paying off over time by extending the usability of short-term investments, i.e., acquisition and creation of assets. Shortchanging the archive’s ability to do its work now devalues past and current efforts by denying them a future.

Archivists have centuries of tradition, learning, and research which have informed the development of current practices, with an increasing focus on managing digital collections. IT professionals have their own areas of expertise, but these do not expand to all aspects of dealing with file-based materials. Tracking complex relationships among related or derivative assets… Providing accessibility at the intellectual rather than just the physical level… Selecting file formats and codecs based on potential longevity and fidelity to analog source originals… Developing metadata models that adhere to professional standards and that support the activities of collection management… These and more are areas of digital archiving that rely on data practices but that include considerations well beyond those of ground level data management. Today’s archival professional needs to collaborate with IT — as well as many other departments — but we also need to step up and take back control of those aspects of our collections that rightfully belong in our care.

— Joshua Ranger

I liked to think that I distinguished myself through my abstruse selectivity of which teams or athletes I focused my attentions on, leaning heavily towards the underdog, the old-timer nearing or beyond 40 years of age (in a pre-PED era, mind you), the outlier, the mudder… Watching Dale Murphy pop home runs in a sad, empty Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was much more interesting to me than another Montana-Rice downfield bomb.

I have a much deeper appreciation of Pete Incaviglia than you do.

(Caveat: At that time, my hometown was well outside the terrestrial broadcast range of all but one professional sports team, so I really didn’t have a lot of choice in what teams the networks or cable would occasionally show, and thus for whom I would root.)

I think about this period a lot because of the relation between the sorting and arranging of baseball cards on which I spent many a weekend and my current workaday career. But the topic resonated in a different way after reading a recent-ish article in the Times about the Major League Baseball archives and the cataloging/tagging of footage. Sports and porn have been traditional leaders in the development of video technologies and distribution methods, and the article shows that MLB is working at a high level of metadata capture, and making that metadata work for them.

The amount of intellectual control evinced in the article is impressive, and the methodology/workflow in its documentation is, for lack of better words, reallyreallycool (he said, pushing his glasses up). Switching to the other side of the plate to bat, however, I think there are some further instructive lessons here. First, no archivist should feel inadequate. MLB has a number of incentives driving these efforts, incentives that are several degrees of magnitude greater — in terms of fiscal economics — than for most AV collections. The almost hourly need during baseball season to distribute information and content externally via the web and broadcast programs, internally via workflows that monitor games and umpiring, and archivally via the identification and preservation of historical events lies outside the norm of most archives.

The second lesson is also about economic incentive, but of social economics rather than strict monetary concerns. One facet at the core of the popularity of sports is narrative. Stories from baseball’s past are repeated at least yearly; stories from a career are repeated at least weekly; stories from a season are repeated at least daily. There are grand narrative arcs and smaller subplots that help define, reinforce, assess, predict, and synthesize events, personalities, and the organization as a whole. The footage of Yogi Berra jumping into Don Larsen’s arms after his World Series perfect game is hauled out during the post-season to help give shape to what is about to occur and why it matters (i.e., why you should be watching): these are the moments when the pressures make the normal activities of the regular season more difficult, when the great ones rise to the challenge, and when there is a constant opportunity to see something historic happen from unexpected sources. After the 2010 post-season, footage of Roy Halladay will now be forever linked with the Don Larsen footage. The new story snaps neatly into the continuing narrative to expand and confirm: Heros still exist. The present is tied to the past, which establishes an underlying structure of stability to the unpredictability of life. There is value derived in looking back and hope in looking forward.

Based on my ramblings, the lesson here obviously isn’t one on proper gramatical and logical structure. Rather, what I think we can pull out from the MLB experience is, at a basic level, further proof in the value of a comprehensive approach to metadata. The greater the degree of intellectual control, the greater the degree of reuse of materials. Enabling deeper levels of access promotes more extensive access and novel uses of assets, and these efforts can be enhanced and made more efficient by identifying the parameters of what data is most pertinent.

At a more complex level is a lesson in the high value of actively cultivating social significance and in developing stories around collections to better advocate for them and promote access. The past occurs[?] and is documented, but it requires exposure and contextualization to maintain wider relevance. Archives occur (though they are not necessarily documented), but their contents require exposure and contextualization to promote their relevance within an institution and to a wider public.

It is not that un-monetized content is less valuable, but its true value is just more difficult to express — just as it’s more difficult to define the benefit of the utility infielder, the bunter, or the long reliever in comparison to the power hitter and the staff ace. Of course, that divide in baseball has been narrowed by the hard work done by stat head sabermetricians over the recent past number of years. Hmmm…

— Joshua Ranger

Background:

On World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2009, AVPS announced the Your Archive Deserves Advocacy! initiative (http://www.avpreserve.com/avpsresources/about-yada/), an effort focused on promoting the people and stories behind archives as well as providing resources that support advocacy. As part of the YADA! initiative, and in celebration of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2010, AVPS is funding three separate scholarship awards to help offset the cost of attending Foundation Center training classes. The Foundation Center is a national nonprofit service organization whose mission is to strengthen the nonprofit sector by providing information and resources that enable improved knowledge and access to philanthropic organizations. Their in-person and web-based workshops offer guidance and resources to help organizations obtain grants and other funding opportunities. The Foundation Center has regional centers for resources and training in Atlanta, Cleveland, New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC. For more information on the Foundation Center and the classes they offer, visit foundationcenter.org.

How does Fundraising Relate to Advocacy?

The activities involved in caring for audiovisual collections extend well beyond daily efforts such as arrangement, cataloging, reformatting, and providing access. These other activities involve an equally extensive set of endeavors that can roughly be defined as advocacy, including:

• - acquisition of funding
• - communication with administration and other organizational departments
• - public promotion and outreach
• - planning
• - community involvement, and more

Becoming an effective advocate for archival collections means becoming a proactive participant in the management and planning of all aspects of their preservation and long-term maintenance. This includes the ability to articulate the importance, needs, and goals of the collection to a broad audience, including potential funders.

The Scholarship:

Three applicants per year will receive registration to onsite or online Foundation Center classes plus actual travel cost reimbursement, up to $1000 total combined per award. Calls for submissions will take place in the spring through the auspices of the AMIA Awards and Scholarship Committee and awards will be announced in the fall.

Look for the announcement in the spring, and thank you to the AMIA Awards and Scholarship Committee and the AMIA Board for their help in this and continued support of education in archiving and preservation.

The Organizations:

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions
http://www.avpreserve.com
facebook.com/AVPreserve
twitter.com/AVPreserve

Association of Moving Image Archivists
http://www.amianet.org
twitter.com/AMIAnet

]]> http://www.avpreserve.com/news/avps-funds-new-amia-scholarship-to-honor-world-day-for-audiovisual-heritage/feed/ 0 http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/movement/ http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/movement/#comments Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:38:27 +0000 Josh http://www.avpreserve.com/?p=2718 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... ]]> My family is the type that loves nothing more than teasing one another. Well, maybe some fresh caught Steelhead or Chinook on the barbeque and an assortment of West Coast microbrews rank pretty high, too, but such activities can easily run concomitantly to teasing.

It is through such family bonding that I found out I have a (according to them) somewhat unorthodox running style. Intense and scowling focus, straight up posture with high knees; in pictures it tends to look more like I’m high-step marching rather than running.

My form is something I developed on my own, not really thinking there was anything odd about it. When I finally got back into running at the age of mumblemumblemumble after a mumblemumblemumble year hiatus, I joined a large group training for a 10-mile race. When we started getting up in the 8-10 mile range in our weekly group runs, my running partner and I started noticing we were all doing the shuffle run. At some point, your body and mind give out, but driven by momentum or some reptilian brain automated muscle twitches, you just keep going. Your form is bad, you’ve slowed noticeably, and your feet are barely leaving the ground like some teenager shuttling around in flipflops, but you keep moving – creeping, really – along.

As I got deeper into running, at some point I decided a goal was to avoid the shuffle run. My solution was to always focus on making sure my feet pushed off and fully left the ground, forcing myself when tired to keep lifting my legs and maintain my pace – thus resulting in my high-steppin’ style. There are likely a number of inefficiencies in my form due to the heavy dependence on my thighs, but it works for me. I get from the beginning of a run to the end of a run without looking like a zombie, and my speed has increased dramatically since then. The in-between takes a high level of energy and focus, but the end results are well beyond what I thought this aged body was capable of.

