International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle

Now that Schwejk is on our staff, where do we go?

Paul S. Ulrich (Berlin)

Winds of Change - New Technology

21st International Congress

Helsinki, 31 August - 6 September 1996

In the coming days we will be dealing with "Winds of Change". This sounds great, exciting, full of promise, hope and improvement over the status quo. But what changes do we mean? How will they affect what we are doing? And let's not forget that just because a change takes place, it does not necessarily mean that it will be an improvement and that things will automatically be getting better. The only thing we can say for certain is that things will be different, they will not remain the way they are or have been.

You have perhaps noticed that the changes which are the theme of our congress refer almost without an exception to technological "changes", technological innovations which are currently available or being developed. All this technology, all these developments exude a fascination on us and we are capitivated by all the possibilities which are "being opened" for us, how all these new technologies are going to effect what we do. What is missing is how this technology can be effectively incorporated into our daily work and what it really means. With the introduction of new technology, we are going to have to make decisions which might seriously hinder the very processes they were intended to assist.

I agreed to talk to you because I am disturbed by the way we allow ourselves to be duped into playing technological shell games. In these games the fascination of technological machines blinds us to what pea it is which is being shuffled about before our eyes. And if there is a pea in the game at all, it is most definitely not golden, but shrivelled.

Now I'm not telling you not to play the game, what I am saying is: beware, you are playing a game where you hardly know the rules and it is not all it is made out to be. If you are not aware of what is going on, you will most definitely be the loser. It is too easy to lose track of the real purpose of what the technology is intended to do and not to ask the difficult question: why? Why are we doing what we are doing? Don't let this technology blind you from your real goals.

Let's consider a few aspects of this game and remember, whatever I say, no matter how horrible it may seem, is probably not as bad as it really is. Reality has a tendency to exceed our fantasies, generally for the worse.

What is our real purpose? We are repositories for material relating to the performing arts. With this material we hope to provide persons at a later period in time a semblance of what happened, realizing all along that we can only provide hints of what actually happened, we can not totally preserve the event itself. For a long time the main ways of preserving elements of the performance event were either in written form or with paintings, drawings or other visual arts. The recording methods which were used were by no means suitable for what was trying to be preserved. When new methods of creating records evolved, we were very glad to embrace them, for each of these new methods invariably recorded missing ways of preserving an elusive event.

The development of new technologies to record events at first did not seem to be such a problem for us; we did not notice that the material used for the recording process would not be permanent. The period of deterioration was so long, that we could easily pass the buck to later generations - they could solve the problem. Furthermore, although a primitive technology might have been needed for the production of the record, technological tools were not necessary for the accessing of the material which was recorded.

At the latest since the end of the nineteenth century, this situation began to change. Suddenly it became equally important to have technological machinery to access recorded material. Since then institutions preserving material relating to the performing arts have been confronted with the problems of coping with technological "winds of change".

New technologies at the beginning of the century gave us the feeling that we were able to preserve more aspects of the performance situation. First there were sound recordings and then we had films, then videos and so it progressed. With each development we found ourselves confronted with a new aspect of technology and gradually we realized that with the presence of these technological machinery, problems had insinuated their way into our life in ways we were unprepared to deal with.

To make matters worse, our original problems of administering paper-based collections actually increased and did not decrease as we had hoped. Little did we realize that, by incorporating these materials in our collections, we had jumped on a train which was not going to stop and that there was no conductor on board to answer the many questions we had about where we were being taken, where we were going. Rather than admit that we have failed to confront our real problem, which is preservation management, we scurry about chasing the newest technologies being used in the entertainment industry trying to create the illusion that we are "state-of-the-art". We must realize that ultimately technology is not our major problem and that only when we confront the problems of preservation management will we be be able to provide the services which are expected of us.

The most important part of our collections is the content of the collection, the information which was recorded about historical events, information which we have preserved. A collection which can not be accessed may perhaps be interesting, it has, however, relatively little value.

I am reminded of the professor who collected uncut books, i.e. books which could not be read because the book blocks had not been cut. Now it may very well be that a value is attached to such editions. The intent of the persons who wrote these books was that they be read. As long as the books remain uncut this will be impossible. And if this is the only copy of a book which exists, then we have no knowledge of the content, we don't know what is in the book. But if we had the key, i.e. if we would cut the pages, then we would be able to learn what was so important for the author to record for us. Without access to this material our knowledge is lacking.

