Re: [ARSCLIST] Slides and inconvenient media (was spin it again)

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/04/07, Tom Fine wrote:

> This is an interesting statement. Slides might point out some of the
> pitfalls of preservation media. As I said, all those Kodachromes my
> parents and even a few from my grandparents (they weren't into
> photography as much) have been stored under good conditions in boxes
> and projector carousels all these years. The color is still vivid and
> almost 3D it's so sharp. Meanwhile, the albums of color prints have
> faded considerably, just sitting on the shelf. 

Kodachrome lasts well oin the dark but fades quickly in the light.

Are any of those photos of interest for audio history? Images of
recording sessions and musicians are worth preserving.


> And most of the framed
> color pictures are severely faded. But, to this day, it's the albums
> my brothers and I -- or my brother's kids -- will pick up and enjoy.
> Why? Who has time to dig out the slide projector and set up the screen
> and sit around and go thru carousel after carousel. Hence the desire
> to digitized everything and have it randomly-accessible on DVDR or CDR
> or hard drives or all three or some combo.
> 
> The lesson regarding preservation media is that transferring something
> and then having it in a semi- or fully-inaccessible media is not a
> good goal, in my opinion. Part of any transfer project should be some
> sort of accessibility system. In the case of audio, that usually means
> a copy of everything on some sort of server, be the copy a direct
> high-resolution clone or in a compromised format like MP3. Same goes
> for video and for imagery. I've often wondered why the software makers
> don't see this and make a feature where you have a SAVE-AS option to
> simultaneously save full-rez and lower-rez copies. This would be great
> in any audio editing software, and Photoshop and video software. Would
> be one less thing for operator to remember to do.
> 
> How an organization is going to make transferred material accessible
> should be mandatory part of any grant application. I think it would
> also help with another of my pet issues -- selectivity (ie transfer
> the best stuff on the most threatened media first and then prioritize
> down from there, check what other insitutions are doing so you don't
> work in a vaccuum and consider sharing similar material so as not to
> duplicate each others' efforts).
> 

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx