July 7th, 2010 / 5:21 pm
Technology
Ryan Call
Technology
UT Acquires Denis Johnson’s Archive
We noted when UT acquired David Foster Wallace’s papers here. And now we’ll note the purchase of Denis Johnson’s archive, which includes floppy disks and baby footprints.
I think I like the idea of archiving authors’ papers, but I wonder how these libraries will acquire their electronic materials? I remember one of my professors saying that UVA had passed on purchasing his email archive. Will such an acquisition be important in the future? How will those of us who are interested in that sidewise material access it? Who will look after it? What do you think about this impulse we have to sift through an author’s unpublished papers, and how will that translate to his or her electronic writing?
hey ryan,
i go to school with Rachel Zolf, the Canadian poet, and one day in class last fall she mentioned her archive getting purchased. as far as i recall, her emails were a part of it, but i don’t remember any details of the process. so while i’m not being entirely helpful, there are people doing it and it will probably become much more common.
thanks for your comment, alex. im curious: do you know the details of the purchase? like how the emails will be archived?
I think the cashing in at the end of a career of writing might end, with no paper trail…
But maybe actually electronic data will last longer?
Paper is paper.
I worked at a university where we paid 300,000 for an author’s “papers” but he actually worked only in paper. So it was truck-loads.
In the future, who knows?
Electronic data will not last longer – not necessarily, anyway.
All the questions asked by this post: complex problems, no easy answers.
Although the dilemma might be summed up with an example, in two words: floppy disks.
See also this recent article re Rushdie: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/books/16archive.html
I think paper actually more reliable for long-term storage than electronic data. There scrolls and shit that are 2000 years old. Electronic media change formats pretty rapidly. Information can be lost if it is stored on old format that have become unreadable. It has to be transferred from format to format. Electronic media can also become corrupted. (I suppose physical media can be “corrupted,” too.)
I think paper is*
an old format that has*
All this data saving either an effort to deny the fact that we actually do die, or maybe yet another resource built around the PhD?
Since UT has become the badasses of buying up author papers is there a politics to then spending big $$$$ on systems to save paper (a futile act–see entropy, etc) and have they spent the same on saving electronic files?
I wonder.
Yes. Unreadable formats, obsolete/incompatible storage systems, lack of interoperability, file corruption, proprietary software…and on and on. How many people here could open a 5-1/4 inch floppy disk? How many people have even seen one? And then there is the web…the internet…email…chat…texts….
electronic copy is scalable, paper is not.
the information doesn’t decay, only the medium that holds it.
while paper, ink, language, earth all decays.
i can show you silly shit i wrote back in ’95 still on the web today.
All paper is not the same; paper itself is a medium. Scalability is not the issue. Each form of preservation – paper and electronic – presents unique problems – the latter only now being addressed and understood by archivists.
ooops, just realized you said you did not know ‘details of the process’ sorry.
hey ryan,
i go to school with Rachel Zolf, the Canadian poet, and one day in class last fall she mentioned her archive getting purchased. as far as i recall, her emails were a part of it, but i don’t remember any details of the process. so while i’m not being entirely helpful, there are people doing it and it will probably become much more common.
thanks for your comment, alex. im curious: do you know the details of the purchase? like how the emails will be archived?
I think the cashing in at the end of a career of writing might end, with no paper trail…
But maybe actually electronic data will last longer?
Paper is paper.
I worked at a university where we paid 300,000 for an author’s “papers” but he actually worked only in paper. So it was truck-loads.
In the future, who knows?
Electronic data will not last longer – not necessarily, anyway.
All the questions asked by this post: complex problems, no easy answers.
Although the dilemma might be summed up with an example, in two words: floppy disks.
See also this recent article re Rushdie: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/books/16archive.html
I think paper actually more reliable for long-term storage than electronic data. There scrolls and shit that are 2000 years old. Electronic media change formats pretty rapidly. Information can be lost if it is stored on old format that have become unreadable. It has to be transferred from format to format. Electronic media can also become corrupted. (I suppose physical media can be “corrupted,” too.)
I think paper is*
an old format that has*
All this data saving either an effort to deny the fact that we actually do die, or maybe yet another resource built around the PhD?
Since UT has become the badasses of buying up author papers is there a politics to then spending big $$$$ on systems to save paper (a futile act–see entropy, etc) and have they spent the same on saving electronic files?
I wonder.
Yes. Unreadable formats, obsolete/incompatible storage systems, lack of interoperability, file corruption, proprietary software…and on and on. How many people here could open a 5-1/4 inch floppy disk? How many people have even seen one? And then there is the web…the internet…email…chat…texts….
electronic copy is scalable, paper is not.
the information doesn’t decay, only the medium that holds it.
while paper, ink, language, earth all decays.
i can show you silly shit i wrote back in ’95 still on the web today.
All paper is not the same; paper itself is a medium. Scalability is not the issue. Each form of preservation – paper and electronic – presents unique problems – the latter only now being addressed and understood by archivists.
ooops, just realized you said you did not know ‘details of the process’ sorry.
I recommend Matt Kirschenbaum’s book “Mechanisms” and his investigations into the archiving of “born digital” materials. http://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/
Among other things he writes about the particular challenges posed by William Gibson’s poem “Agrippa”.
Susan
Will we see a volume of ‘David Foster Wallace. The Complete Spam Folder’?
Will we see a volume of ‘David Foster Wallace. The Complete Spam Folder’?