Gabby Arndt

Archives As Anchors

Collecting and archiving are ways to reclaim and own our attention—they are acts of meaning-making. These practices are rituals: habits and skills that demand time, patience, and a willingness to look beyond the surface.

I’m a journalism studies nerd. While doing research

for my PhD dissertation, I spent months in the

London newspaper library and then the New York

Public Library scrolling through microfiche rolls

for hours, looking at coverage of crimes from the

1930s, 60s and 90s. As I looked for my keywords

and the articles I knew about, I stumbled across all

sorts of... See more

Without archiving, we can’t see

patterns. Fleeting examples get lost and we miss the

connections.

What we have now on YouTube is a more democratic,

unfiltered sampling of living oral traditions; what we don’t have

is an archive of it. YouTube is a private entity. It could unilaterally

announce a sunset policy for old videos, or lose a lawsuit, or even

go out of business, and then some or all of those videos would

suddenly disappear. In the current... See more

economics and the tastes of the present

are poor predictors for long-term cultural value.

Public archives are necessary for ensuring that

culture is not prematurely erased by seemingly low

commercial interest, and that factual information is

safeguarded from nefarious actors.