I would imagine that most of you know who the good soldier Schwejk is: the character created by the Czech Jaroslav Hasek. Schwejk always does exactly what he is told to do; he doesn't question what he is told to do. And he always does exactly, literally, that which he is told to do. He assumes his master knows what he is saying. Schwejk follows orders better than any person does, for somewhere along the line everyone interprets what he is told. Not Schwejk. The problems which arise are funny for those of us looking on from the outside. For Schwejk's master and for those he comes in contact with the situation is anything but funny - it is exasperating!

I would suggest that at the latest when we began to use technology in our museums and libraries that we began to add Schwejks to our staff. Machines don't think, they were not intended to think. It is our job to think for them and to provide meaningful orders to our Schwejks which produce the results we want. The more fascinated we become with new technology, the more new technology we introduce into our work, the greater the number of Schwejks which we will have to deal with.

Jaroslav Hasek wrote about a society in which there was only one Schwejk. The results were not necessarily flattering. Today we are embacing situations where we delegate more and more tasks to a company of Schwejks. Where will this take us?

Just a few years ago, computers were seen as the technological wonder which would help us solve our problems, particularly our administrative problems. The reasons we used to justify the introduction of computers were that the amount of work which kept piling up could not be managed with our limited staffs and only the introduction of this new technology would permit us to provide cost-effective services. We fought hard to scratch together enough money for the hard- and software and thought that once we had our new super acquisition, everything would be smooth sailing. After all, everyone told us that all we would have to do is punch a few keys, push another button and all our problems would be solved. It was suppposed to be so easy that any child could manage this technology. (What no one told us is that archive/library management is not something any child can do.)

We were so proud that we had taken our first steps and did everything we could to justify our expenditures. We were perhaps state-of-the-art at the time we ordered our new assistant, our Schwejk, but little did we realize, little would we admit to others, that our needs would far exceed what we had originally said. Because we never really confronted our real problem, it never went away, but stayed haunting us, always reminding us that something was not going the way we had hoped it would go. Daily we were inundated with new press releases about new products which would make our work with Schwejk even easier, new developents which would solve all our unsolved problems.

Within a short while we once again realized that we were still not adequately equipped for the task we had begun, Schwejk was not performing exactly as we had imagined he would perform. We needed even more updates, newer equipment, newer this and newer that. Demand followed demand. In spite of the use of ever newer technology, there were still problems with Schwejk, and the backlog of material we had to process did not diminish as we had argued; quite the contrary it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And we needed more and more storage space. There was never enough.

Then came the CD-ROM. As long as we had a few of these silver disks, everything seemed manageable. But the number of these disks quickly multiplied, each with it's own technical demands and different user interface. Once again we found ourselves questioning how much we had really gained. The technical and administrative overhead which we were certain would be reduced with them did not decline, but continued to increase.

Now the amount of information which can be stored on a CD-ROM is really very limited. We need much, much more space for our information than is available on CD-ROM. More and more information is being made available on them. But when the next generation of CD-ROMs comes, which it will, will we still be able to use the CD-ROM drives which we now have? Will we need two different drives, one for the older CD-ROMs and another one for the new ones? How long will we be able to run parallel systems? Will the old and new systems be compatible?

But the most distressing question is: what happens to the information on those CD-ROMs we are not able to access? Who is going to transfer all this information to another system? Who is going to be responsible for this? Are we just going to ignore this fundamental problem and hope that when the time comes someone will have the answer?

Perhaps others can have this attitude. Those of us responsible for preserving information and making it available to later generations will be committing an irresponsible crime if we don't take this problem very seriously. Quite frankly, the problems of maintaining, the problems of guaranteeing access to the material we have painstakingly acquired are the most pressing problems which we will have. If we don't solve them, the expensive work we have done in the past will be worthless.

The stand-alone PC did not solve our problems. New, additional, pressing daily catastrophes with our technological wonder assistants once again distracted us from our real problems. Managing our data becomes more and more cumbersome. The way out of our dilemna would seem to be to network our workstations. But networks aren't quite as simple as we would like to believe and the demands which we place on them are more complex than we really admit. And Schwejk has so much fun working here. We must spend more and more time administering our complex systems and have less and less time for our real work. And there is always the need to buy one more of this, one more of that. The programs need more and more memory and storage space, the old programs no longer have the user interfaces we need and it is always mandatory that we update or replace them. Again and again there are more updates and data must be exported/imported from one system to another. We lived in isolation from the rest of the world. It was an ivory tower were we could do our own things, hoping that the day would soon arrive when we would be delivered from our "temporary" technological growing-up troubles with our Schwejk.

