3 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2022
    1. Humanist concerns about printing motivated one early appearance of the theme, in Erasmus’s famous digressive commentary on the adage festina lente (make haste slowly), first published in 1525: “Is there anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books? Even if, taken out one at a time, they offered something worth knowing, the very mass of them would be a serious impedi-ment to learning from satiety if nothing else, which can do far more damage where good things are concerned or simply from the fact that men’s minds are easily glutted and hungry for something new, and so these distractions call them away from the reading of ancient authors.” Erasmus complained here about a flood of new books because these were of lesser value than ancient texts and dis-tracted readers from true learning. Erasmus blamed the flood of bad new books on printing.

      I'm reminded here of a similar conversation I had circa 1996 with cinematographer Caleb Deschanel who lamented with me about the increase in the number of new low quality movies available on VHS and DVD and how we both spent time watching a lot of crap instead of focusing on the auteurs and better quality cineaste experiences that were available in remastered formats and collections like the Criterion Collection.

  2. May 2016
    1. “People will want to study the labels that were put on tapes, or the tape stock, or the plastic case,” says Gary, who specializes in American history. “All that stuff tells a story about how it was produced and where it came from that future scholars will want to grapple with in some fashion.”
  3. Jul 2015
    1. She said that's because, to an archivist, everything's worth saving.

      Although, a big part of being an archivist is appraisal - determining what's worth saving and what isn't, based on institutional mission and funding. Yale probably has enough money to do this, which most archives do not.