Characteristics of a Pornographic Record

A record who's function is defined by its owner. Unlike a birth certificate, which remains a certificate of one individuals birth regardless of who owns it. A newspaper is the same in that regardless of who owns a particular printing of a newspaper, it is by definition a newspaper and nothing more. A map, is a map, regardless of who's holding it, and whether they're holding it right side up.

Conversely, moving images with sound depicting two people engaged in a game of Twister while clothed in only their birthday suits can have very different functions. If this film is under the ownership of a film-maker, it is regarded as art. If it is under the ownership of a collector of films that portray naked people doing, well, anything, then its a pornographic record. A still image of a woman's genitalia is a medical record when it is an official record of the placement of freckles on a humans body and it is owned by a dermatologists office. That same picture owned by John Q Public, is a pornographic record. I don't have to detail the difference between images of young children that are owned by their parents versus adults who are not in any way related to the child; the function of records which have the potential to be labeled as pornographic changes the classification f the record itself as the owner of that record changes.

The implication is that the act of recording sexual activity, sexual body parts or the naked human form is not what is devious; it is the ownership of such material which implies an inherent devious behaviour. Thus is it also implied that those persons participating in the act of creating pornographic records are not as devious as those owning those same records? And if those participants are not the devious record makers, is this not a source of support to the argument that pornographic records are just as valuable as any other recorded unit of information which is bestowed with the proud title of a "record", and thus, worthy of archival processing?

Cross-blogging with Loculamenta.

It has been graciously pointed out that my last post regarding the Grateful Dead collection at UCSC may have been barking up the wrong tree. In part, this is due to the relatively small amount of audio material that is contained in the acquisition in question; the bulk of the collection appears to be paper based. Ok, I can live with that. My questions regarding the digitization facilities still stand, but that's more attributable to my over-protective audio-visual archival tendencies than UCSC's own in-house capabilities.

Still there is something bugging me: this "social component." Does an academic institution have any place meddling in the world of open-source tagging? Again, I'm jumping ahead, but I'm comparing the type of social component that is supported by projects like Steve.Museum. I would argue this method works well for orphaned museum artifacts, but does this method suitably fit the academic institution's model for housing (and making available to researchers) archival material.

In a nutshell, is not the penultimate difference between museums and archives the genesis of the concept of context and provenance? In museums, artifacts re-discover old and new contexts in exhibitions; in archives context and provenance are carefully guarded against the affects of entropy through the maintenance of intellectual control. Where does social tagging fit into intellectual control? Or does it not, instead only finding a suitable fit in the realm of access? If the later is the case, then are we not at risk of repeating a pattern that we have already condemned as a "no-no": when digitization projects became so prevalent, the original argument from the profession was that these projects should be supported as a means of alternate access. The practicality of that notion having been shot down, the new method is to use digitization as a means to support preservation and thus access as well.

I'm all for getting the public involved in the "behind the scenes" of archives especially because any chance to get the public interested in archival material, research, history, culture... the list goes on. But if the cost is potentially alienating certain documents or items while others' status is raised over the rest, then the entire exercise is counter to traditional archival methodologies. I don't see how this could be beneficial in the long run.

The Grateful Dead Rise Again

Cross blogging with Loculamenta.

(Author's note: Alex, can you post some of the links to the original announcements re: this collection and its funding donation? See the comments to my previous post on this subject for the reason why).

User populations and policing of content are always of paramount importance to an archive, because if only for the most simplistic of purposes, your users and your content are why you exist, and why you will continue to exist. If you don't support your user's needs or appropriately manage your content, your archive will cease to function, and soon cease to exist. But getting to the point where we can focus on user populations and the policing of user-updated content skips over a few key steps in the process of digitizing any cultural artifact, whether for preservation or access (or ideally both!).

I'm curious if the questions that guide the first analysis of the Grateful Dead funding and digitization project should be focused more on ... well, the digitization!

The problem with this kind of simplified approach is that it is at risk of cutting out the sexy social component, which is pretty much the buzz word (or phrase?) in the profession right now. But I wonder, with approximately 1.25 million dollars available and backing a name like the Grateful Dead, to what extent should this particular user group have an increased social component, particularly when discussed within the context of the rest of UCSC’s holdings? For example, I was curious what kind of audio preservation resources are available at UCSC already; operating under the assumption that the facilities must in some way exist for this material to be properly and best handled at this specific institution (else, why wouldn’t this material have gone to Stanford?) I did a basic Google search using the words “audio”, “preservation” and “UCSC.” Not only is there no facility that comes up within the first three pages of Google’s produced results (which is farther than your normal Google search-user will look), but the first link that shows up was this article: "UCSC receives gift of rare audio interviews and photos of late '60s jazz and rock icons".

Considering that both collections are liable to house un-published information on a variety of overlapping themes, issues, concepts, people and events (to name a few!), my immediate reaction to this is: Why shouldn’t some of this funding include bolstering access for both collections? Wouldn’t this constitute a social component? When we look at the “social component” and we skip right to our users as a primary source of key information, I argue that we are not only taking the professional responsibilities out of our own hands, but we are de-valuing those professional responsibilities we have on a broadly reaching scale.

I say “kudos!” to UCSC for getting an un-thinkable amount of funding to handle one collection; but you now want me to agree that a critical part of this funding must be dedicated to an un-controlled, un-known, un-attached “social component” that will in no way directly link to any of the rest of the institution’s mandated responsibilities? Good luck with that.

My searches so far have yielded very little information on the actual facilities available for audio preservation of original recordings into digital format. I am aware the UCSB has some formidable audio preservation resources, but I am also aware that these resources are largely dedicated to wax cylinders and vinyl discs, and I doubt that many of the Grateful Dead recordings were ever done on wax; though a large portion was likely recorded to vinyl. If you're outside the business, then you'd assume that the two UC campuses would work together on this - lending the resources of one lab to the collection resources of another archive. You would assume wrongly, for two important reasons: 1) Academic environments in the public sphere are always under-funded and over-worked - if the money isn't going to UCSB, then UCSB isn't about to take on the risk of wear and tear on their machines for records that they will not be owning; 2) archival material does not travel off-site! EVER!

This means that the entire collection will arrive to UCSC and sit there, awaiting the proper machines to not only digitize, but to playback the original records. The field of audio recordings is arguably more complex than that of moving images (ok, I mostly just make this statement to piss off the film buffs out there that are paying attention. Kudos, you're paying attention. Now accept that audio records are just as if not more unique than your own precious film holdings.). Take for example the Harvard Audio Preservation Studio. Their listing of equipment is nice to see, but its far from extensive. The University of Toronto's Media Archive boasts a similar listing of equipment on their site; again it is far from complete. Part of the budget for each of these institutions must include continual efforts to purchase playback machines which will properly play audio recordings (failure to use proper playback equipment of any audio-visual record will result in the destruction of the content and/or physical record, which is counter-productive in the most primitive of situations).

Throughout all of this, the point I’m trying to make is: how do we look at this “social component” realistically? Do we apply the concerns for a social component only to one collection? Now that the collection is officially an acquisition, I want to know that its existence will be in harmony with the rest of the institution’s holdings, instead of its existence being paramount to all of the holdings (and the resources dedicated to them) that came before it. To be sure, if it weren’t for the institution’s pre-existing collections and their collection mandate, then this new acquisition for UCSC would have had no archival social component that would have brought it under their management in the first place.