Although we still hope that somehow a solution to these problems will be found, we are already being bombarded with new developments which will once again wreck havoc with our plans: whether we like it or not the internet and in particular the World Wide Web is here and they will force us to once again reconsider what we are doing, where we are going and what we really want. With international networking we will not only have our local problems to deal with, we will also have all the problems which each local area/institution has. Add to this language communication problems and you begin to realize the extent of the new developments. And when we have begun to feel somewhat at home with these new developments, we will begin the next round in a never-ending spiral.

If you thought you had problems with your Schwejk, what is going to happen when you suddenly discover that all your colleagues in other institutions have just as many Schwejks on their staffs as you do? How many Schwejks can we afford before everything breaks down?

You may have the impression that I am trying to discourage you, that I am against new developments. Quite the contrary, I see many new possibilities opening up for us, possibilities which were unthinkable just a very, very short while ago. Daily I am confronted with all aspects of this new technology and they aren't always that which they are made out to be. What is important is that we really realize what we are doing, what we are getting into, where we want to go and that we clearly define the reasons for what we are doing.

Technology places demands on us and these demands are numerous. Our jobs are to collect, catalog, preserve and make historical material accessible. Each type of material has it's own demands and the technology we use does also. Perhaps the most disturbing part is that we can't really control the incursion of technology in our jobs. This is because technology is used, even worse, it is an integral part of the theatre, the performing arts, and all aspects of the entertainment industry are invariably a part of our job. We can't avoid it.

None of us has enough money for our needs. We must show that the material which we have is being used. In order to do this we must attract visitors. The best way to attract visitors is to utilize new technology which will draw crowds. Furthermore, potential investors are more willing to contribute to "state-of-the-art" institutions than they are for institutions which don't attract an audience. We find ourselves in the dual role of producer and conserver. The important thing here is that we don't confuse the dual roles which we are forced to perform. When we become involved in publicity with technology we compete on the "edutainment" level with the entertainment industry. This has, however, little to do with the conservation aspect of our jobs. The problem is that the objects of our conservation job are also the object of our "edutainment" job. It is on this level that our work becomes confusing not only for our audience and sponsors, but also for us. Producing something is always more rewarding, more exciting than conserving something.

As nice as it may be to have old cylinder recordings, it we don't have a machine to play them, they have very little value other than their physically existance. A film with no projector to show it is equally valueless. The same holds true for all the new media which we acquire. Without the reproduction machines, the information on the recording media is of no use.

Old newspaper clippings are nice to have, but continual use of them speeds up the deterioration process. We are caught in a vicious circle of being forced to work with reproductions rather than with originals. Reproductions themselves in turn also deteriorate, so we must make reproductions of the reproductions to make the content accessable. In other words, the administrative work of keeping our material accessable, i.e. preserving it, forces us into areas which we are completely ill-equipped to manage.

On a very basic level we have the problem of data back-up (i.e. preservation) when we have a computer or computer system. At regular (or more generally, at very irregular) intervals, we make copies of our data to guarantee that should any horrible unforeseen calamity occur, we can continue working. Of course, this is very time-consuming and bothersome, so we minimize dangers and become rather haphazard. Then, when we can least afford it, there are problems, and of course something has always been forgotten, something doesn't work the way it was supposed to work. This happens to all of us. I can't tell you how often I have lost data simply because I didn't follow the very procedures I preach to everyone who starts working with computers. And it always happens when you can least afford it.

But there is another, more insidious problem here, a problem which is at the heart of the fundamental problems we who work in archives and museums have. Most of us do our back-ups without questioning whether what we are doing is of any value. Just because one has gone through the motions of making a back-up does not mean that the original is intact. If it is defect, then the back-up is also defect. What do you do now? What if the back-up is defect? Do you test your back-ups? Quite frankly, I don't know anyone who tests the integrity of back-ups; it is too time-consuming. But if there is trouble, a corrupted back-up will not be of any help, of that you can be sure. Quite the contrary, even more time will be spent until it is discovered that the back-up is corrupted. And let's not forget that all these back-ups cost a lot of money, not only for the physical medium on which they are made, but also for the administration: whether temperature-controlled shelvings or not, you must allocate physical space for them and then there is the administrative overhead.

At the core of all our problems is the problem of numbers. Unless we realize that the administration of large numbers of objects quickly takes on proportions much greater than what we originally planned and that the adminstration process itself produces additional material which must likewise be administered, then we will completely underestimate our situation and not find the requisite solutions. Archiving ultimately involves the problem of numbers, and if anything characterizes our "winds of change" then it is numbers, large numbers, very large numbers, excruciatingly large numbers.

Two years ago in Antwerp I began my talk with an illustration of the numbers confronting us in collecting material relating to the theatre which I repeat here because it vividly exemplifies our problem.

