Special Episode:
Rick Prelinger is the founder of the Prelinger Archives, the Board President of the Internet Archive and is the acting directory of the Open Content Alliance. Rick spoke to the University of Pittsburgh on January 26, 2006 regarding, as the title states, the future of archives. This week’s podcast is the audio from Rick’s lecture, in its entirety. This lecture is also available as a webcast through the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education, which you can get here. With that said, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to provide the lecture as a podcast/blog entry so the listener might get more out of it by further investigating the subjects Mr. Prelinger discusses. The lecture was aimed primarily at archivists, but anyone interested in open content, citizen media and copyright issues should find it quite interesting as well.

Listen here. Also available as an Enhanced AAC with Chapters and hyperlinks here.

Sections
1. Opening
2. Rick Prelinger Introduction (1:20)
3. Access (5:10)
4. Technology (27:56)
5. Cultural Production (33:29)
6. Civic Participation (37:47)
7. Q&A (44:51)
8. Close (57:55)

Part 1: Opening

Part 2:Rick Prelinger Introduction (1:20)

Part 3: Access (5:10)

Barriers

• access can be illegal
• contractual violation
• expensive
• risky
• impossible
• poor use of resources
• poor business decision
• access is a sticky door that gets stickier as the media gets richer

problems of de-contextualization when archival material used in broadcast media

Make source material available when its been excerpted.

Define access expansively and generously

Creative Archive Project

negative feedback surrounding opening up television archives

giving the public something back (license fee)

Cory Doctorow’s EFF Statement to BBC Board of Govs

Internet as Distribution Medium

Archives are now commercial.

History redefined.

Emergence of non-official personal archival material. (Industrial, Educational, Surveillance)

Our Media

Cult of Archives

CC License

Possibilities for Usage:
Free for public use.
High quality, warranted use must pay.

Today’s Remixer is Tomorrow’s Licensee.

The more an image is used, the more valuable it becomes.

The Most Valuable Image Time/Life Owns

getting over the risks of letting people use collections

If you think too restrictively about access you’ve already lost control.

Insufficiently assertive with donors- conceded right to block access.

Donors assume they retain copyright.

SRL Demo

Openness

People will consider archives irrelevent.

Try to draw a bar- a fraction- denominator is every kind of legitimate, non commercial use. The numerator is commercial use. Archivists need to enter the discussion of where that bar sits.

Risky in that it raises issues of property.