The Social Life of Film Preservationists

Gracy’s piece (Gracy, Karen. Film Preservation: Competing definitions of value, use, and practice. Chicago: Society of American Archivists. 2006. Chp. 8) is really interesting from our perspective as students in the Ischool, because it really examines the work that a film archivist actually does, from inspecting the film, to negotiating with labs, to selecting what can be saved. It would be helpful to study many different types of positions in this field (libraries, archives, digitization), since professionally there are so many different kinds of positions and kinds of work to be done, and this type of anthropological writing, examining the work that people do, is so rare. We read a chapter of Gracy’s work in Caroline Frick’s Politics of Preservation course last year. It reminded me of readings that I did in Doty’s Users course about studying the way that people work and the way that people share information and gain knowledge on the job, primarily through gaining experience and watching other ‘experts’ in the field (The Social Life of Information, Brown and Duguid). This is why interviewing people, and working on case studies of archives and other institutions can be so helpful for students, because people on the job can succinctly sum up what the main issues are within the field.

For me, the most interesting aspects were the political discussions about deciding which films should be saved. This is something that a digital preservationist really decides, and there is never a right answer.