An article in the New York Times titled History, Digitized and Abridged caught my eye this morning. There is a nice photo which shows two shelves of old books. A few (very small number) are show in white as empty boxes. Presumably these white boxes represent the small portion of books that will be digitized in a number of collections. In other words, lots of books, videos and film clips that are on the shelf won't be digitized. Why should we care? The reason is that the newer generation (think of the millennials and whatever generation comes after) of scholars use the web almost exclusively as a source. This will ultimately leave a huge gap in history. Many reasons exist for why the entire world's cultural heritage cannot be digitized, Google's efforts notwithstanding.
One of those reasons is of course, copyright restrictions. "Copyright is a very blunt instrument" noted Tim Brooks, the author of Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry. As the article notes, sound recordings are especially vulnerable to perishing in non-digital oblivion as recordings made before 1972 are protected under state rather than federal laws, and under the 1976 Copyright Act, may be entitled to protection until 2067. This is on top of the fact that musical recordings have several layers of copyright protection, including the underlying musical composition.
A friend of mine who is a devoted opera buff just obtained a video copy of a rare recording of a particular Russian performance. She luckily knew someone who could turn it into a DVD so she could watch it. Not everyone will have the resources to access and enjoy these lost performances.
Comments (3)
I located a rare and valuable out-of-print film on VHS on eBay. It's a Soviet opera film of Moussorgsky's famous unfinished opera Khovanshchina. Shostakovich completed the orchestration for this Mosfilm production which was directed by Vera Stroyeva. It starred the great Mark Reizen (born 1895), a celebrated Jewish bass who was Stalin's favorite singer. That political favor saved Reizen from being executed or shipped off to the gulags along with the many other less fortunate Jews. The legendary Maya Plisetskaya (another Jewish artist, born 1925), prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi, also appears in Khovanshchina, performing the famous Persian slave's dance. I think her later debut protected her from persecution because Stalin was on his way out at the time, although her father and other family members were murdered for political reasons.
Someone holds the copyright of this important film of Khovanshchina, but I don't know whom. Corinth Films was the distributor. When I called them, they told me that someone else holds the copyright and isn't willing to relinquish it for release on DVD because the master is now in such poor condition. I even wrote to the studio in Russia for more information but never heard back from them.
This is a priceless work of art from the Soviet era, and it's a real sorrow and a pity that it's not being restored or at least protected in some film museum. I've had it transferred to a DVD for my own personal viewing and to preserve it, since the tape is getting rather old. I'm thrilled to have it. It's priceless.
Posted by Shelley Jordan | March 13, 2007 12:56 PM
Posted on March 13, 2007 12:56
Yes, there are orphans in every country, and even in ex-countries (USSR). Many of them will apparently have to be lost forever in order to make it painfully obvious that we have to do something, that giving copyright owners the power to assign to oblivion, by design or by accident, isn't really necessary to create an incentive to make the work in the first place. When one balances the incentive against public benefit in the archival, preservation context, the fulcrum needs to be quite a ways over from where it is right now.
Posted by Georgia Harper | March 13, 2007 1:20 PM
Posted on March 13, 2007 13:20
"Why should we care? The reason is that the newer generation ... of scholars use the web almost exclusively as a source."
Here's a bit of anecdotal experience that makes me sanguine: informal conversations last year with nearly two dozen students in a doctoral art history program (baccalaureate holders all), and not a single one of them chooses to conduct his/her scholarly research *without* using resources that are *both* analog and digital. Maybe that's just the nature of some doctoral programs, or of some programs conducted in New York City in 2006.
Here's a bit of anecdotal experience that furthers my optimism: formal conversations with nearly 60 public college undergrads last year (NYC public high school diplomates all) matriculated in a vocational program studying for an associates degree indicate that they use digital resources as a speedy tool *not* for conducting substantive, let along original, research but rather as a way to quickly find, cope, and concatenate a surfeit of information. Considering that many of the students' own chosen level of this scholarship might reasonably be characterized as trivial or feckless or non-existent, digital resources are, in fact, a good thing, a good way for the best of them to dip their toes in the water, a good way for the worst of them to simply cut to the chase and produce that paper in exchange for that grade.
This self-selecting process makes me optimistic.
Respectfully,
Walter Dufresne
Brooklyn, New York
Posted by Walter Dufresne | March 13, 2007 1:51 PM
Posted on March 13, 2007 13:51