Civility has returned to the AMIA List-serv (Association of Moving Image Archivists). It had been missing for a while after a couple of exchanges about copyright and public domain took a turn for the ugly and brought out the worst of what that forum can be. Fortunately, the discussion morphed into a much more informative discourse on the benefits (or lack thereof) of cold storage for electronic media. The core of the issue was why bother AND, is cold storage lulling us into a false sense of security…especially as machines continue to become obsolete. Was the expense of this storage better utilized to digitize and electronically secure the assets?
“ While you have been paying the electric bill for 40 years cooling the tapes - the reality is that the machines to play them back are gone, and those that are left have parts that are broken and can not be repaired without Herculean effort.”
This is a quote from a much longer post by Jim Lindner of Media Matters and it makes a pretty powerful point. So, what can we do? What should we do?
First. I think we should all exhale and calmly remember that properly storing electronic media assets has bought time. Time for a plan of action, time for content strategy planning and time for decisions to be made by archive managers….and that is ultimately a good thing.
Second. We need to become more comfortable with the idea that we can’t keep everything. I know that’s heresy in some circles but the reality is that everything suffers by chasing after this ideal. By trying to save everything you may actually save nothing. Business decisions have to factor in to this. It’s not about the quantity but the quality and relevance of the content. The definition of quality and relevance is for you to decide as it applies to your specific collection needs. Content strategy and collection management has to take a bigger role in planning for the digital archive future that is already here.
Third. We need to look for creative and practical solutions and be more open to using joint resources and finding industry-wide ways to get the most “bang for the buck.” No matter what, hindsight will be cruel to our decision making today. It’s a given so take a deep breadth and soldier on.
On a lighter note, heading out to the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas this week and I am looking forward to seeing how end-users are creating new opportunities from archived content in this emerging world.