Transparent Plea

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

Media Based Media

I’m not sure what this newish song by The xx has to do with VCRs (besides being one more thing that makes me feel old when seeing that what is familiar to me has become a reference point of retro cool to a younger generation), but I’ve been digging this song. Is it too early to proclaim an audiovisual anthem of the year?

Also makes me wonder about a playlist for other songs inspired by formats or media types. “Watch The Tapes” by LCD Soundsystem? “Brimful of Asha (on the 45)” by Cornershop? Any other ideas? I wonder if Tamagotchi could be considered a file format…

—Joshua Ranger

Ratings, Rankings, & Rantings

Complaints about the movie ratings system as overseen by the MPAA have a long tradition, both from those who think the ratings board is too strict and those who think it’s not strict enough. What these two sides do agree on is that the poor assignation of moving ratings is destroying the fiber of American culture, a polemical kind of stance that has been so often repeated that both sides are tuned out now. But in a recent article New York Times film critic A. O. Scott, prompted by the hulabaloo over scenes of smoking in Avatar, takes a more level-headed and more novel approach to the issue (“This Article Is Not Yet Rated”).

The typical arguments are present (The prudishness about sex, drugs, and swearing seems very unadult…Why isn’t there the same level of concern regarding violence…). These kinds of arguments fall along the line of “What’s wrong with showing ‘real’ life with all of its grime up on the screen?” The more novel take I cite seems to have been developed from some ideas Scott was pushing around in an earlier ArtsBeat blog post that is more specifically about smoking on film (“Movies and Vices: Made for Each Other”), part of a line of reasoning that I found a bit more compelling and better expressed.

What I gleaned as one of the core argument from each piece is that the greatness of cinema is in the beauty of the image, the beauty of storytelling, and the creation of a dreamworld of sorts that we access through viewing and are able to keep segmented into its proper place as fantasy and not real life. The other half of this argument is that there isn’t really much evidence that people are compelled to imitate the acts they see on screen, which is one of the big arguments for ratings and censorship. There’s some nice paradoxical reasoning here: You can’t say that moving images dig into the mind and inspire people to do ill, but moving images dig into the mind and inspire people.

So how can this claim be valid? Is it just self-serving, preaching to the choir argument that the prudes are wrong about the power of cinema but the cool kids are right about the power of cinema?

I would say that there is a difference here that is based in temporality. The Negative Effects side assumes immediate inspiration: Someone will see something and copy it. The Positive Effects side is about a long-term inspiration, one that’s associated more with the nebulous concepts of art and culture. The results of this kind of inspiration cannot be easily measured or defined in a cause and effect manner, and therefore are more difficult to make a claim for against the immediate.

Relating this more closely to the audiovisual archiving field, the outlines of this argument can be related to the argument of why it so important to save materials that do not necessarily seem culturally relevant now. In the here and now, one type of content – one inspiration – is defined by what seems important…now. Preserving all materials in spite of their immediate importance instead takes into consideration the long-term growth and persistence of culture, of an organization, or a society.

What is happening now is our culture, and we cannot exist outside of it, but it’s a living thing that continues to change and grow. It is our responsibility to maintain the works of the present as well as those of the past that have influenced it so that future generations will continue to be nurtured by culture and continue to nurture it themselves.

— Joshua Ranger

Collective Individualism

New York Times Columnist (and fellow Oregonian) Nicholas Kristof was interviewed on WNYC’s On The Media last month about his approach to being what they termed an “advocacy journalist.”

The gist of it is, advocacy seems to be much more effective when approached as the story of a single individual, that the desire to give aid or help dampens when faced with too many people to think about. I was reminded of a section in Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being where she writes of the difficulty of trying to comprehend the thousands of deaths caused in a South Seas ferry accident. Overwhelmed by the numbers, she experiences more pain over not being able to feel for their suffering than she can muster for their actual suffering. However, as the research study Kristof cites suggests, that decrease in sympathy and the impetus to help doesn’t even need that many people to start taking effect; it begins when the number of people rises to two.

