I watched SNL’s 40th anniversary show tonight. Like many Saturday Night Lives, this one was good for a while and then…not so good.
But it was saved by a series of montages featuring the best moments of past Saturday Night Live. Which brings me to the point of this late-night newsletter. Tonight, SNL again reiterated that archives are REALLY GOOD TO RESURFACE.
Archives:
1. are cheaper to distribute than creating new content
When I was little, my grandfather used to take me to the library and we would look at the microfilms for newspapers from important dates in history. Now, I can go to the Times Machine. Did you know that when you type in a CAPTCHA code, you’re helping to digitize books and newspapers?
How can we incentivize users to create additional metadata which could then be used to create new methods of distribution? #archivetalk
Mel
PS: If you like this, send www.tinyletter.com/melodykramer to a friend and ask them to subscribe.</span>
2. are way easier to produce and fail-safe (thanks @missmagner)
3. are something that differentiate legacy-owned media companies from startups (note: you are now competing with them for your own archives.)
4. produce feelings of nostalgia which help span multiple generations
5. require consistent metadata, which can be categorized in all sorts of ways. (See: 64 News Homepages.)
6. can go viral, because they produce feelings of nostalgia, which span multiple generations
7. need really, really good structured metadata.</p>