Re: [ARSCLIST] was Mass Digitization-now why preserve

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 25/05/07, Karl Miller wrote:

> "Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: ***Further, at
> least IMO, the reason for preserving intellectual property, including
> things like newspapers, magazines, sound recordings, still and moving
> images, usw. is so our posterity (assuming we have such a thing) will
> have the necessary information to understand and/or comprehend our
> times.
> 
> I believe that the reason we have such little support for preservation
> is that society does not value history. What is the value of history?
> I just typed that in at google. Most of what I read suggests that the
> documentation of history satisfies curiosity.

It is more than that. An awareness of history enlarges the world you
live in, like the discovery of a new continent or Hubble's discovery of
the nature of the galaxies. 

In the case of music, a person who knows only the music of his own time
lives in a small world. Records from the 1920s, or reconstructions of
how music would have sounded in the 1720s, open up windows.

In the case of oral history, that speech really is a part of another
world.

>   
>  One other reference I encountered came from a 1934 speech to the
> Kansas Historical Society, "The point I wish to emphasize is that our
> history is in the making; it is not a dead thing to be pulled out and
> praised or deplored; and our Historical Society, therefore, is not
> merely a custodian of the past, but is the recorder of the present,
> and so is as vital and essential to Kansas as any department of the
> state."
>   
>  I also found the statement "Public appropriations for historical
> societies have been reduced everywhere." I thought to myself, so what
> else is new...
>   
>  So what is the value of our recorded history. How does one place its
> worth within a context of what is valued by our current society?
> 
About the same value as transport systems.
> 
Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx