Thinking Local

I believe I’ve written before about how lucky I feel to have grown up in a pre-cable, VHF/UHF era where “local affiliate” seemed like something more relevant than just the people complaining what time Jay Leno is on and deciding whether Days of Our Lives airs at 1:00 or 3:00. In my hazy memory it denotes those local or regional personalities who seemed so Big Time; the too-bright lighting and low quality video that exposed how chintzy television sets actually are and how much makeup and hair styling is required to (try and) make people look good; the idiosyncratic collection of airtime filler collected from various licensing deals over the decades (and which gave me my early and defining film history education). I would guess that this was how viewers in the southeast would have experienced Turner Broadcasting (WTBS) in its early days, but, and I don’t know if this true or just the aging curmudgeon in me, but the channel’s shift to a major national presence through cable seems like a profound shift to a certain flattening of localness. I enjoyed CHiPS and Beastmaster as much as anyone, but, irony, kitsch, and nostalgia are the amour fou of cultural consumption and the sub-prime mortgages of cultural capital — intense, ostentatious, and absolutely unsustainable.

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Admittedly, I have to cop to a degree of disingenuousness here. It’s difficult to make an argument for “localness” when, in fact, the areas where I grew up were far from urban centers and depended much more on extended regional networks. This meant that my early television exposure was as much from Portland as it was from Northern California, which means my points of reference are as equally Ramblin’ Rod

as they are Cal Worthington (and his dog, Spot)

One exception to this was the radio. The town where I spent most of my childhood was at the bottom of one of a series of deep vallies in the region, enclosed by major mountain ranges to the east and west and a smaller groups of mountains, hills, and bluffs to the north and south. At that time most transmitters were not powerful enough to reach our little divot, so we had two local radio stations — the Top 40 AM station and the FM news and radio station. Eventually we caught up to the times and the two swapped frequencies, but it took the influence of New Country and Rush Limbaugh to set things right.

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Okay, okay. More disingenuity and exceptions. (Question: Is the unreliable narrator a reliable narrative device if the narrator keeps admitting to unreliability?) There were other regional radio and more local television stations that reached the communities where I lived. Those, of course, would be public broadcasting stations: KSYS Medford (now rebranded as SOPTV Southern Oregon Public Television), KSOR and KSRS radio (now rebranded as part of Jefferson Public Radio), and any other number of public radio stations from distant translators I could tune in on clear, starry nights (as long as I wasn’t listening to the Trail Blazers game).

At that time I don’t think I really understood the organizational and distribution structure of PBS, NPR, and PRI, so it’s difficult to recall the exact division between what was locally produced and what was national. My memories are much more impressionistic along those lines. I remember the wooden Big Bird cutout they used during pledge week on which they taped feathers with donor names and which, even to a six-year-old, looked pretty moth-eaten. I recall getting huffy when All Things Considered or Prairie Home Companion came on because it interrupted the classical music. I remember the satisfaction of seeing the names of businesses I knew or my doctor among the list of funders in the donor bumpers.

This was something different than Ramblin’ Rod or good ol’ Cal. Even though in TV psychology terms I felt like I “knew” them, it was a distant knowledge. They were far-flung entities I could imagine meeting but couldn’t imagine ever getting the chance to do so. Even if I had gotten the chance, I know now that it would have been a depressing let down, all polyester, faded paint, and desperation. But public media was something different. It was just there, dependable. The people involved were the people I saw at the mall, the parents of schoolmates, the people who did things because, well, that was part of living in a community.

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I’ll give you a minute to wipe the treacle from your computer screen. It was not my intention to get all Mayberry here — I did after all gather all my truck and humped it to New York City when I got the chance — but one of the great lessons of living in New York is just how scalable “local” is. Yes, WNET is a major producer of national PBS programming, but that doesn’t subsume their local commitment. For a number of years in the 1970s and 80s, they produced TV Lab, a program which gave space to video artists like Nam June Paik and Bill Viola and to experimental documentaries and dramatic features.

The lower east side of my hometown was an RV park at the County Fairgrounds, but if it had been a thriving arts community maybe we would have had similar programming. But even beyond NET are things like NYC TV and Radio that air programs about and for local neighborhoods, music, and cultural groups, or the long tradition of public access television now supported by the Manhattan Neighborhood Network

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As a jaded New Yorker I am contracted to at least act like I disdain my small time roots (though, really, people get locked into neighborhood mentalities here that are just as isolated as growing up in rural areas). However, local is not small. Local is an area one defines through geography and accessibility and the individual urge to expand those definitions. Local television and radio, especially as expressed through public media and public broadcasting, bring us a look at the world while bringing us a connection to our neighbors. And this is why we work to preserve such content, to recall and reenforce those memories and those connections.

— Joshua Ranger

Ghana

Things That Shouldn’t Be Archived #9 — Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect

As you no doubt heard, the Original Champagne Lady Norma Zimmer passed away recently. This was sad news to me because I felt rather a close connection to Lawrence Welk’s stable of performers. Though I didn’t grow up during the height of its popularity, The Lawrence Welk Show reruns have been a staple of Public Broadcasting for decades. And, I don’t know if this makes me sound incredibly cool or like the nerdiest loser around, but, I spent many a Saturday evening in college eating dinner with the show and concocting elaborate, imaginary backstories for the performers, stories full of dark character flaws and tense relationships that betrayed their happy family onscreen presentation.

Ah, youth! And the entertainment options of the low income college student! Anyway, one of the actually interesting things about watching Lawrence Welk was seeing all of the patterns and repetitions that occurred over the years, or even within shows: Costumes and sets re-used, camera angles and edits (and the same exact camera progression used for the first half of a song and the second half), and the Welkian set of standard songs.

Unfortunately, the same way that costumes get a little threadbare over the years, the songs, too, seemed to follow a natural rate of decay. Whereas it may start out as something actually pleasant, like this:

Neil LeVang

It would soon degrade into well intentioned kitsch, if a blandly literalized interpretation. Though you can’t help but love the twins:

Otwell Twins and Aldridge Sisters

And then finally, it stumbles into full blown Las-Vegas-pills-and-booze-bloat:

Guy and Ralna

Not sure if this is the kind of education that PBS meant to provide. Let’s leave it off with some Norma to bring a little effervescence back.

— Joshua Ranger

FADGI Audio-Visual Working Group Guidelines: Audio Digitization System Performance

The Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative is a governmental interagency activity that draws participants from the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Libraries of Medicine and Agriculture, Voice of America, and several other interested agencies.

The initiative is divided into two parts: the Still Image Working Group and the Audio-Visual Working Group. Chris Lacinak has drafted the initial report on the Audio-Visual Working Group’s efforts to evaluate audio digitization systems and develop performance metrics in order to set guidelines and evaluative measurements for conducting and monitoring digitization activities.

• FADGI AUDIO DIGITIZATION SYSTEM PERFORMANCE (PDF)

Select Few

I may regret admitting this, but from the ages of about 9 to 14 I was pretty deep into collecting baseball cards. Of course maybe I should be proud to admit it, if only to prove that I have moved beyond Baudrillard’s infantile, scatological collector’s mindset. Whatever the case, I recall that I could never get rid of any cards, no matter how many duplicates piled up. Five 1988 Topps Oddibe McDowell cards, one with a gum stain on the back? Keep ’em all and let me sort them out, in increasingly smaller piles arranged by number (first by 100s, then by 10s, then 1s…). Monetary value was one factor in my collection, but, obviously, it was not primary consideration. Just because Beckett’s Monthly categorically confirmed that those 1988 Topps were valued at 2 ½ cents for “Commons” doesn’t mean that anyone would actually pay anything at all for them.

Maybe if I had grown up in New York City I would have been more of the mind of getting rid of unwanted items by placing them on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building, as is the local tradition. I appreciate the sentiment of the practice — I can’t use this, but maybe someone else could, which is preferable to throwing it away or taking it to an overpriced “thrift” store — but I often wonder at the ideology of the situation. If you can’t use a pile of unmatched Gladware lids, do you really think they would be a great boon to someone else? And once that sweater or box of VHS exercise tapes have sat out through an overnight rainstorm, shouldn’t they just be tossed? A very odd mindset here indeed: one can’t let go enough to throw something away, but once it’s on the sidewalk, it is no longer one’s responsibility no matter how long it sits untouched.

But enough on my localized pet peeves of navigating Brooklyn sidewalks and tripping over cheap Ikea furniture. What prompted these thoughts were a couple of articles I recently read related to the concepts of selection and deaccessioning. One might say that these are some of the dirty little secrets of archiving…except they’re not dirty and they’re not secrets. Or, they shouldn’t be secrets, but they are in a way because the general public doesn’t really know what goes into the practice of archiving.

This is quite apparent in the first article I read about the investigative journalist Paul Brodeur’s feud with the New York Public Library. Seems that Mr. Brodeur donated his papers to the NYPL Manuscripts & Archives a number of years ago. It sounds as if the donor agreement had the standard stipulation that NYPL had the right to return any materials they determined to be inessential to the collection. There are a number of reasons for this kind of policy — duplication, non-original or non-unique materials, content that has no bearing on the interpretation of the collection, Xeroxes, etc. Space, staff, and storage resources are highly limited — and researchers don’t really want to dig through more than they have to — so this kind of culling is standard practice.

However, after an extended processing period, NYPL informed Mr. Brodeur that there was X percentage of papers not desired, and he could either take them back or NYPL would dispose of them. Seems Mr. Brodeur blew a gasket over this and now is using all of his connections and muck-raking powers to demand the full collection back and shame NYPL into bankruptcy and/or revising long established archival standards.

This conflict was exacerbated to a degree by the lag between ingest and completion of processing the collection (another issue, another time…), but I feel like things were at least equally exacerbated by the lack of knowledge about archival process and the emotional ties to objects one has similar to my devotion to iconography of journeyman infielders with .250 lifetime averages. I would guess that when Mr. Brodeur donated his papers, he simply emptied his file cabinets into boxes and sent them along. As we all experience, our personal files (or desk piles) are filled with important papers, but also with all the things we didn’t want to deal with at the time and then forgot about. Junk mail that got thrown in with other papers, copies of articles we read or always planned on reading, to-do lists, receipts, Chinese restaurant delivery menus…Things mingle, pile up, and, if we’re not careful, they take over physical and mental space they do not deserve.

To the creator, just as to the person who cannot trash 3-year old packets of soy sauce from old take-out, each sheet, each object is imbued with potential significance or emotional import. The archivist must have a clearer head — What level of resources are available to care for all collections? What will researchers use most? How is the integrity of the collection and of one’s profession best maintained? These decisions may seem arbitrary, Procrustean, or insensitive to those outside the process, but the decisions (should) have a strong basis in an organization’s mission statement and collection policy, best practices, subject area expertise, and various institutional factors. Articulating these issues and how they are evaluated to donors and the public should be an important opportunity for outreach and education from the archivist’s and the institution’s positions.

Which is why I was heartened to read Linda Holmes post “The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything” on NPR’s Monkey See blog. Ms. Holmes has crafted an intriguing meditation on the fact that there is more cultural content in existence than any of us could ever consume in multiple lifetimes, and so this has lead to a couple of coping strategies: Culling, the act of pre-screening what one chooses to take in, and Surrender, which is more a melancholy acceptance of the facts combined with an undiminished interest in enjoying what little we can attain.

Though this post is from the user’s position rather than the archive’s position, it still touches on similar themes and considerations that we all must face as active imbibers and cultural custodians. Ms. Holmes comes down on the side of the more lyrical strategy of Surrender, but I feel that both have their uses. Accepting that not everything will be accessed or saved is important, but it is more passive in nature. Culling, which could be considered curation in a way, is an active process for shaping and maintaining collections. Archives are living entities that require active management, not stacks of papers stored in boxes waiting around just in case someone decides to browse the contents. Archivists perform highly-skilled, highly valuable duties to help make sure that our culture doesn’t surrender too much. That’s a thought worth holding onto and putting out on the street for the public to take.

