Preface
The collection of articles now in your hands offers a tacit reminder of the last
time that a new medium so profoundly shaped our cultural memory system.
The printed word, the book, ushered in the first information age: it enabled the
easy multiplication of texts, facilitated their distribution, and encouraged
comparison and thus critical scholarship. The printed word greatly assisted the
accretion of knowledge by recording ideas, and most importantly, by offering
ways of ordering and thus finding them, of weaving them into systematic
networks and making ideas accessible. Indexes, filing systems, catalogues, and
various other finding aids reflecting the logic of the alphabet and were driven by
the demands of a widespread readership and a steadily growing number of texts.
The medium permitted a transformation of our cultural memory; but the
systems derived from it also fundamentally changed our way of thinking.
Comparisons of this now distant moment with our digital present are
widespread, and I do not here want to repeat them. I would however like to point
to one aspect of our media present - an aspect evident in all of the articles in
this collection - that parallels the book's in significance. Today's computer
baseddigital media might be seen as one-upping the print revolution by
exponentially increasing the ease of textual multiplication and distribution, of
putting the means for textual production and distribution into the hands of
ordinary individuals, of unifying the experiential domains of word, sound and
image into a stream of bits and bytes. But like the book, they do something
more: they facilitate new ways of processing information, permit new manners
of organizing and accessing data, and - in some very tangible ways - offer a new
means of assembling our thoughts and memories.
One of the places where this appears most clearly also happens to be the focus
of SAP: our memory institutions. Let's step back for a moment, and consider the
differences among libraries, museums and archives. Libraries store primarily
written information, organize it, and serve as sites of distribution to the public.
The written word is a sign system, a code, that retains its power regardless of
platform: whether found on vellum manuscript or photocopy or e-book, the
sequence of the signs determines authenticity, not the specificities of the object
upon which the code is inscribed. And, as just noted, the word brings with it an
organizing logic, an ability to compare and order. Moreover, the uncoupling of
the word/sign from the book/object facilitates open distribution, and has
traditionally encouraged a tolerant construction of intellectual property
protections. By contrast, the museum is concerned precisely with the
specificities of unique objects, with the collection and display of artifacts whose
meaning cannot be 'reduced' to description or verbal sign systems. With this
emphasis on the unique comes an ambiguity in ordering logics (chronological,
geographical, functional, stylistic?), necessary restriction in distribution, and a
tendency towards increased protection of reproduction rights. The third of the
memory institutions, the archive, stands between these two ways of organizing
cultural memory, sharing a concern with material that is often simultaneously
sign-based and artifactual. That is, even when it collects written documents
(which in the context of the library might be seen as easily distributable sign
systems), these documents tend to be rare or unique, and as such they also have
the complexities and specificities of museum objects. The situation is obviously
more complex when archives collect audiovisual materials, since non-print
media lean more closely towards the specificity of the object than the generality
and interchangeability of the written word. Yet, while not generally open to the
public in the way that libraries are, archival collections are also not as restricted
to hands-on investigations as museum collections.
Computer-based digital media are quickly challenging these old certainties.
Yet, while clearly modified by digital media, libraries and museums basically
retain their old functions, one centered on highly distributable signs and the
other on location-bound unique objects. Libraries are engaged in massive
digitalization projects, and have been able to greatly accelerate the speed and
intensify the nuance of their search systems; but they remain essentially
circulators of signs. Museums now offer richly detailed 3-D online catalogues
and ways to search collections using all sorts of eclectic logics, but the basic
business of preserving and protecting unique artifacts goes along unaltered.
Archives, however, are increasingly finding their identity challenged. Digital
technologies seem to be forcing a wedge between the sign-based and object-based
functions of archival collections. That is to say, by facilitating the easy and
highly accurate reproduction and distribution of archival documents, the
overlap between archives and libraries as circulators of signs seems to be
growing; and conversely, by holding fast to the notion of the original object in
the face of these technologies, the archive risks duplicating the function of the
museum.
I readily admit that these distinctions are overdrawn, but they help to illustrate
the growing pressures on archives - even audiovisual archives - in the digital age.
Photographs, films, television programs and audio material have all had
comfortable niches as artifacts, and despite earlier generations of technologies of
reproduction, have tended to be spared widespread replication within the
archive. But digital technologies enable increasingly low cost reproduction and
distribution of even audiovisual texts. Could we be reaching a point where
audiovisual media 'content' can be freed from particular artifactual
configurations, in the same way that words can be lifted from the page?
Particularly as we enter an age where much of our media will be produced in
digital formats, we need to think carefully about the conceptual distinctions
between the library and the archive. For the moment, the intellectual property
constraints seem to be limiting the potential for online distribution of many
unique (and increasingly commercial) artifacts, even in low-resolution formats.
But this is a vestige of the past, actively re-worked and exploited by the commer
cial interests of the present (and even being retrofit for certain manifestations
