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AVPS Presenting At ALA Midwinter 2010
12 January 2010
Chris Lachttps://www.weareavp.com/team/chris-lacinak/inak 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 near Downtown Boston. The Midwinter Meetings are primarily a business meeting for the Association, but there are also a number of Interest Groups, Discussion Groups, and Forums that meet concurrently as well some extra-session educational opportunities. It’s a great opportunity to start getting involved and to meet colleagues, as well as the chance to visit a great city. Catch a flick at The Brattle or Harvard Film Archive while you’re at it. We look forward to seeing you there!
But Is It Art?
11 January 2010
I caught this little BBC news story (“The cassette comes back as art”) the other day via the Social A/V Archivist’s blog. I clicked through on the link because I thought it might be about the use of tape as an art material. Turns out it was a trend piece on the renaissance of the audiocassette in England, specifically as a medium for sound art. (Silly me for inferring something beyond the controlled vocabulary of “cassette” in the title.)
I was interested in my imagined topic because during some gallery visits this fall I noticed that there was typically at least one piece which included a pile of magnetic tape as one of the materials. 1/4″ tape hanging from a tree. 1/2″ tape strewn on a platform with eggshells mixed in. Cassettes with tape that had been detached from the hub and was spooling on the floor as playing from open faced Walkmans.
I understood some of what they were trying to express through the selection of magnetic tape as material, but it also made me feel sad for the way tape is thought of and treated. Almost every day when I’m walking through the city I see a busted open VHS or audiocassette, its innards sprawling and knotted across the sidewalk. I’ve often wondered if film was ever treated this way, if at some point in mid-century New York film was just such a ubiquitous commodity that people threw it on the street to blow around in the bay winds until it clung to a parking meter or against someone’s leg.
Certainly there has been an overwhelming amount of cultural detritus published on tape, but even the most dog-eared, broken-binding, ripped-cover copy of Let’s Go: France 1988 is placed lovingly on one’s stoop for someone else to pick up and read. Maybe the issue isn’t one of easy disposal of unworthy content, but rather an issue of disrespect for a certain format type. I’ve often wondered if magnetic tape suffers less love because it has no visually noticeable content like film or paper to draw us in. Do some of these resultant attitudes towards tape – that it’s cheap, plastic, replaceable, low quality – only apply to our old UB40 cassette collection, or might it creep into our general attitude towards magnetic media and subconsciously affect how we treat even materials we’re interested in maintaining? And what might this mean for digital files, which we have even less tangible connection to? And c’mon really, eggshells? What does that juxtaposition even have to do with anything?
— Joshua Ranger
Testing One’s Resolve
8 January 2010
Most people I speak to who are beyond their 10 year high school reunion and use Facebook have at least one story about reconnecting with someone from their school years. Typically someone “really attractive” who they didn’t date but “always had a thing with.” I must have been hanging out with the wrong group of people, because the only cohorts that contact me are the ones who were really into the Anarchist’s Cookbook, or who knew the schedule for when a new batch of records were put on the shelves at Goodwill, or who were always busy talking about Dr. Who on newsgroups.
The other day one of these old compatriots started IMing with me. Sorensen (his last name, which is what we all called him by because there were too many other kids with his same first name) lived in the hills, wore an Indiana Jones fedora all the time, and his dad had a field full of 50s and 60s Buicks in various states of disrepair.
“Happy New Year, Josh”
“Happy New Year, Sorensen. How are things back in the ‘Burg?”
“Cold for this area. We actually got snow the other day. Global warming ha!”
“Wasn’t it just in the 60s like two weeks ago?”
“Sure was. I was walking around in a t-shirt! Crazy man, crazy. So you got any New Year’s Resolutions?”
“Sort of but not — I try to set goals to accomplish during the year rather than making some general behavioral change. I’m more likely to stick with a change if it’s embedded in working towards something. Like, I want to qualify for the Boston Marathon this year. That will push me to work harder on my running than just saying I want to run more or something. What about you?”
“Nah, man, I don’t do any of that. It’s just setting yourself up for failure.”
“You mean because nobody sticks with their resolutions for more than a week anyway?”
“No, that’s not it. I’m pretty stubborn when I set my mind to it. Like one year my resolution was to drink less Coke, and I did it, too!”
“I remember that — you drank Pepsi instead and drank about twice as much of it as you did Coke.”
“Well that’s because it wasn’t as good as Coke and I had to drink more to get my fix. Then when the year was up and I could go back to drinking Coke, it just didn’t taste the same anymore. I couldn’t drink either and had to find something else. You see, failure! Because I swore off Coke for a year I lost my love for it. Except for the few years when Jolt was around I’ve had a hole in my life ever since.”
“But wasn’t the point to drink less soda, not to just stop drinking a particular one?”
“Well that’s a stupid question. I would have resolved to drink less soda then, wouldn’t I have? But I didn’t have a problem with that. I might have a Sprite or a Mountain Dew every once in a while, but not too often. The problem was that I was drinking too much Coke.”
“But then you solved that, didn’t you?”
