Reading this reminded me of one of my pet peeves, one which I have been trying to avoid encountering the past year and a half: The taken as gospel historical interpretation that film attendance rose and movies solaced us during the Depression. This hoary, supposed truism is marched out whenever financially rough times arise or are spoken about, the current recession included.
History and memory, however, take a slower, more constant rate that looks at the bigger picture. History may or may not be concerned with the trends in communication and information sharing in the early 21st century, but it certainly will not care about who was the fastest to Tweet the news about Michael Jackson’s death.
Chris Lacinak will be addressing the Digital Conversion Interest Group at the American Library Association’s 2010 Midwinter Meeting in Boston this Saturday. Chris will speak on issues around digital video preservation, including reformatting and accessioning born digital video. ALA Midwinter 2010 will take place on January 15-19, 2010 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center [...]
Actually, I think the real problem here is the eternal confusion over preservation and DVDs, something D’Addario almost touches on but doesn’t state clearly enough, and his confusion over the issue is partly what seems to be fueling his anger over Criterion’s dealings. To state it most simply, a DVD is not preservation. It is the result of preservation work, but it is not the preservation. That is done with the film which is eventually transferred to DVD for a wider viewing pleasure.
While you were busy comparison shopping between a Kindle and a Nook this past month, paper books were still being published, including Daniel Eagan’s America’s Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry. He spoke about his review of the first 500 films to be placed on the National Film [...]
Not saying that everything needs to be prioritized to a preservation level, but might people’s habits in how they treat the widespread, everyday non-archival items creep into how everything is treated?
10. www.fileinfo.com lists 202 video file formats.
9. They also list 337 audio file formats.
But this should not lead to a defeatist attitude; we should continue to take our higher responsibilities and standards seriously. This is why I say we do The Best Option at the Time, not Good Enough, because the ethics and standards of our field should not allow us to settle.
Archivists have to know a lot. Probably a lot more small details than any one person can keep in mind. (Do you have all of the Kodak edge codes memorized?) Standards, guidelines, and best practices provide necessary reference and give a structure to our work that we need. Staying updated on new or changing standards is a requirement of performing our work to the best quality possible — and one needs something to do while waiting for the next season of Mad Men to come out on DVD.
A few months ago a friend told me she had heard that you could fix a scratched DVD with toothpaste. There weren’t many details beyond that, but she assumed it meant you just rubbed some toothpaste over any scratches on the disc and that would fill them in somehow…This was the same person whose father lost a number of paperclips in his computers disc drive while trying to poke around to make it run faster, so I wasn’t so sure about her technological reliability.
