Someday, I
think I am going to get myself kicked out of the club – the I Heart Preservation club.
I saw on the
always insightful and thought-provoking blog for AudioVisual Preservation
Solutions a post about a new online video - Archive – about the Internet
Archive featuring interviews with its founder, Brewster Kahle. I had seen the
video earlier and it is a worthwhile watch. In it Kahle says something which
gets highlighted in the blog post along the lines of the cause of loss being
institutional failure.
 |
| Empty Bookshelves, by Flickr user svenwerk |
I remember
hearing these words when I first watched the video and thought that this was an
interesting and potentially useful approach. Days later, when I read those same
words on the blog post I had a different thought – the thought which just might
finally get me kicked out of the club. Maybe the idea that loss is a failure is
wrong. Or, if not wrong, perhaps seeing loss as failure is only one dimension
of the issue. What would happen if we saw loss as part of the natural
information economy / ecology / ecosystem.
I guess this
is perhaps just a rephrasing of my suggesting object life cycles should include
not just creation and preservation, but for it to truly be a cycle it should involve
some aspect of destruction.
I don’t
think it is too far a stretch to make a loss/death comparison. Desiring loss or
death does not seem particularly healthy, but neither is denying them, or
considering either necessarily a failure.
I don’t want
to suggest this is my final and only opinion on information loss, but I don’t
think viewing loss as a failure is necessarily the only right answer either.
All that
being said, I can’t close this post without saying I am very grateful for
Brewster Kahle and the incredible work the Internet Archive does, and am also grateful
for the thoughtful posts written by Joshua Ranger. It would be a deep shame if
any of their work was lost any time soon.
I think you may have struck upon an interesting concept of society as unpopular as it will be to librarians. All one needs to do is think of the job skills that no longer exist, except in pioneer villages and re-enactment groups - wheelright, blacksmith, weaver, etc. As much as society, well technically librarians, would hate to think of information being lost, it happens to some degree already. Will the Internet cause it to happen on a much larger scale? Who really knows, but the role of librarians will absolutely be changed because of it. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete