#ControlTheConversation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaPgDQkmqqM&list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ&index=2

Using Trump’s “Grab ‘em by the 🐈‍⬛” scandal as an example, the video first video in the series covers the strategy of controlling the conversation, especially when debates start from a #controversial or #problematic main topic.

This usually works by deliberately making #BadArguments (“He doesn’t speak like that anymore”) that bait you into talking about something other than the main topic.

@onan @ajroach42
I find it interesting that until a few months ago, this video was the most recent one published by Bedfordshire in years. I'm hoping there's been a change in leadership and philosophy there. And at other archives.

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#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42

So, yeah, no, I find the arguments given highly unpersuasive.

There are other arguments which could be made:

• Authors restricting access to works. Here my feeling is that peer pressure form dead people should have an expiry date. The argument largely stems from copyright. Either an author should take responsibility for deleting works, or it becomes the common heritage of later generations.
• Cataloguing and classification. I'm surprised this didn't feature in the video. It's a huge problem with current online archives. Essentially, the problem should already be a major part of an archive's work, and translating metadata to digital formats already a part of existing practice.
• Integrity and control. This is the elephant in the room for much of the talk. Again, ultimately the works from the past belong to all of the current generation, and future ones. Archivists are their custodians, but not the gatekeepers to them.

7/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42

Funding and its impacts is another legitimate concern, though past experience strongly suggests that increased access and awareness should improve the argument for preserving archives, facilitating sharing and replication, and even in tackling some of the other concerns such as copyright impediments to providing greater access.

6/8

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42
Fidelity to the original is another "perfect as the enemy of the good" objection. True, no copy will ever fully reproduct all aspects of an original, but ... Porquay no los dos? With both the original and multiple copies (perhaps deep scans --- multiple wavelengths, microscopic resolution, penetrating images, chemical analysis), ever-better fidelity can be achieved. And many works within archives are themselves copies, often by hand, of originals. Duplication through time, and the issues it presents, is already integral to archival, and itself plays a key role in historiography and tracing the spread of documents throughout the ancient world.

5/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42

Changing digital formats has greater legitimacy. Both file formats and physical media change with time, though that rate of change seems to have slowed. (Physical media similarly went through several stages of evolution though again, eventually settled on a fairly stable set of formats.) Major file formatss (TIFF and RAW uncompressed images, JPG, GIF, and PNG, Postscript and PDF) are now decades old, and remarkably stable. Digital archivists are looking at long-term storage. Phyiscal media are similarly being designed for long-term archival, on the order of millennia, and there's a pretty good possibility that they'll succeed in this. Meantime, online or nearline storage (disk and tape) can be replicated and upgraded with reasonable ease. Raw storage costs for the entire US Library of Congress is on the order of a few thousand dollars of physical media, and is falling by an order of magnitude every decade. (Provisioning, maintenance, and access costs add to this, but again the sums are quite suprisingly reasonable.)

4/8

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42

Quality is the second pink fish. Even low-quality digitisation is better than none for billions of people worldwide. And reasonably quality scans are readily attainable. Several false objections are raised (colour scanning is possible and widely practised). And the best way to improve a process is to practise it, see what works, what doesn't and improve it as you go. So long as the originals exist, they can be re-scanned if technology improves sufficiently that this is justified.

Odd Formats is another canard. If standard formats are easiest to process, work on those first. Categorise and clasify exceptions. Come up with reasonable mechanisms for addressing them. One thing about publishing, and even manuscripts, is that formats tend settle into a reasonable set of widely used formats in large part. Again, with practise comes improvement.

3/8

#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives

@onan @ajroach42
Copyright is the most legitimate complaint, though even it applies largely to only 20th century works, nearly all published after 1925. (There are exceptions, this is law, jurisdictions differ. But as a rule that holds.) Copyright is indeed hugely culpable for restricting rather than enabling access to works, as UC Berkeley Law Prof Pam Samuelson has said.

Quantity is the first of the red herrings. If you've a lot of something to do, and actually do want to do something with it, doing something is more likely to get you there than doing nothing. This means devising a plan, prioritising works to process, perhaps setting up processes for new aquisitions such that they're archived on arrival. Even a random sampling is better than nothing. Roughly 140 million books have ever been published, unpublished media (manuscripts, notes, etc.) expand that, but the set is finite.

2/8

#BedfordshireArchives #libraries #BadArguments #DigitalArchives #digitisation #copyright #Archival #Archives

@onan @ajroach42
Ugh.

Her argument largely boils down to "copyrights", "cost", and "the perfect is the enemy, and in this case, righteous vanquisher, of the good". The first two have some validity, the last is sheer obstructionism.

As Bedfordshire's SM states things, the existence of the archive is more important than access to it, and the argument reads (whether it's intended to or not) as one for doing nothing rather than a best or reasonable effort.

Let's look at the objections ...

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#Archives #Archival #copyright #digitisation #DigitalArchives #BadArguments #libraries #BedfordshireArchives