Within the history of archival arrangement - photography has lead an interesting life. When photographic documents were first beginning to be treated seriously as a readable document, the archival profession was not all in agreement as to how these new records should be dealt with. Where would they be stored? Their physical and chemical make-up was identified to be different enough from textual documents, as were the skills needed to read/interact with these documents. These differences were enough to warrant strong arguments for different preservation tactics and methodologies.

Due to this argument, a trend developed wherein all material that was identified as photographic in nature was physically separated from its context and surrounding content, and placed within the context of other similar documents. Arguments were very strong from within the professional, practicing community that photographic documents must be treated with the same attention and care and resources as textual material; unfortunately the argument at the time strongly favoured physical separation with no consideration to intellectual control. In reflection, best practices and standards for archives now incorporate a sensibility for the duality of that paradigm: upholding format-based preservation duties means a constant awareness for and maintenance of the original context.

Reflecting now upon that approach, I am curious how some of the same patterns will emerge, and how will they affect efforts to approach new media, in particular video games, such as mmorpg's. By approaching the format as something that is 'new' instead of approaching an evolving technology with a particular sensibility for previous reactions to new or evolving technologies, what patterns are going re-emerge that the archival community has previously encountered, analyzed and ... shelved?

By approaching a new media as though it is 'different' or 'segregated' and therefore requires whole new paradigms and critical analyses, is a dis-service being done to previous scholarly work as well as to future archival holdings?