Great Moments in Archives History

Occasionally at True Archives, we discover artwork that needs no introduction or interpretation. Imagine our surprise when we discovered this important historical record documenting the dawn of Information Science evil.

Turning Tables on the Turntables

In the early days of hip-hop music, actual vinyl records on turntables became musical instruments as DJ’s and rappers dragged a needle across the grooves to produce the trademark ripping sound in cadence with the chanting words. We don’t know who invented the technique, but it is likely the practice came from a perception that the vinyl records were expendable and worthy of their individual destruction just to make the sound. Now that ripping sound can be generated digitally, of course, and it has made its way into the techno genre as well, but we wonder if the subliminal message regarding obsolete media and its disposable nature is somehow being absorbed by millions of angry robot music affectionados.

A real consequence of this attitude is the endangerment of books in libraries all over the world. As Information Scientists continue their nefarious campaign against the codex, the perception of the book as an obsolete format grows daily. When books are considered expendable, and their value is seen as negligible, we at True Archives shudder to contemplate future trends in popular music. Who is to say that the sound of shredding paper might be the next trademark sound of rappers, beat poets, and punk rockers? Tearing pages out of a book while keeping the beat of a given composition is a frightening possibility as barbaric Philistines take to the recording studio in the next musical fad.

Perhaps not all is lost, though. If we can just convince them to use the telephone directories that seem to show up on our doorsteps several times a year we might be rid of that plague. After all, who needs a phone book when everything is online now....

E(g)AD!

It started as a localized outbreak. People who had previously seemed hale and hearty suddenly became ill, usually with terrible results. Part of the problem with containing the outbreak came from the curious practices in the disposition of the departed’s effects, where traditional methods were deemed dangerous and needed to be wiped out to prevent the spread the virus. Soon, the problem became global.

No, we are not talking about the Ebola outbreak; we are instead referring to the widespread threat of Information Science that archivists have dubbed "EAD," (which stands for "Endlessly Aggravating Drudgery.") This descriptive format for the online presentation of archival inventories was foisted on an unsuspecting profession about twenty years ago, and while it has recently shown signs of its impending demise, Encoded Archival Description is still plaguing pusillanimous parchment processors in manuscript repositories around the planet. But, like all things digital, the EAD format is beginning to show its age. In a medium where mayflies outlive most software applications, the same Information Scientists who developed EAD are now casting about for the next digital hula-hoop. Item level description, the painstaking burden of creating online tools to give the illusion of research to the "right now" generation, will soon eclipse any attempt to enforce a new standard of inventory display designed with hopelessly arcane language and procedures.

The problem with these electronic fads is not the time wasted in conforming to standards that will not last as long as a Larry King marriage. The real crime is the ever changing medium in which these tools are set. Like embossing a piece of Jello, these same inventories and search machines will only be temporary as Information Scientists invent new vexing ways to format them. Not content with one method, they will invent a dozen more, ever while insisting that we catalog individual pieces of paper. In that way lies madness, and archivists need to draw a line in the sand if they expect to process any meaningful amount of paper backlog in the future.