Let us look at a fictitious institution whose goal is to document 10 years of a local theatre. For the sake of argumentation, let us assume that this theatre brings out 8 productions a year, performs 6 nights a week, is closed for three weeks in the summer and has 20 people on the staff (artistic, technical). This means that it is necessary to document 80 productions with a total of 294 performances a year for a total of 2940 performances over a ten year period. If we further assume that there is an average personnel turnover of 50% each year, this means that potentially data on 210 persons directly involved with the theatre will be gathered.

Our fictitious institution collects programs, posters, reviews, newspaper clippings, prompt books, production notes, pictures, set and costume designs, set models, selective costumes, set pieces, lighting plots, sound recordings and properties for all the productions. Furthermore, various legal and financial documents relating to the daily business of the theatre will also be collected. If this theatre is technically well-equipped, there will also be rehearsal tapes, films and videos.

Furthermore, let us assume that for each production there is an average of 50 pictures, 10 set and costume designs, one set model, two costumes, 5 properties and one box of legal and financial records for each perfomance (i.e. roughly 70 items per production) . This means we are now talking about 4000 pictures, 800 set and costume designs, 80 set models, 160 costumes, 400 properties and 80 boxes of legal and financial records.

To document each object various descriptions of the physical object need to be recorded (size, shape, color, material) as well as information about the production, dates, persons involved. In practical terms there will be duplicates of certain pieces of information regarding the historical/theatrical importance of each of these 5600 items. The description record relating to each item will need to be duplicated and made accessible for various query approaches. Conservatively speaking, at least three additional records will be created for each physical item in order to provide access to this collection. These items/records in turn need to be administered as well. In other words, we will be administering 22,400 items for our 80 productions!

Unfortunately we have overlooked several important elements in this collection: the information collected on the performing artists themselves. Most of them were active both prior and after their activity in the local theatre. Our fictitious collection will without a doubt have considerable material on at least some of the artistic personnel and not all of this will be directly related to the theatre which is being documented. Let us assume that on an average there are 5 objects relating to each of the 210 persons active in the local theatre. This means that there are an additional 1050 objects that need to be administered with an additional administrational overhead of 3150 items. In otherwords, we now have 26,500 items to be dealt with!

This fictitional institution is so small that most of us would gladly exchange our problems with the problems which it has. What it does tell us, however, is that unless we from the very beginning plan on administering extremely large numbers of objects, we have absolutely no way whatsoever of accomplishing the task which has been assigned to us.

There is another danger lurking in the background which is even nastier and is thus ignored: do you have reserve equipment to use if there are technical troubles. But you already know this problem, don't you. If anyone should be aware of this problem, then it is those of us working in museums, where we collect that which was recorded and the machines for reproduction. Without machines to decipher the information on the recordings, we assume that it has been preserved, but in reality it is worthless if it can't be reproduced, and we have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not the infomation on the medium still exists, i.e. whether or not it is has in fact been preserved. The only thing we know is that the medium has been preserved, not necessarily the information on it.

NASA, the National Aeronautics Space Administration of the US, has mountains of magnetic tapes of valuable data from space flights which have been stored for later evaluation. There are back-up copies scattered in various locations about the US for safekeeping. At some point in the future it was hoped that there would be the time and facilities to more fully evaluate this data. The time never came, the tape machines broke down and today there are no machines which can be use to transfer the data to media accessible by the current generation of storage machines. Furthermore, the amount of data which would have to be physically transferred is so great that the costs of transferring it make the data worthless. Will you be caught in the same dilemna?

Currently there are numerous projects world wide to preserve our heritage by converting printed material into digitalized form. Without a doubt there are very pressing reasons for doing this, for the deterioration of the physical media is progressing rapidly. Whether or not there are contingency plans for continually transferring this material to new media I don't know. But when you consider the numbers involved, I would imagine that all our energies are focused on preserving books electronically on a currently available media, not necessarily for the future. If someone raises the question of continually exporting all this information to new media and formats, it is brushed under the table with answers like "We will handle the problem when it arises". Just think for a moment what this means. All our preservation work will have been in vain if we don't also have a cost-effective way of continually transferring our expensive information from one media to the next.

But we don't have to talk about big projects in order to see that this happens on a daily basis to all of us. And if it hasn't already happened to you, you can be very certain that in the very near future you will find yourself in the same situations. These "winds of change" rapidly become storms of destruction.