“But at what cost, Josh. At. What. Cost?”
————
Chatting with Sorensen made me consider a few things:
1. I need to spend less time online.
2. There are many interpretations of failure.
3. If personal change is so difficult, how are we supposed to begin to tackle institutional change?
This last is one of the big struggles for archivists in trying to advocate for their collections and for trying to enact necessary change for necessary care. It’s a big job that will not be accomplished in the first week of the new year, or even by the end of the year itself. But steps towards a bigger goal can be achieved in digestible chunks. I take a lot of my resolve from my experience with running. It’s a very mental sport that depends on one’s patience, of being able to take one’s time to build up to different levels of accomplishment. But at the same time, one needs to know when to push and go big, to challenge what one thinks one can do and achieve something beyond one’s comfort zone. You might fail at it, but the beautiful thing is that you wake up the next morning and try again.
So I agree with Sorensen — I don’t care for New Year’s Resolutions. They set you up for failure because a year is too short of a time. We’re in this for the long haul and need to plan for the big investment. It’s a lot of work to do, but I reckon that’s why Sorensen needed all of the soda to keep himself going.
— Joshua Ranger
Instant Classics — Just Add 1s And 0s
8 January 2010
Interesting piece by Daniel D’Addario in Newsweek about the non “classics” in the Criterion Collection library (The Curious Case of the Instant Classic), including The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, Che, and A Christmas Tale. Criterion does rightfully have a lot of cache based on the work they have done and people almost inherently trust their taste. Should we step back and review how they spend that capital, or should we just back off and let them do the things they need to do to earn money that will support their other good work?
I remember when I was growing up of always being dubious of the “Contemporary Classic” label on the VHS sleeve of a new release. It seemed obvious even then that it was more marketing ploy than anything else. But do most people notice the cover, label, publisher, or even title of the movie all that closely? I’m also reminded of the local Blockbuster when I was in college that consistently shelved the Danny DeVito / Joe Piscopo hit Wise Guys under their Classics section merely because the cover looked like it had been colorized from black and white.
But can we really critique Criterion’s selection of newer movies just because they are new? I would much rather watch their release of Carnival of Souls than the roughly contemporary 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, but that doesn’t mean Godard is unworthy.
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.
Sorry to be preaching to the choir here, but it’s a point of clarification that we need to be making. D’Addario partly seems upset because these “pristine” new works are being released by Criterion when they don’t need to be preserved or restored. But just because they are being released on DVD doesn’t mean they’re getting the same preservation treatment as The War Trilogy. And maybe more importantly, isn’t it better to create and maintain a preservation master while it’s easy rather than having to go through all of the restoration work 60 years down the road?
— Joshua Ranger
Things That Shouldn’t Be Archived #3 — The Year In Review
31 December 2009
But then again, it had a good beat and I could dance to it…
Library Of Congress Releases 2009 National Film Registry
30 December 2009
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 Registry on WNYC’s On The Media last week:
The U.S. doesn’t have the mandatory repository system that many other nations do, so institutions and mechanisms like the National Registries and the National Preservation Boards are extremely important for identifying significant works and making sure that they are cared for. As is mentioned in the interview, one never knows what or when a work will become considered culturally significant, and many of the films on the registry are orphan or non-commercial works (and for the sake of underlining the extra special attention these kinds of works need we’ll pretend for a minute that all studios have always preserved their productions to the utmost). Without the support and interest generated by inclusion on the Registry, many of these films would remain at high risk for loss.
Of course this is the fun part of preservation — the lists and the memories and the amazement and the arguments over what is important or the best. This is what helps expose our work to the wider public, but it’s important to remember that the National Film and National Recording Preservation Boards are doing a lot of other work that needs support. They help establish standards and best practices for archiving and preservation; they conduct reports on the state of the field; they interact with Congress to garner more funding and support or adopt laws and acts that make our work easier. Archives can be decidedly local, but staying aware of or involved with what these national institutions are doing is one step towards becoming a better advocate and custodian for a collection.
— Joshua Ranger
TCB
28 December 2009
I’m rather embarrassed to say that over the long holiday weekend I spent one night rubbing mineral oil into the wooden handles of my silverware and into my wooden cooking utensils. I’m not sure whether I’m more embarrassed of the fact that this was what I chose to do on a night off with the whole city out there waiting for me, or whether it’s because I’m ashamed it took me several months to get around to doing this task.
As the old saw goes, a cobbler’s children go shoeless and a doctor’s wife dies young. After spending all day focused in on proper care and handling, persistence, and preservation treatment, those become the things I want to set aside briefly as I decompress from the workday. And of course we all tend to face the same struggle at home as we do at work of trying to find the resources (time & energy) to take care of everything that needs to be done.
But, rested from a day off and caught up on my Google Procrastinator (read: Google Reader) because the posts had slowed down for the weekend, I finally set out my materials and got to work. It turned out to be rather enjoyable — satisfying to get something done and the wood looks quite nice now.
