I had never considered the possibility of archiving pornography for exactly the reason this article suggests: I thought of pornography as ephemeral and essentially interchangeable. SO what I'm wondering while reading this section of the article is how can pornography be appraised? What makes any given work of pornography more worthy of being preserved than any other? Is it simply how it reflects the prevailing trends and tastes of the time? If so, what about niche or fetish genres of pornography which by definititon diverge from mainstream tastes? Also, while it is silly to lock away pornographic records in a dark room like the Victorians did, surely it has to be somewhere a little more discreet so the majority of patrons who don't want to see pornography while they use the archive don't have to be exposed to material they might find uncomfortable or disturbing?

And even if they did have a good track record, entrusting corporate entities with the care of such a major part of humanity's archival record would even further centralize power and control in their hands. The rise of subscription and rent-based distribution schemes is part and parcel of the resurgence of extreme inequality, and this article does a good job of explaining how that affects the preservation of sound recordings.

I find the tone of this article quite interesting, as it grants archivists a role almost akin to a secularized priest, administering sacred rituals to the dying, the dead, and their survivors. I had never considered this angle on archival studies, but it is a thought-provoking way of framing this aspect of archival work. I think that it properly conveys the gravity and responsibility of working with donors near the end of their lives.

As more information is created by institutions over time the value of each individual piece of information goes down. Whereas when dealing with scarce medieval documents one must extrapolate the context from the scant information which can be divined from the records, now the broader context must be established first in order to limit the vast quantity of information available to what is actually relevant. If the archive contains everything, it becomes as useless as if it contained nothing. And if the role of the archivist is merely to hoard everything the institutions that create records produce rather than critically evaluating which possible records best reflect the reality of what is being documented, then archival studies cannot really be a field in its own right, because it merely collects rather than studying. Cook is right that archivists must record the forest rather than getting lost in the trees.

Robinson is right to emphasize the particular threat securitization poses to Black and Indigenous people, but wrong to frame this as the main issue, as though securitization of public space would be fine if only it were racially equitable. Homeless, mentally ill, or otherwise marginalized people are still endangered by the police even if they happen to be white, because the function of police is first and foremost to defend the propertied from the unpropertied.