— Joshua Ranger

AVPS Partners With METRO To Support Media Archiving

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions is again partnering with the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) to provide training and resources to regional libraries and archives for the preservation and management of audiovisual collections. As part of METRO’s Documentary Heritage Program, AVPS will be conducting three training workshops and will work on development of the Audio/Visual Community Cataloging toolset (AVCC), a set of guides, templates, and utilities that libraries and archives can download as a tool to assist in planning and performing a cataloging project for audiovisual materials making use of collaborative or volunteer efforts. It’s a great honor for us to support the efforts of METRO, and we look forward to working with the community they support. The full text of METRO’s press release is below and can also be found at http://www.metro.org/en/art/310/

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Through a new partnership with AudioVisual Preservation Solutions (AVPS, http://avpreserve.com), the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO, http://metro.org) will offer three workshops and create a pilot project to serve critical needs to libraries and archives charged with preserving and providing access to audiovisual resources. The partnership enables professional development for the library and archives community and provides greater accessibility to collections held in archives and special collections in the metropolitan New York region.

The cornerstone of the partnership between AVPS and METRO will be three workshops in June and July 2011 aimed at serving the professional development needs of archivists, librarians, and collection managers who work with audiovisual and file-based collections. On June 1, AVPS experts will lead “Managing File-Based Collections for Small Institutions” – introducing digital collection caretakers to utilities and processes that will help them perform routine archival tasks in the file-based domain. On June 16, “Using Metadata for Audiovisual Collection Management” will address how, with legacy and digital audiovisual materials, the array of technical, relational, administrative, rights, and preservation related metadata fields present a great deal of utility in the management, distribution, and monitoring of materials. On July 12, “Processing Audiovisual and Video Collections” will focus on core knowledge and skills needed to process audio and video materials for planning, budgeting, cataloging, access, grant applications, and long term storage. Details and registration for these workshops can be found on METRO’s calendar at http://metro.org.

In addition to the three workshops, the partnership also supports the creation of an Audio/Visual Community Cataloging (AVCC) tool set. The AVCC will offer a set of guides, templates, and utilities that libraries and archives can download as a tool to assist in planning and performing a cataloging project for audiovisual materials making use of collaborative or volunteer efforts. AVPS Senior Consultant Joshua Ranger notes, “The backlog of under-documented or unprocessed AV materials is one of the primary impediments to enabling access and planning for preservation. We are dedicated to finding new, cost-effective approaches to overcoming these types of hurdles and helping libraries and archives better manage collections, and we’re proud to be working with METRO towards these goals.” After initial development is complete, AVPS and METRO will be looking for libraries and archives in the region to help test and refine the tool set later this year in preparation for general release of this free resource via the METRO website.

METRO’s Documentary Heritage Program also supports work at New York University’s Tamiment Library (http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/index.html) and Asian/Pacific/American Institute (http://www.apa.nyu.edu/) to document the history of the Asian/Pacific/American community in the New York metropolitan area.

“Collaborative relationships like this are essential to sustaining the important work being done by our region’s archivists and librarians,” says Jason Kucsma, Acting Interim Director at METRO. “By leveraging the expertise of consultants at AVPS, METRO is able to offer quality professional development resources to under-resourced libraries and archives that hold some of the region’s greatest treasures.”

This partnership and the services produced are made possible with funds from the Documentary Heritage Program of the New York State Archives, a program of the New York State Education Department.

About AVPS
AudioVisual Preservation Solutions is a full service audiovisual preservation and information management consulting firm. AVPS provides effective individualized solutions founded on our broad knowledge base and extensive experience in the area of collection assessment, metadata development, digital preservation, and strategic planning. With a strong focus on professional standards and best practices and the innovative use and development of technological resources, we aim to help our clients achieve efficient, high-quality capabilities to meet the challenges faced in the preservation and access of audiovisual content and institutional data.

About METRO
The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) is a non-profit organization working to develop and maintain essential library services throughout New York City and Westchester County. METRO’s service is developed and delivered with broad input and support from an experienced staff of library professionals, the organization’s member libraries, an active board of trustees, government representatives and other experts in research and library operations.

As the largest reference and research resources (3Rs) library council in New York
State, METRO members reflect a wide range of special, academic, archival and public library organizations. In addition to training programs and support services, METRO also works to bring members of the New York City and Westchester County library and archives communities together to promote ongoing exchanges of information, resources, and ideas.