Date:         Sat, 6 Jan 2007 21:44:48 -0500
Reply-To:     Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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Sender:       Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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From:         "Steven C. Barr(x)" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: Libraries disposing of records
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
> I don't understand what you're advocating. I'm with Philip Holmes -- if "save
everything" types want
> to actually do that, then they can pay for it and figure out where to store
it. Don't involve me or
> use my taxes for it (given the recent elections up your way, I'd say Canadians
are getting tired of
> a high tax burden too).
>
EXCEPT...this sort of thinking would have said, c.1490, "Why pay to
send some crazy sailor to search for lands we know don't exist?! Hire
more priests and ratchet up the Inquisition a few notches...!"

> I'd rather have my efforts (and some of my taxes) go to intelligent
> preservation that attempts to weed out and save the "best" of each era -- 
knowing full well it's a
> biased and stilted representation of the time rather than the experience of
actually being there
> (only those who live in a time/place get the privilege of "being there" and
"doing that", everything
> else is a limited facsimile).
>
Here, the problem becomes "Define 'best!'" By sales to the public?
By opinions of whoever may currently be considered "experts?" Or...
Further, we have NO way of knowing what will be important generations
hence...who could have foreseen, say, the "genealogy" craze that puts
lists of tombstone data on web sites? Or that data on a long-ignored
pop hit would be needed to sue about "My Sweet Lord?!"

> That's what's worked since the Romans and before, so it's good with
> me. Main overriding good feature is that it's doable, as opposed to grabbing
up and trying to
> preserve every last piece of junky "art" just to say "we kept it all." That to
me is ridiculous.
>
Well, what from the "pre-digital" era has survived has done so mostly
by accident...and what DIDN'T survive often would be both important
and useful to historians and researchers if it had! Whomever saved
that single extant copy of "Zulu's Ball" probably didn't do so on the
grounds it would someday be an important historical document...and
the reverse is true for the various Paramount 13xxx discs for which
NO copies exist...!

> Alas, the save-everythingers' "dream" is likely to be more true than ever of
this current age.
> Digital stuff seems to lurk around in some corner of the connected world
forever (as some of today's
> teens will find out when they finally grow up and decide to run for public
office or seek a good job
> and their MySpace bare-chested video shoots them down). Barring a nuclear
meltdown or return to the
> Dark Ages, all the garbage kicking around on the Internet today -- including
all the mis-information
> touted in places like Whacky-Packia and numerous e-mail legends that circulate
around and around and
> around -- will be preserved forever and after we all die off, it may be
treated as "fact." This is
> what "unmediated history" gets you, and I don't think it's any better than the
bias and loyalties of
> "wise men" written history as it was done up to now. As I said, there is
really no way for someone
> who didn't "been there done that" to ever really understand it or experience
it (latest example is
> the rewrite of the Ford years that the mass media did). The best he can do is
find some eye-witness
> testimony and absorb it.
>
I didn't suggest "unmediated" history be saved...there would, logically,
have to be at the very least some division between "fact" and "fiction"
in archived material. Further, it is essentially impossible to record
(in ANY way) history without some personal prejudice affecting the
contents of the "record"...and anyone who depends on such documents
should keep that fact in mind! In fact, that is one argument for
saving different documents referring to the same event(s) on the
assumption that if one accessed all of these one might be able to
come closer to the actual facts...!

Steven C. Barr