Last year Windows 95 was introduced and with it new programs to allow us to be more productive. Did those of you with older systems convert all your files from your previous systems to the new systems? Probably not. But being well-trained in preservation, you have without a doubt retained all your back-ups and continue to allocate space somewhere for them. Perhaps you could still "save" the information with the current system, but when the next new software or hardware is purchased, you will without a doubt get rid of the old software and hardware and then totally forget all the old back-ups. But you probably won't throw them away, will you?

We must justify the existence of our collections by showing that they are used. The more people who visit our institutions, the easier it is to convince others that we have a value. To make our collections "attractive" we use any and all means at our disposal, so if producing and showing videos about our holdings draws people or is used to convince potential moneygivers that their money is well spent on us, then we do it. We use such techniques to convince others that we are modern, up-to-date. But let's not kid ourselves about being up-to-date, being fashionable is expensive. There are always follow-up and hidden costs which are tied up when we follow this course of action. And once you start on this path it is extremely difficult to stop. Once you have established yourselves as being "state-of-the-art", how do you justify becoming old-fashioned a short time later?

Our good soldier Schwejk, the computer or any other technology, has invaded our lives whether we like it or not. And like Schwejk, this technology always does exactly what we tell it to do - exactly, no questions asked. Schwejk assumes that we know what we are doing, that we know what we want. We must think for him. Our Schwejk, technology, is probably the most frustrating, demanding employee on our staff. We have hired him, we have embraced him, we have invited him to help us, now it is up to us to find ways to effectively use him. If you leave it up to him you can be certain that no good will come of him. You will hate him, curse him, wish that he would vanish. He is here to stay.

When I first started thinking about what I would say to you, I thought primarily about the technology which is invading our daily life and how it would effect changes in our work. At some point, however, I noticed that I was falling into the same type of trap, playing the same shell game which I wanted to warn you about. The fundamental problems were being avoided. I was looking at shadows and seeing them as causing our problems. Oh, they are problems, but not the real problems.

Perhaps the most-used adjective today is "virtual". Wherever you turn you hear about the "virtual" this and the "virtual" that. We have the "virtual library" and the "virtual museum" and above all else we have "virtual reality". If something is virtual, then we have come to attach all sorts of exciting attributes to it and become excited because we think we are experiencing something new which we haven't experienced before. Everyone wants to be involved for fear of missing something very important. But is "virtual reality" really so new?

The performing arts, I would suggest, have always been "virtual reality" and as such have always dealt with the problems which are currently exhaulted as being so progressive. Whether we regard them as entertainment or "edutainment", the performing arts are in the last analysis "virtual reality", for what is presented to the audience is not and never will be reality. A person sitting in front of a proscenium (irregardless whether he is in a theatre, a movie theatre, or the technological equivalent, the video screen) forgets reality and submerges himself in the "virtual reality" of what is being presented to him.

Audiences need to be captivated in some way and the best way is always to have something new, exciting. The performing arts are and have always been a business and technical gimmicks have always been employed to attract an audience. New technologies exude an attraction on all who see them. This was true for the Greeks, the Romans, Shakespeare, the theatre productions and films which will be presented next year, and it will also be true for any new forms of entertainment which will be found in the future.

The entertainment business uses whatever technology is currently fashionable. Anything which will not attract an audience is discarded. The new technology of yesterday is quickly forgotten, discarded, or given to a museum.

As curators for the remnants of this "virtual reality" business, we must confront the reality, the real, dirty reality, that we are stuck with and must come to grips with administering and preserving what the entertainment industry has used and discarded; in this we have no choice. Added to this is the preservation of what we ourselves produce.

Of course, here I am assuming that all our institutions preserve and document their activities and that this material is also added to the other material in their holdings. When you use technology for your work, you obligate yourselves to preserve what you have done. Have you taken this into account when you took your first steps in introducing new technology? Have you instructed your Schwejk that this is part of his job, the most important part of his job?

Viewed in this way, the winds of change take on a new, if not necessarily pleasant, meaning. Just like nature's winds, we have no control over whether or not they blow. How much damage is caused we may perhaps be able to influence. New techology is a part of the theatre and a part of the preservation process; we cannot ignore it. We can, however, keep our eyes open and our wits about us and we must know what we are doing and even more important why. We don't need to be conned into playing a shell game. But if we do play the game, we should make decisions which are relevant to what will be needed now and in the future. We should not be taken in by a lot of hot air which we can't afford. We need to plan carefully and give our Schwejk precise instructions what he is to do, otherwise don't be surprised if things turn out quite differently than what we want and need. Will you be able to transform your Schwejk into a character who does not evoke laughter from those who view what you did, not just today and tomorrow, but in fifty, one hundred years?

21st Congress

URL: http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas96/hels09.html