This could be a quaint little lesson about the joy of doing work, but instead what I was thinking about while oiling was how this set of silverware was one of the first objects I owned that really called for this level of care. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I feel I grew up (and still live) in a disposables culture. Affordable material objects are not typically designed to last for very long. They are cheap and easy to produce and therefore eminently replaceable. Even higher priced objects like computers, furniture, and cars are thought of as short term, something one will want to update in 2-5 years.**
My great fear is that this kind of attitude has expanded to how people treat media objects. After decades of getting used to mass produced video and audiocassettes, CDs, and DVDs that seem to have no intrinsic value, or thinking about born-digital content and storage as an unending resource do we stop thinking about them as something that needs care and attention? 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?
Preservation and archiving are a series of proactive efforts as well as a mindset. As I find in distance running, it’s not the physical act that is difficult; it is overcoming the mental barriers to get myself out to run that is the hardest part. There are many standards and best practices in place for the what and how of archiving and preservation that are easy enough to access and implement. Perhaps we should begin to consider the mental approach and assessment of our work actions as requiring an equal amount of focus in order to better serve our valued assets.
— Joshua Ranger
**Yes, in audiovisual preservation the content carrier will need to be replaced on a regular schedule, but that doesn’t mean the current instantiation can be mistreated because it won’t be around long term.
Things That Shouldn’t Be Archived #2 — The Year In Review
23 December 2009
The eternal conflict is whether these things shouldn’t be archived due to their culture-eroding awfulness or whether they should be archived as a warning to future generations. Perhaps file it under Things Their Creator Wishes Weren’t Archived: The promotional video for Microsoft’s Songsmith, possibly the least essential software of 2009 (if one discounts the majority of the iPhone App Store content):
–2009 has been a hard slog in many sectors. Why did Microsoft have to go and make it even worse?–
It’s like karaoke, but without well-written songs, alcohol, friends, and fun. Oh Yeah!
— Joshua “Jazz Hands” Ranger
Top 10 Audio/Visual File Formats Established In The Aughts
18 December 2009
10. www.fileinfo.com lists 202 video file formats.
9. They also list 337 audio file formats.
8. These numbers do not take into consideration the different release versions of each format.
7. Nor do they begin to approach the number of variable applications of codexes, settings, and other options.
6. An archivist may run into any one of these permutations some day, and will have to deal with the common, the obscure, and the obsolete equally to figure out how to make them accessible and maintain that accessibility.
5. There is no great joy for the archivist in the continual establishment of new file formats.
4. But you needn’t be caught flat-footed.
3. Having a plan in place for the ingest, monitoring, and migration of digital collections will help you control the process rather than feeling controlled by virtual strings.
2. Be prepared to address What Was? What Now? What Next?
1. And there are great resources to help you establish best practices and manage your digital collection:
- Library of Congress Sustainability of Digital Formats & NDIIPP
- Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI)
- AES Technical Committee on Archiving, Restoration and Digital Libraries
- And more in our Links page and throughout avpreserve.com.
— Joshua Ranger
Making A Better Good Enough
17 December 2009
This past weekend’s Times Sunday Magazine had a list of the top innovations of 2009. An interesting twist here was that these included not only physical / mechanical inventions, but also new concepts or changes in ways of thinking. One that especially caught my eye was the concept of “Good Enough is the New Great” (second down in the G’s). It seemed true enough that, with the huge expansion in available audio and video digital recorders and formats, we’ve gone through a shift in what we consider acceptable a/v quality and that we often care more about having access to information than we do about the aesthetics of the deliverable.
However, I started thinking about this in terms of my own work with audiovisual materials and quickly realized that this is not actually an innovative concept, that archivists have long been working under the rubric of Good Enough. The whole idea of an access copy is itself creating a good enough copy for users. Also, we have always struggled with availability of resources, with the restrictions that original or destination formats have, and with sudden technological shifts that promote obsolescence. Because of these and other factors, our choices in archiving and preservation often end up as The Best Option at the Time, which can sometimes seem like only Good Enough.
We as archivists also know that Good Enough is not a new thing to the wider public. We are the ones who have to deal with maintaining the media that has been created, and part of the reason we are forced into The Best Option is because of how often the media creator has settled for Good Enough or defaulted to Good Enough because they didn’t make proper adjustments to settings, lighting, format options, etc. Sure we prefer to preserve the best quality and longest lasting version of an asset, but we can only work with what we are given and are limited by the destination options available.
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.
These responsibilities lie in three main areas:
- Research: Get educated in best practices that one should strive to follow. There is more and more research and resource availability that will help one to decide what the Best Options are.
- Maintenance: Keep abreast of changes to standards, practices, format availability, obsolescence, and other factors that will affect the persistence of audiovisual materials or how our work is done.
- Education: Not just our own education, but also the education of others in our organizations and the general public. If they understand what we do and the challenges we face, and if they understand how their actions affect the long term preservation of their creations, our work will have even better Best Options available.
Creator, User, Archivist – we’re all in this together. Good Enough is a good enough access standard, but it is not a preservation standard, and as always, we need to be cautious of the former trickling down into the latter.
— Joshua Ranger