Now I’m not sure if we should be patting ourselves on the back or preparing a suit for copyright infringement, but Kristof’s take on the issue is the same as the base building block of our YADA! initiative — to tell individual success stories about archivists as a means of advocacy and of inspiration to others.

But seriously, it’s a widespread concept used across many sectors in various approaches. We chose to tell success stories because there seems to be plenty of focus on the opposite as people get caught up in the list of problems laid out ahead, almost inversing the old quote about success having a thousand fathers. Making people aware of the challenges faced in media archiving has its place in garnering support, but maintaining that backing and further encouraging its growth means showing the positive results of support.

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I think the idea expressed by Kristof and in the study can be extrapolated out to other areas of conceptual disconnect. We’ve written before about using specific examples or designing smaller scale, more quickly accomplished projects when starting out with your advocacy efforts to administration or funders. It can also be a way to not feel overwhelmed by 100 Paige boxes full of generic blank audiocassettes, by finding ways to think about them as “individual” segments to be approached one at a time. Every piece of media has a story — both as an object with a history and as content — but that’s something that can be lost when faced with the masses of reels and cassettes and unorganized file structures. Maybe stepping back to “listen” to and relate the individual stories of our media will help us better be able to listen to our media content into the future.

— Joshua Ranger

AVPS Releases New Grant Tracking Calendar (YADA!Cal)

We all know the drill: an e-mail comes through the listserv reminding us that the deadline for the Such & Such Grant for Thus & Thus is two weeks away. This sends us barreling headlong in a mad dash to ferret out some project, any project to cobble together some sort of application for…Or we sit and, before deleting the e-mail from our inbox, think, “Aw, man, I gotta apply for that next year…”

With this in mind AudioVisual Preservation Solutions, as part of our Your Archive Deserves Advocacy! (YADA!) initiative, has developed a free internet calendar that lists deadlines, reminders, links, and short descriptions of grants available for media archiving and preservation related projects. Using the .ics file format through the assistance of iCal Exchange, you can subscribe to the calendar and its updates through iCal, Outlook, Google Calendar, or a number of other calendar programs. Subscribing to the calendar feed will insert the “events” into your calendar program of choice so that you can more easily track and plan for future granting cycles. Events will be defined as their own set within your calendar which you can display or hide as you see fit through your program’s settings. As new deadlines are announced or new granting opportunities discovered we will update the main calendar. Those changes will be reflected in your own subscription.

Check out our Tools page or the Subscription Instructions for more information about the YADA! Archiving & Preservation Grants Calendar (YADA!Cal).

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Sometimes it seems funding opportunities do arise suddenly and require a quick reaction to capitalize on. However, any Development Department will tell you that those opportunities are a result of planning, cultivation, and engagement, and that the overall approach to establishing sustainability must be proactive, not reactive. Becoming a better advocate for your collections means becoming more aware and communicating more about the issues that can affect your collection both negatively and positively. One way to start filling in some of the gaps in awareness is to be prepared, and help prepare others in your organization, for funding opportunities before they flutter by again.

— Joshua Ranger

WEB On The Web On MLK

I’ve been happy today to see / hear all of the newly found or released recordings of Martin Luther King, Jr. I think it speaks a lot to the importance of audiovisual materials and archives to the formation and continuity of society. I also think Martin Luther King, Jr. would be the first to admit that his work and success was built upon the work of many others that came before him, and would need to be continued by many others after him. In that spirit, from the Dept of Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst, a documentary of the dedication of W.E.B. Du Bois’ homesite in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1969:

One person can be an inspiration and symbolize much that is beyond his or her original reach, but history is built by the millions. Hopefully that singular inspiration will also create a desire to dig deeper and discover more that history has to offer. Happy researching, and Happy MLK Day!

— Joshua Ranger

Making Hollywood Myths

he New York Times Business section had an article today about the financial difficulty MGM is having (“In Hollywood, Grappling With Studios’ Lost Clout“). While MGM seems to be the worst off, the article suggests that the situation is representative of the problems and lowered values that all film studios are having.

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.

