We're All Doomed, Let's Go Digital
As my colleague @hourofhistory explained in his post, this week's reading, "The Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America’s Collections" paints yet another gloomy picture of the state of the nation's cultural sector.
At this point, I'm not surprised by bad news.
The reading is full of charts and graphs that visualize just how bad things are. For example, this one, which reveals how unprepared institutions are for dealing with potential environmental threats to collections:
There is always a chance for disaster, especially as global warming persists. In the mean time, institutions face chronic underfunding, especially in conservation and preservation departments.
Tl;dr, things are bad, and there's no obvious solutions.
As usual, the report presents a lot of problems and few solutions. The piece concludes with, "designate your funding for collections care" and "plan for emergencies." But there is no easy way to do either of these things. I worry that historical institutions are in over their heads, especially as space is becoming more limited.
What if instead of trying to preserve everything, we shifted our focus to digitization
Of course I want to save every historical artifact possible. I believe in the benefit of seeing a physical object instead of just a digital version of it.
But the reality is that our environment is becoming more volatile, the planet is running out of space, and there is no sign of improvement in getting people to care about historical preservation.
Based on this graphic, also from the HHI report, I don't think there's much hope in physically saving these objects.
At some point, we're going to have to bite the bullet and accept that not everything can be saved. Perhaps the future isn't in trying to improve conservation and preservation, but rather in widening digitization efforts to make the inevitable loss of physical objects less painful.
Of course, digitization comes with its own problems
It still takes time and money that most institutions don't have. There are still space and storage concerns, especially as digital technology continues to evolve. Yet, I think that there is more hope in digital than there is in physical conservation.
The digital offers for more storage space, immersive experiences, and excitement that will draw funders more easily than trying to beat the clock in saving physical objects. This photo is from the VR exhibit at The Franklin Institute
With advances in VR, it is becoming easier to create a manifestation of an object that is close to encountering the real thing. While a 3-D graphic of an object is not the same as coming face to face with the actual thing, maybe it is good enough. I think that someday it'll have to be.
The question now is,
When is it time to give up on saving physical objects and instead move to total digitization? Is it here already?
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Does any organization destroy (or relegate to destructive conditions) what it digitizes? If so, this approach may work. If not, digitizing adds yet another layer of infrastructure and expense.
It does feel as if the entire field is in trouble, regardless of what we do or want to do. But can't we step back and find another approach? Can we learn from the medical practice of triage? And maybe institutions are doing it already and that the Heritage Heath Index is a disservice in its gross framing of the issue.