Posts by Russell Brown
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Watching earthquake scientist guy Mark Quigley on Campbell Live, the look of defeat in his face as he was interviewed outside his house in Avonside, I felt sad. The poor bastard so wanted to say it would get better now, and he just couldn't say that.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Matthew Steindl,
Archive collection, storage and preservation is a hugely expensive activity and involves a high level of expertise and training. For this reason it is crucial that every little piece of the tiny pie that is allocated to the heritage sector be used as wisely as possible.
Matthew, I think I'd be more sympathetic if it didn't seem to be all about funding. As Simon has explained, the first step is the database, and it's really no slight on professional archivists to suppose that much of that information will be more readily secured by people working in the industry.
As an example, when Roger Shepherd bought back Flying Nun Records from Warners, the first task was working out exactly what they owned -- Warner had let the catalogue and rights get into that much of a mess. Simon, on the other hand, has made a lovely job of compiling and annotating the many releases with which he's been associated, and he has a good idea of where the rights lie.
I'm sure he'd happily provide such information to AT -- and I trust the library would reciprocate -- but in this context saying "stand back and let the professionals handle it" doesn't really make sense. This work is being done right now.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Geraldene,
NZ On Screen does some immensely useful work on what I’ve been told, and can well believe, is a tiny budget. I still have difficulty though with the problem of some contextual material being cobbled together from uncredited print sources.
Do you have examples? Feel free to email me (click the little envelope).
The entries aren’t research, though: they’re editorial for consumption by members of the public, and they’re going to draw on existing material sometimes. They shouldn’t, however, copy whole text without attribution.
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Subsequent to an offline discussion, I do feel the need to make more clear that some of the problems identified by Roger Horrocks at the NZFA, particularly with respect to preservation, are wholly the consequence of a lack of funds. Others – the governance problems and the archive’s bad relationship with the screen sector – not so much.
Frank Stark’s energy and advocacy have helped fill a gap that no one else was filling and he and his staff deserve great credit for that. But my view that folding the other two archives into the Film Archive – and that did actually seem to be the idea when I made some enquiries – is a really terrible idea remains. I think the crown entity structure I suggested is a better idea.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Tamsin6,
I’m really sorry that I came across as patronising. I am not that great at expressing myself in this kind of medium (right back to Usenet days, so you’d think I’d have improved, sadly, no.)
Aw, sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that. Robust discussion and all. I’m enjoying and appreciating your presence.
When I ventured to suggest that the archive could be in place and then extended, I certainly never suggested that this would have to be done by ‘proper’ librarians. What I was saying was that the skills and professional standing of archivists should be used and made use of in whatever way you can envision.
Can't disagree with that at all. My argument was that sometimes it's better for the stakeholders in a culture to take the lead in documenting and preserving their own culture -- especially when the alternative is waiting around for their culture to become an institutional priority.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Another way of reading that of course is that while perceptions of male homosexuality have changed a lot in the last half century, in the case of women and rape and safety… not so much.
The cultural prejudices embedded into Sid Davis’s cautionary films are a thing to marvel at. He was the permanently alarmed and fearful father of a girl. In his first film, The Dangerous Stranger, children who paid no heed to their parents’ warnings were kidnapped by strangers and never seen again. (Davis was so obsessed by this theme that he made The Dangerous Stranger three times.)
Sometimes, the dangers were more prosaic: in Live and Learn, Davis’s own daughter played a little girl who ran with scissors and was impaled.
But the one place where there was never any peril – unlike, say, the real world – was within the family itself. And as you correctly observe, there are parts of that giant hairball of prejudice that are washing out even now.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to nzlemming,
I found them very receptive to issues, so send any problems in to them and see what their response is.
+1. I think the culture there is to be responsive. try 'em.
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Oh hell, one more. The Chills performing Martin Phillipps’ much-loved bFM jingle.
Notable for the quality of the annotation. The question for me isn’t how and when NatLib or Te Ara would do the job at some future date when it is deemed important, but how people already doing the work can be given the tools to do it in such a way that it integrates with official efforts.
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And before I STFU and let someone else have a word, something really exciting that’s been happening this year – William Daymond digitising and uploading live performance videos originally shot by Bob Sutton.
I confess to having been particularly delighted to see this clip of Tall Dwarfs performing ‘Crush’ at the Windsor Castle in 1985. I’m in it, I was rather intoxicated at the time, and I was relieved when it appeared to see that I wasn’t doing anything too stupid at the time:
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to paynter,
Yes, we are struggling with and working through these issues within ATL and NatLib. We hope to update our access policies to cover (verbatim) reproduction and reuse soon (in line with NZGOAL).
Actually Gordon, do you think you or someone else could do us a guest blog explaining some of those acronyms – and, more particularly, what’s available digitally and how to get at it? I think there’d be a lot of interest in that.
Semi-regularly, even :-)