I have always been interested in the in-between: the process from here to there; that which is not easily defined as one thing or t’other; the forgotten spaces in cities and buildings that exist where hidden work or unexpected activities go on. Of late I have also been finding that the in-between is becoming a greater focus of concern in explaining the work we do. Many people in media archiving or preservation have likely run into the situation where someone says, “Well why don’t you just digitize it?” One starts with a reel of film or ¼” tape, and then one has a CD or DVD. Bingo bango bongo. Of course they don’t know about the whole process of assessing the content, parameters, and condition of the original; identifying reformatting options, desired outcomes/uses of reformatted materials, file-based preservation strategies, and how those decisions inform one’s selection of deliverables and vendors; and then performing quality control and scheduling periodic review/migration of preservation materials. These considerations are our realm and our work. I don’t exactly know how they get the crème in a Ding Dong; I just want to eat it.

These are the day-to-day kind of in-betweens we think about and deal with. Lots of important decisions to make, but nothing too surprising. However, the management of file-based assets has created a new set of concerns that archivists have to be aware of. 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…

Archivists and collection managers must be aware of these issues, but they very often are not the people responsible for making the related decisions or implementing policies or equipment upgrades. Especially in larger organizations, systems can be part of a much larger networks that services many different departments. Collection management may just be a portion of overall systems management, which itself may be the realm of an IT department, or a higher level organizational manager, or a vendor / contractor hired to perform services. In these cases actions may be taken without consulting all levels of users, and the decision-makers may be acting on not the fullest amount of information or based on more broadly defined needs.

Preservation needs, however, are something different. Preservation goes against the natural order — it is the staving off of the processes of degradation and decay — and that also means, in a sense, going against the directional flow of an organization or certain technological shifts towards thelatestandgreatest in order to best maintain legacy materials in the face of constantly changing work plans or software / hardware versioning. Innovation and change certainly oughtn’t to be rejected out of hand, but caution can take a reasoned approach and play a role in effective advocacy — one of the other sides of the multi-faced die of collection management.

Advocacy itself takes many forms. I think what I’m trying to draw out here is that these forms include the cultivation of institutional awareness and relationships. Archives are often integrated into larger institutional budgets and structures, and are often perceived as a minor organizational piece. Two things here:

1. Archives have the potential to be major players in the fulfillment of organizational missions and goals across a wide array of departments.

2. Open awareness and communication with those other departments regarding their needs as well as how their policies or decisions will affect the longevity of archival materials is one of the keys to proactive, forward-looking collection management.

It is a foregone conclusion that a media collection is fairly useless without means to discovery and access. What cannot be found and viewed is, essentially, non-existent. Parallel to this truism is the fact that a collection which is invisible to its parent institution is bound to remain forgotten, unused, and unsupported. Making a collection findable through catalogs or finding aids is one step; making a collection findable through creating awareness and articulating its organizational value is equally important. The care taken in interactions between people and departments is as valuable as the care taken in migration between formats and storage devices. And I ain’t ya teasing here.

— Joshua Ranger

]]> http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/movement/feed/ 0 http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/on-pahr-with-expanded-federal-support-to-regional-state-archives/ http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/on-pahr-with-expanded-federal-support-to-regional-state-archives/#comments Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:05:13 +0000 Josh http://www.avpreserve.com/?p=2679 ]]> ** A special Guest Post from Michele DeLia**

In spring 2009, US Congressmen Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and John McHugh (R-NY) introduced a bill that would grant a total of $50 million per year for five years to be distributed among every state, earmarked for local and regional archives and libraries that hold valuable historical material related to the cultural heritage and national identity of the United States.

Right now, that bill, Preserving the American Historical Record (the PAHR Act), is under review in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (S. 3227) and the House Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives (H.R. 2256). Backed by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Carl Levin (D-MI), the PAHR Act has the bipartisan co-sponsorship of 7 US Senators and 59 House Representatives. Additionally, the Society of American Archivists, Council of State Archivists, and the National Association of Government Affairs have partnered in support, and organizations as diverse as the National Genealogical Society, National Coalition for History, American Association for State and Local History, American Library Association, Heritage Preservation, and National Association of Secretaries of State, to name a few, have endorsed the PAHR Act.

In its current form, the PAHR Act would authorize the Archivist of the United States of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to administer monies to states via a competitive formula-based grant program. Each state would receive an equal base amount; the remainder of the full grant award would be calculated based on a population/area formula. On top of this, each state would be required to match 50% of the total funds granted. Over a 5 fiscal-year plan, each State Archives (or other state-level organization designated by the Archivist of the United States) would work with the State Historical Records Advisory Board to manage the local grant program. On a yearly basis, the selected organizations would apply for re-grants and submit documentation on their progress and measured outcomes.

As summarized by the National History Coalition, the funding program has been designed to support the following initiatives through preservation and access to historical records:

• Creation of a wide variety of access tools, including archival finding aids, documentary editions, indexes, and images of key records online.

• Preservation actions to protect original historical records from harm, prolong their lifespan, and preserve them for public use through conservation and creation of avenues for access, including digitization projects, electronic records initiatives, and disaster preparedness and recovery.

• Initiatives to use historical records in new and creative ways to convey the importance of state, territorial, and community history, including the development of teaching materials for K-12 and college students, active participation in National History Day, and support for life-long learning opportunities.

• Programs to provide education and training to archivists and others who care for historical records, ensuring that they have the necessary knowledge and skills to fulfill their important responsibilities.

The PAHR Act would not only provide opportunities for local organizations to carry out diverse new projects of national significance, but would also relieve much of the burden from the current federal grant program, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), also called the “funding arm” of the NARA. The NHPRC, the only private/public grant-making body with the primary mission to fund projects that preserve the US historical record, and since 1964 has awarded grants for a wide range of US preservation activities at the federal, non-federal, nonprofit, state, and local levels. However, the NHPRC is not capable of reaching all archival and records-keeping organizations or funding all necessary projects due to the constraints of their allocated budget and parameters of what activities the granted monies may support. For example, its proscribed guidelines do not extend funds towards conserving archaeological artifacts, museum objects, or works of art — all of which may represent valuable information about our nation’s history. Nor does the NHPRC fund cataloging or preservation efforts of books or other library materials, and as a government institution it is unable to fund preservation of privately owned materials or those held in institutions where assets are subject to “withdrawal upon demand for reasons other than those required by law”.

At the regional or local level it is difficult to find the resources and manpower to properly care for the increasing number of materials that exist on a growing number of (often obsolete) formats. Additionally, the existence of these regional collections is not widely known to the public, which results in a lower level of access and therefore a lower level of regional funding — an issue identified by the Council on Library and Information Resources as the Hidden Collection problem. The strain on one organization to undertake the many faceted projects throughout the United States it simply too great. The NHPRC is currently under review for an increase in their granting authorization level. This would be the first increase in the amount available in almost 20 years. PAHR is a necessary supplement to the NHPRC activities no matter what, but if the authorization increase is not approved by Congress the need for PAHR to address the duty of non-governmental local organizations to preserve and share their records with the general population is even greater. Ultimately, PAHR will contribute to a stronger historical US cultural record about our nation from its inception forward.

On July 1, the House Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives cleared H.R.1556 (the bill to reauthorize NHPRC’s available funds from $10 million to $20 million through FY 2014) for review by the full House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Many supporters insist NHPRC needs to increase its funding to meet the demand of maintaining electronic records, and to strengthen best practices at all archival levels via federal/state partnerships. On June 21, the Senate Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security Committee issued a committee report (S. Rep. 111-213) on its version of the NHPRC’s bill (S. 2872), currently on the Senate floor calendar, however it authorized NHPRC at only $10 million.

It is important that this version of H.R.1556 is approved, reaches a full vote before the House and passes, because the increased funds will relieve and enable the NHPRC to fund more US preservation initiatives, and empower organizations to form state/federal partnerships at the local level to build upon and implement best archival practices and standards in their communities. If the PAHR Act is also approved, there would be a total of $60-70 million each year dedicated to the preservation of our nation’s identity, which in part will strengthen the overall security of our country from privacy breaches over time. Contacting your congressmen with respect to each of these bills is a great way to make an impact in passing the PAHR Act.

Despite the high level of sponsorship and endorsement the PAHR Act has built up, it still has a tough row to hoe in getting approved by Congress — let alone just getting to the point of an up-or-down vote. Even in boom times spending on the arts is not extremely popular, and we archivists have not always been able to articulate what we do in a way that incentivizes the provision of adequate levels of monetary support. With the explosion of electronic records, the reliance on the Internet as a primary source for information, and the daily development of new technologies, the greater our need for more trained information specialists and resources to preserve our history. The funding provided through the PAHR Act and NHPRC can save and share with the public valuable records that have been put aside, ignored, or forgotten.

