We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
571
102 Film Prtsavation 1993
DR. BILLINGTON: I would just point out that I think behind this whole enterprise we've been commissioned to undertake, the idea to form a national policy is part of the realization in the Congress that we are headed for tough budgetary times, that's no secret to anybody.
And one thing that isn't realized I thiiUc; we think in terms of who's going to pay the bill, how is it going to be divided up. This is competing not just against other things on the social agenda, but against a whole range of preservation things. We have a hundred million items in the Library of Congress. It's the largest accumulation of recorded creativity. And sound is basically a large portion of the American memory. And all of it is on material that is-we're a throw-away society. I mean, our records, recorded sound, we haven't even talked about that It's all-paper itself is disintegrating. All paper made since 1840 with very little exception.
So practically everything that we have, and that all other great repositories of American creativity have, is all disintegrating. The preservation problem of [modem] American creativity, particularly. The papers of the founding faUiers are fine; you're dealing with vellum and parchment and high-rag content quality papers. The incxmabula, you don't have to worry about them for the good old fifteenth century.
But modem America is on throw-away goods. It's a massive problem. On the public policy side, the Congress and legislators and others are just begiiming to become fuUy aware of it So the idea of defining some kind of rational pattem is essential. Not just so that everybody's rowing in the same boat in the same direction, but because there are all kinds of other preservation boats that one has to worry about too.
And that leads to the last question I wanted to ask the panel, which is the technological future that Mr. Rothman was engaging in a bit, and talking about the new digitized universe and one thing and another. Might it be the case that film itself is not going to be the long-term preservation media of this form of American creativity?
MR.WATTERS: It's possible.
DR. BILLINGTON: And I wondered what your thoughu about that would be.
MR. MAY: That may be, but nothing has come up yet that we all feel comfortable with.
MR. HUMPHREY: Sony Pictures may be in a different position in that Sony, our parent company, is in the business of new technologies. We are in a partnership with them. Sony is experimenting with film in the high definition area. But again, SM, i^ple, all kinds of other companies are looking at compression technologies and other information technologies, that can store the visual image and the audio image.