Books: Keep or throw?

Piles for permanence
or procrastination

Vacillating over volumes…

Audrey: It’s about time to clean the bookshelves of outdated, irrelevant books. What's your plan?

Mari: Which books we should keep and which ones we should get rid of, you mean? I was thinking if I haven’t opened a book for six months I should throw it out.

Audrey: Can you decide what's relevant? Some of those "outdated" books may have historical value. Interest to future generations.

Mari: I didn't mean it like that.

Audrey: Well, that's how it sounded. We can't just go on a rampage to make room for more popular titles.

Mari: Okay. What do you suggest?

Audrey: First pile: books of historical and sentimental value. Save. Second pile: books to donate to libraries or opportunity shops. Third pile: ephemera, yes. toss.

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Voice-over

Curating and stewardship of a private library can benefit from two three people’s opinions.

Archive Preserved

After the move…

Richard: All the furniture has gone into storage.

Guy: And the drawings and documents?

Richard: They’re safe. In boxes. Ready for the regional archive.

Guy: I had hoped the furniture could have become a mini museum and the papers stored in the drawers for interested people.

Richard: Moving the furniture out saved the documents. Mostly people access old plans and records online now.

__________

Voice-over

Artifact storage plus a website. Probably 5% of access through artifact-viewing and 95% online glimpsing. Some lovely old watercolor architectural plans.

Relocating an Archive

A messy room…

Visitor: What’s happened here?

Archivist: We have to move the archive to a new location. A smaller place.

Visitor: Downsizing? Hard to choose what to keep?

Archivist: It’s easy enough. He’d kept the office furniture together with the architectural drawings. So we’re throwing the furniture out to protect the drawings.

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Voice-over

Sometimes you have to cut a lot of branches so the tree will survive.

1954 house plan discovery

Locating old plans in an archive…

Bill: I think I’ve seen drawings for the Williams house in the collection here.

Sarah: It’s good of you.

Bill: No worries. Main reason for keeping a collection of old drawings is to help people understand an old house they bought.

Sarah: Here’s a Williams And a photo. That's it!

Bill:1954. There are half a dozen drawings showing floor plans, elevations and structural details.

Sarah: Wow. This is a godsend. 

Bill: Do you want the drawings or will scans do?

Sarah: Scans are fine. Keep the originals in the collection.

________

Voice-over

Archives have their uses. Most people only want the scanned copies or photographs. The originals which take up space can be kept in a central repository, purpose designed for preservation and printing.

Projects built and unbuilt

Sorting through the collection…

Jonathan: Shouldn’t we just toss out the projects that were never built?

Sally: He wouldn’t have liked that. He said the unfinished ones were sometimes like sketches of great paintings that were never completed.

Jonathan: There is something grand about the neo-classical parking building.

Sally: Yes, the Depression put paid to that. In contrast, the very modernistic and spartan art gallery did get built.

___________

Voice-over

Sorting through a collection of architectural drawings raises a dilemma. To throw, or not to throw? That which never was built may have been greater than that which was.

Arkivism

Simon de Myle

Building a digital ark…

Noah: We’re launching a new website. Arkivism.

Japheth: Meaning?

Noah: It’s an online archive.

Japheth: Why spell it with a “k”?

Noah: It's a digital ark. This one will carry artifacts. And art.

________

Voice-over

Arkivism seems an apt analogy for archive construction. And Noah was a good brand of ark.

Archiving old photos

Consistency in naming…

Kordelia: 2000 photos per drawer… Maybe we don’t need to keep the shaky blurry ones. What’s the best way to organize a digital collection?

Kentaro: It’s a big job. Probably huge. There are many ways. Here’s one example: Sort albums into years and months. Then into groups: “A” keep, “B” not sure, “C” throw (eg shaky, blurry). Be a bit ruthless. Start with “A” group: date, who is who, location. Scan photo (300 dpi or better) sharpen and tweak colors if necessary. Name file with a consistent format and version: for example, “220327 Olivia Opera 01.” Store in non-lossy file format, like PNG on external SSD hard drives for portability.

Kordelia: It would be faster to just scan everything; it seems like a good opportunity to declutter.

Kentaro: Using a fast scanner, scan several on one page. Best if you can employ a student, or use a commercial outfit. Dates have to be done manually I guess, but not necessarily for each pic. Group them. Face recognition, you could use software, and tag later. batch processing where possible.

Kordelia: Luckily, my mother was well organised so all the albums are in chronological order labelled with the year followed by a unique identifier.

_______

Voice-over

There are scanners just for this. Ones where you can just load 36 photos into it. Like the Epson FF-680W.

Bequeathing an Old Book Collection

Negotiating a gift…
Heira: I have some old books. My husband valued them and wanted to bequeath them to the library.
Librarian: But we don’t have space.
Heira: This one is 250 years old.
Librarian: (sighs) Yes, I understand. The mere fact of being old might make it significant, despite it being of not great value in its lifetime. But the covers have fallen off. What does the family say?
Heira: One or two say pitch them on the tip, most of us say the collection should be archived for posterity.
Librarian: What we really need more of is funding before accepting collections.
_________
Voice-over

The beholder’s eyes are closed, the minds of those who come after are closing. Three principles for tidying up: Assess to select, toss to declutter, house to collect. Oh, and one more thing: find an institutional benefactor.

Photographic evanescence

Perusing family photographs...

.

To horse! To school!

Charlotte: When was it taken?

.

Emily: It’s Andrea on Chestnut with Mum beside her. So it must be about 1920.

.

Charlotte: Your mother rode?

.

Emily: Oh yes. Sent all us kids to school on horse.

.

Charlotte: Do you have any other photos?

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Emily: I think most were thrown out after Dad died.

________

Voice-over

Some people like to discard and declutter. Archivists tend by nature to be hoarders. Compiling family histories can be a bit like a lottery.

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