This is where you, fellow archivists, professional small collections managers, librarians, students, history buffs, Americans, or American enthusiasts come in. The Society of American Archivists (SAA) has done a great job on their site (http://www.archivists.org/pahr/) of providing a comprehensive list of resources, letter templates, fact sheets, contacts, etc., as a guideline to help support the bill. Here is an abbreviated action plan to show how you can most easily and efficiently help pass these bills:

Little Action Plan (PAHR LAP)

1. Call your senators and representatives at their Washington offices (preferred) or visit their regional offices. Personal contact such as phone calls get a better response than email.

2. Ask to speak with the Legislative Director (or Regional Director).

3. Make a strong case for why the PAHR Act will save and create new jobs, strengthen the nation’s security, and ease the burden on NHPRC’s grant program.

4. Request that your Senator and/or Representative co-sponsor the bill by contacting the offices of the main Sponsors:

(Senators)
Bryan Hickman (Sen. Hatch)
202-224-5251, Bryan_Hickman@judiciary-rep.senate.gov

Harold Chase (Sen. Levin)
202-224-6221, Harold_Chase@levin.senate.gov

(Representatives)
Mike Iger (Rep. Hinchey)
202-225-6335, michael.iger@mail.house.gov

Jason Miller (Rep. McHugh)
202-225-4611, jason.miller@mail.house.gov

5.Go to opencongress.org and compose a follow-up letter online.

6.Let other people know about this by emailing and posting to Facebook and Twitter.

Other Resources:
Society of American Archivists on PAHR
Senate on Homeland Security and Government Affairs
House Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives
State Historical Records Advisory Boards (Google List)

— Michele DeLia

]]> http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/on-pahr-with-expanded-federal-support-to-regional-state-archives/feed/ 0 http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/gettin-trashed/ http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/gettin-trashed/#comments Thu, 27 May 2010 17:59:07 +0000 Josh http://www.avpreserve.com/?p=2611 ]]> 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. The other week some fresh-faced new college grads, probably out looking for their first apartment, walked by my window. A piece of conversation floated in, something about how the air in Brooklyn is the freshest and loveliest around.

I felt sorry for these kids, who apparently had grown up next to a sewage processing plant or the municipal dump. Or maybe I should have felt happy for them for moving somewhere new and sad for myself — during a recent trip back to Oregon a major event several times a day was simply standing outside and taking deep breaths.

Whatever the case, these thoughts reminded me of a Radiolab episode from a few years back about the archeology of trash (“The Greatest Hits of Ancient Garbage” July 29, 2007).

The main story was about the discovery of what turned out to be an ancient dumping ground in the Egyptian desert that contained around 1000 years of discarded items. Of course there were the requisite pottery shards and household items — the jelly jar drinking glasses and giant wooden spoon wall hangings of their day — but the major find was massive amounts of 2000 year old paper fragments. And this warn’t no Michener-by-the-pound or Diet for a Small Planets. No, these papers include contemporary anti-heroic responses to Homer, non-canonical or alternate versions to christian bible texts, and surprising forms of popular literature.

These discoveries present starkly different views to accepted knowledge and interpretation of the ancient world, opening up not only our knowledge of the past but also our understanding of the creation and transmission of culture. Is there something inherent in a cultural work like The Iliad that makes it ‘timeless’ and something that makes responsive or satiric literature too bound to a certain period to be memorable? Or is there some kind of guiding hand of a canon-forming elite that enforces their taste on the masses? Or is it just random fate that allows one thing to be maintained and passed down while other things fall by the wayside through no fault of their own? There is as much to learn in what we keep as there is in what we decide to discard.

There are obvious correlations here to selection in archives and the concept that we don’t always know what materials will be relevant to the future. However, I think there’s something else here that can be gleaned from thinking not about the content of what was found, but rather how exactly this great discovery was enabled. One thing to consider is that the great luxury of analog materials is the potential for persistence in spite of — or even because of — neglect. Here these papers were, sitting buried in sand for century upon century and yet, though it will take more than a lifetime to piece the fragments back together and translate them, the majority of the content will be readable or at least viewable. We will have no such luck with digital media. Think about the difficulty of trying to open files from 15 years ago and try to imagine letting your hard drive sit for 2000 years before accessing it again. Heck, I could create an InDesign file at home on CS4 and then take it to work and I wouldn’t be able to access the file on CS3.

