conference report: Fahrenheit 2451
Feb. 3rd, 2025 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacIn between the concerts I last reported on, I attended this conference. I'd heard about it from Sørina Higgins, the principal organizer, who is an Inklings scholar I've had dealings with. The topic was "Ideas Worth Saving: The Future of Theology & Thought." Besides theological and Inklings angles, it was sponsored by the Internet Archive and to be held at their offices in San Francisco. That meant it was nearby and I could attend. But it also inspired me to send a note to Søri in my capacity as a librarian, to the effect that "computerization of texts is to provide ease of access. It's not an ideal form for preserving data." And suddenly I found myself listed as a presenter at the conference, with a 15-minute slot to explain what I meant by that.
The Internet Archive offices are in a converted church in the outer reaches of the city, which doesn't mean there's any available parking nearby. It also means a lot of climbing of stairs. The main meeting room is the church's auditorium - it looked more like that than like a sanctuary - up on the second floor, a room whose acoustics were daunted by the massed servers of the Internet Archive humming away in the back of the room. Main presentations were given there (with microphones, fortunately), but the paper breakout sessions were in a couple of tiny rooms elsewhere in the building.
Mine was first in a 75-minute session in a tiny room with a large table, around which a dozen people could fit. I talked about the history of image reproduction in libraries, from microfilm to computer scans, and how those assist access by taking the burden of usage off the originals and thus help preserve them. But they're not archival: they won't last without vigilant updating and replacement. And how do you preserve words over the centuries? "By printing them out on acid-free paper, binding them between sturdy covers, and storing them in a building with a constant cool temperature. In other words, a book in a library."
Then we had another librarian talking about the future of libraries and the role of A.I., a theology professor on the importance of writing and preserved data in the heaven of Judeo-Christian tradition, and a film scholar on the use of film fragments as inserts in other movies, a particularly interesting topic which he traced back to Duck Soup.
The other main item I attended was a panel discussion on myth in Star Wars, anchored by clips from the movies. I remember my own comments on a couple of these. On the opening crawl at the start of the original movie: "We're always being told that stories need to start with action scenes, that expository lumps in particular are deadly. Yet the most popular movie of all time begins with three paragraphs of exposition, in print." On the scene in Empire where Luke meets Yoda without knowing who he is: "I'd like to respond to this scene by quoting a different book altogether: 'All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was a little old man with a staff.'" (Actually that quote as I gave it offhand mangles up two different editions of the text, but the point is clear: Yoda is also little and has a staff.)
There were a few people there I knew, a few more I'd met at the Lewis conference in Oregon last year, others worth talking to, and my only regret is that precarious health meant I couldn't be there for more of it.
The Internet Archive offices are in a converted church in the outer reaches of the city, which doesn't mean there's any available parking nearby. It also means a lot of climbing of stairs. The main meeting room is the church's auditorium - it looked more like that than like a sanctuary - up on the second floor, a room whose acoustics were daunted by the massed servers of the Internet Archive humming away in the back of the room. Main presentations were given there (with microphones, fortunately), but the paper breakout sessions were in a couple of tiny rooms elsewhere in the building.
Mine was first in a 75-minute session in a tiny room with a large table, around which a dozen people could fit. I talked about the history of image reproduction in libraries, from microfilm to computer scans, and how those assist access by taking the burden of usage off the originals and thus help preserve them. But they're not archival: they won't last without vigilant updating and replacement. And how do you preserve words over the centuries? "By printing them out on acid-free paper, binding them between sturdy covers, and storing them in a building with a constant cool temperature. In other words, a book in a library."
Then we had another librarian talking about the future of libraries and the role of A.I., a theology professor on the importance of writing and preserved data in the heaven of Judeo-Christian tradition, and a film scholar on the use of film fragments as inserts in other movies, a particularly interesting topic which he traced back to Duck Soup.
The other main item I attended was a panel discussion on myth in Star Wars, anchored by clips from the movies. I remember my own comments on a couple of these. On the opening crawl at the start of the original movie: "We're always being told that stories need to start with action scenes, that expository lumps in particular are deadly. Yet the most popular movie of all time begins with three paragraphs of exposition, in print." On the scene in Empire where Luke meets Yoda without knowing who he is: "I'd like to respond to this scene by quoting a different book altogether: 'All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was a little old man with a staff.'" (Actually that quote as I gave it offhand mangles up two different editions of the text, but the point is clear: Yoda is also little and has a staff.)
There were a few people there I knew, a few more I'd met at the Lewis conference in Oregon last year, others worth talking to, and my only regret is that precarious health meant I couldn't be there for more of it.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-04 06:15 am (UTC)Back in the dark ages I used to do IT support in a library, and a large part of my job was transferring data. 9" floppy to 5" floppy. 5" floppy to 3.5" floppy. Amstrad disc to PC. Floppy to CD. CD to DVD. And at every step chance of operator fuckup & data loss. Digital storage is good for about 5 years, 7 tops. And that includes the web. But you know all this.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-04 06:48 am (UTC)It's been a long time since I've seen any reference to 9" floppies, which were actually floppy and are the origin of the term. Even 5" ones, which were flexible, weren't really floppy. But I doubt there are many left who remember or have used the 9" ones.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-04 07:27 am (UTC)This was back in the early ninties, and even then I had a special machine setup with a 9" drive.
I used to cut a 3.5" floppy open to show my students so they could see the 'real' floppy disk inside the casing.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-04 07:28 am (UTC)Oh - and here's another example of data loss. I had a friend doing a thesis on political cartoons in the Manchester Guardian (19C I think?). The archive he had access to had transferred all the papers to microfiche, and the originals were gone. The reproductions were not good enough to show the captions on the cartoons. The image yes, the lengthy captions & speech bubbles no. I think he ended up travelling down to London where another library had kept the original newspapers.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-08 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-04 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-04 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-08 07:18 am (UTC)In the 1970s, I wrote a science fiction story about the perils of non-paper archiving. (Back then, it was microfilm, of course.) I'd been listening to my father - a literary historian - bemoan the fact that libraries threw out newspapers after microfilming them.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-08 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-08 06:51 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure my father was referencing practices at the Library of Congress. I'll see whether he remembers anything more about this.