This statement has bugged me for years, possibly because I don’t like to follow accepted wisdom without vetting it first, but also because it seemed like the kind of thing that merely sounds true. Something that gets postulated once, seems to make sense, and then is repeated without further research. True, some of the financial problems MGM and others now face are related to more complicated issues of debt load, corporate structuring, and lowered credit availability, but they still aren’t actually making that much money from movies. As the article points out, MGM only released one film in 2009 and the film-making arms of other better-off studios / entertainment companies are not considered the major part of the corporate value.

So if we’re in the midst of a recession, and are being constantly told that therefore we should be attending the movies to drown our sorrows, why are the studios not more well off? Well, if you review the numbers from the first years of the Great Depression, you find a similar story when, in fact, four of the five major studios filed for bankruptcy or went into receivership. Tino Balio in The American Film Industry (pages 255-256) points out the following statistics:

Average Weekly Attendance (in Millions):
1929: 80
1932: 60
1933: 60

Studio Profits (in $Millions)

Of course the studios did recover and had become highly profitable again by the 1940s. Perhaps this end result is where the belief in the studios’ success through the Depression comes from, but the re-emergence is only half the story.

To me, this underscores the importance of archives and of promoting the actual work that archivists and preservationists do. Somewhat like a “What have you done for me lately?” attitude, there is a “Whatever has happened most lately is how things have always been” attitude towards history. Without the archival research done by Tino Balio (and the existence of that research material) we would have no argument against believing that the final state of the film industry during the Depression was its actual state during the entire period. Likewise, without documentation and stories about the work it takes to preserve, restore or even just maintain a piece of media, the fact of those necessary efforts are subsumed by the existence of a completed instantiation. “It’s on DVD so it’s all good”, besides being plain wrong, is all denouement and no rising action, none of the interesting or important part of the tale.

Hollywood is not the original dream factory. The ability to create myths or gloss over history existed first in our minds. The means of distribution are just more powerful nowadays. The wonderful thing about being an archivist is the dedication to preserving both the beauty of the myth and beauty of the underlying truth for discovery by all.

— Joshua Ranger

Things That Shouldn’t Be Archived #4 — Holiday Edition

It’s an old one, but the upcoming holiday made me think of it. Many people are incredulous at how tightly the King estate controls use of MLK’s works and image. This commercial makes me feel like maybe that’s not such a bad thing:

I mean, Abe Lincoln and George Washington selling sheets and towels, that just makes sense — but could you imagine being bombarded with similar type ads featuring King all weekend?

— Joshua Ranger

Facing Friendsterly Fire

I have a confession to make: Tradition holds that my lineage comes from one of the Lost Tribes of Friendster. I think this news story confirms the family lore.

Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of ‘Friendster’ Civilization

The scenario is ludicrous, but like good comedy (and horror) can do this piece from The Onion reflects an anxiety gnawing at the larger society. In this case, the fear that the digital world moves too fast for us to keep up, that we are always in danger of becoming culturally obsolete, and that whatever we are “in to” is actually a lame waste of time. I don’t really have a good argument in defense of the relative coolness of my own tastes, but I could argue that our fear of the speed of the digital age is somewhat misplaced.

Not scientifically but conceptually thinking, time moves at different rates. We can speak of watching a film as a short 2 1/2 hours or of a long day at work, or marvel at the quickness in the passing of a year. In the experience of the everyday, time does not seem to be on our side. It’s something we struggle against to slow down or speed up. Because we are in the midst of technological or cultural changes they seem to come at us furiously, constantly shifting the playing field and testing our skills at adaptation. Part of that adaptation is mocking what we left behind — that is, of course, until it shifts into an object of nostalgia.

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.

This doesn’t mean we should trash content we currently find to be culturally insignificant. Preservation of the day-to-day record is what will enable the future to interpret the past — not necessarily through just its content but also through the fact of its existence and formulation. This is where our responsibilities as archivists lie, but it’s also where our anxiety over the speed of the digital age should be more focused and transformed into positive actions. There are an overwhelming number of issues surrounding the preservation of digital materials, but there are also a number of standards, guidelines, and recommendations being produced by organizations like The Library of Congress, IASA, PrestoSpace, and even little old us. Shifts in the digital landscape make us feel like we’re being left behind. That feeling is exacerbated by inaction, but, more importantly, it is mitigated by having a digital strategy in place that can transform those seismic seeming shifts into minor, day-to-day events that are easily addressed.

So if you haven’t already, start making a plan. For those of you that have planned out a digital preservation strategy, where did you start and what resources did you find helpful? The only thing I beg of you is please please please have good descriptive and contextual metadata. I don’t want some future generation finding something like the above video, and then not be able to tell that it’s satire and start to think that we were, like, totally lame. Embarrassing!

— Joshua Ranger

Up Selling Selling Out

Bono made a spot of noise in a recent New York Times op-ed piece where he advocated stricter intellectual property controls over digital media. Much of the immediate reaction branded him as a new Lars Ulrich, the Metallica drummer who brought suit against Napster for promoting the illegal downloading of music, but Krist Novoselic, the bassist from Nirvana, wrote a response in the Seattle Weekly supporting Bono’s points.

Essentially, Bono and Novoselic argue that piracy and/or the inability to realize high return on content hamper artistic expression rather than promote it because creators do not earn enough money to be able to focus on their work or invest in producing a higher quality product. This is similar to an argument put forth on a recent WNYC Soundcheck (“Smackdown: Music in Commercials”) where Mark Caro and Eric Deggans debated the use of music in advertising.

One side of the argument would claim that licensing music for advertising is the dreaded “selling out” and detracts from the artistry of the music. The other side claims music has always been a commercial venture, artists need to make money to live and cannot subsist on record sales, and licensed songs expose the music to people who may not have heard it otherwise. Of course, this last point for increased exposure is also one those advocating looser intellectual property controls use.

This is one of those unending circular arguments that will likely never achieve resolution — there are too many emotional and monetary issues wrapped up in it for anybody to concede anything. That’s all fine and good for scholarly debates, but as archivists well know, trying to muck through these issues in real world scenarios is not all that pleasant. We typically find ourselves stuck in the middle of that mire, pulled by our responsibility to provide access to as many people as possible and our responsibility to legal and ethical concerns. Anyone who has ever done a rights assessment of an audiovisual work — especially one created pre-Internet distribution — quickly begins to wish there were no copyright laws. But that review is a necessary component of enabling access. The problem is not that copyright exists, but rather that as currently written the laws are too arcane for the laity to interpret and follow.

As you can see from my own circular spin on the topic, it’s not an issue to be solved in this forum. Perhaps, as with quicksand, the solution is to relax and float to the top rather than struggle and sink further. In other words, there may be ways to use the problems we encounter with copyright to promote the difficulties archives run into. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard or read, “Hey, why isn’t that on DVD/CD/Etc. yet?” with the suggestion being that whoever owns the material is stupid, lazy, and/or greedy for not releasing the work for consumption by others. Excluding Orphan works, the reasons are often related to issues of cost, a large chunk of which is typically the price of obtaining copyright clearances for all relevant parties. It took decades for Killer of Sheep, one of the great American films, to be commercially released mainly because of the cost of music licensing. And famously, the great Civil Rights documentary Eyes on the Prize has been in and out of limbo for years because the original licensing deals ended and have not been able to be fully renewed. The problem isn’t always that one single clearance is too expensive; multiple smaller licenses will add up or it can be difficult to even figure out who or where the rights holder is.

As we have seen with Congress addressing the issue of Orphans, it takes years of advocacy and work to effect meaningful change in the law. If we want change rather than evasion or stagnation we need to make it a point of discussion with the powers that be as well as the general public. Getting people to admit there is a problem is the first step to recovery. So next time your cousin starts complaining about how The Six Million Dollar Man isn’t available on DVD, explain how much both would cost in today’s dollars (Steve Austin’s upgrades and the home video licensing) and create some wider exposure for our work.

— Joshua Ranger

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