This issue underscores the great need for having a proactive preservation plan for digital media, including format and codec selection, obsolescence monitoring, migration plans, well-formed metadata sets, and more. What this underscore underscores, however, is that there has been a lack of tools and guidelines for digital preservation that have kept up with the quickly shifting requirements and structures of media and systems. There have been some strides made lately (including [blush] some of our own efforts), and many organizations are hacking through this issue (such as NDIIPP, FADGI, Blue Ribbon Task Force, and others), but there’s still plenty that’s unsettled.

When contemplating the challenges of digital preservation, it feels like a struggle fought in quicksand, tiring and futile. A common reaction is, well let’s just move everything back to analog. I don’t think this is an option now. First, the access digital materials have created and the possibilities they hold are just too great… and the amount of space and infrastructure we would need to store everything created as physical materials is just too great to be feasible. That’s why there are trash heaps and garbage is shipped across state lines for deposit. Second, this is our moment as archivists, and as a society, to do something big, to identify a major problem and find the solution. We can no longer be that anonymous Egyptian who has a cultural impact by having stored his papyrus in the ‘circular file’. It’s time to make a commitment, take some action, and manage our digital materials the same way we know we can the analog. Our days may be like sands through the hourglass, but our lives have greater agency than that.

— Joshua Ranger

]]> http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/gettin-trashed/feed/ 0 http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/all-well-and-good/ http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/all-well-and-good/#comments Mon, 03 May 2010 18:35:15 +0000 Josh http://www.avpreserve.com/?p=2554 ]]> One of the topics that led me to a career in archiving — perhaps out of fascination or perhaps out of dread — is the speed at which a culture can begin to view a pattern or idea as a set-in-stone, age-old tradition. The presidential pardon of a Thanksgiving turkey is spoken and thought of as if it were instituted along with Article II of the Constitution, but it was actually first performed by George H W Bush in 1989. The historical record preserved in archives informs us of What-Was, but, of equal importance, it reminds us that What-Is Wasn’t-Always.

Of course, though this area is of great concern to me, that does not mean I am immune to it, as I was reminded by a New York Times Magazine On Language column a couple of weeks ago (“Wellness”, April 12, 2010). I had had no idea that the term ‘wellness’ was relatively new and had been relatively controversial in its application. I had grown up with the word, and had even taken the required Wellness class in high school, a course that combined Health and P.E. I didn’t think much of it at the time — just another core requirement taught by one of the cadre of football coaches to suffer through — but in hindsight there was plenty of packaging going on. Chapter 1 in the textbook was a long form definition of wellness, and the class was continually sold as a great advance in teaching innovation (MWF we’re going to watch filmstrips about health and hygiene, TuTh we’re going to play ping pong or go bowling or something.).

All that Wellness, and yet still I was not immune to a short-sighted view of culture.

Lucky for me (and for you) I spotted a more interesting trail splitting off from Memory Lane. I’m still hacking my way through some of the undergrowth, but I began to consider archives as part of the health-wellness continuum of institutions. There are a number of factors that are considered to point to the health of an organization or industry. Finances, leadership, business models, investments, future prospects — all of the things that are included in Quarterly or Annual Reports to show that things are good and going to get better.

As the Blue Ribbon Task Force report on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access has made clear, there need to be new lines of argument developed to convince stakeholders and decision-makers that investment in preservation is worthwhile. Perhaps one of these new lines is how archives contribute to and reflect on the overall health, the wellness, of an organization. The maintenance of an institutional past through a preserved, accessible archive establishes a source of materials that can contribute to the achievement of an organization’s goals and missions while also developing a respect for the past and long-held traditions that can contribute to organizational pride, employee well-being, and guidance for the future.

There’s a general idea, on-the-ground as it were, that how one treats one’s family, friends, and material goods in one’s private life is a reflection on how that person might interact with or treat others in the public realm. Depending on how much you agree with the Supreme Court’s definition of corporate personhood, this might be a leap here, but perhaps, too, we could say that how an organization treats their archive and history might be interpreted by employees, investors, and the general public as a reflection of how the institution would deal with them. A high level of care and respect for institutional character and past may translate into a view of that organization’s high level of care for people and for producing high quality work. This may not be of direct monetary economic benefit, but it is certainly of social economic benefit that can contribute to the furthering of an organization’s goals.

These are just the rough beginnings of some ideas here. What’s more certain is that we may have gone to the well one too many times with unfocused arguments on why archives are important and preservation should be funded. Nobody would really disagree with that statement, but it doesn’t mean they would take actions to support it. Creating the prompts or incentives for following through with support and funding is where we need to do some focused cross-training in order to start help moving archives — and the culture — further up the wellness continuum.

— Joshua Ranger

]]> http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/all-well-and-good/feed/ 0 http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/marshmallowing-the-troops/ http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/marshmallowing-the-troops/#comments Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:04:28 +0000 Josh http://www.avpreserve.com/?p=2488 ]]> Little known fact: I was a middle school Chubby Bunny champion. A moment of pride? Perhaps not, but when my only other award to that date was 2nd Place Most Interesting Cake in a Cub Scout cake bake off, I was eager to win something.

I have little doubt that the stirring Chubby Bunny competition has since been banned from schools nationwide and any record of it relegated to school newspaper archives…though I hope in my case it hasn’t been (I have never claimed that all archival materials are entirely benign or significant). For those unfamiliar with the particulars, the competitors in this event vie to see who can pack the most marshmallows in one’s mouth while maintaining the ability to fully vocalize “chubby bunny”.

Like I says…

I guess I have marshmallows on the mind (though not on the tongue) in part because I’ve almost made it through another October to April confluence of my formerly beloved holiday themed chocolate covered marshmallow treats (May to December romances ain’t got nothing quite so bittersweet as that relationship). The other reason is because I caught this little (Stay) puff piece on YouTube about The Marshmallow Test, an experiment where young children were presented with a marshmallow and then given the option of eating it or of waiting 15 minutes and then receiving an additional marshmallow:

Two things immediately struck me about this experiment — besides, that is, the memory sensation of gooey sugar melting on my tongue. First was the fact that in the original experiment referenced by the news story the children were tracked to age 18 and it was found that those who waited out the 15 minutes were more likely display the greater levels of self-discipline and focus that lead to life success than those who did not. I think this speaks very well to the idea that the ability to plan and conceptualize future events and goals is an integral part to one’s overall wellness or success. Second to stand out was the association in the results of the test with the idea of instant gratification, of the mindset that what can be gained now is worth more than a greater, extensible future gain that results from more immediate short term investment.

This mindset is a major hurdle in the advocacy and support for archiving and preservation funding. As the excellent Blue Ribbon Task Force report Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-Term Access to Digital Information points out (Read it! http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf), there is great economic and cultural benefit to the preservation of materials. However, despite those benefits, there has been an overall lack of clearly defined statements outlining the value of preservation in ways that sufficiently incentivizes organizations to fund that work.

We feel it in our bones that preserving the cultural and historical record is important — that is why we became archivists in the first place — but the Big Idea capitonyms that drive us (History! The Future! Culture!), while important rallying points, often result in vague arguments for why it is Important to Preserve this Valuable Material. This passion is good, but when an organization is faced with mandates to increase revenues or cut budgets, they are going to grab that marshmallow off the plate, floor, or wherever they can find it in order to attain immediate goals, regardless of the feast of unseen marshmallows down the road that initial fluff could engender.

Our responsibility now is to articulate the reasons why the short-sighted approach to sustaining the use and quality of archival materials is wrong and what the quantifiable benefits of preservation are. These are not necessarily monetary benefits. Economics is a social science, and there are institutional benefits derived from reputation, from fulfilling mission statements, from providing education, and from other identifiable, classifiable achievements. It’s important to point out that this issue will not be addressed solely on an institution by institution basis. The bottom line is the bottom line. But there will also be the need for the incentive provided by a strong Public Policy that outlines practices, gives support, and develops the infrastructure or reasoning that enables organizations to adopt long term preservation strategies. The Blue Ribbon Task Force has hacked a trail through the brush. It’s our time to build on that.

— Joshua “chumby bummy” Ranger

]]> http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/marshmallowing-the-troops/feed/ 1 http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/lead-follow-or-go-out-of-the-way-to-visit/ http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/lead-follow-or-go-out-of-the-way-to-visit/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:12:24 +0000 Josh http://www.avpreserve.com/?p=2269 ]]> 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

]]> http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/lead-follow-or-go-out-of-the-way-to-visit/feed/ 0 http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/transparent-plea/ http://www.avpreserve.com/blog/transparent-plea/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:24:12 +0000 Josh http://www.avpreserve.com/?p=2260 ]]> 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

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