Archive the Unimportant

An initiative to protect unconsidered, unloved, and forgotten media

Today's Unimportant Archived Item

About

This simple inititave's goal is to promote personal archiving of seemingly unimportant media items to prevent them from being lost forever.

What's "unimportant"? And why is unimportant important?

If the thing you're thinking about would make the average person grunt in disinterest after you shared it with them, it's probably unimportant. Here's the thing: people are really bad at judging what might be needed in the future, so that's why it's key to not only archive so-called "important" cultural artifacts.

How about some examples?

The demo tape your middle school band recorded. A catalog from a long-gone electronics mail-order vendor. A floppy disk of programs you wrote when you were first learning to write BASIC. A video of your high school's 1987 Battle of the Bands. Antique books on niche subjects that haven't been preserved before. Public access shows that aired at 2am in Toad Suck, Arkansas in the 1970s. Concert flyers.

Want to know a secret? Some obviously important stuff is OK to archive too. Historical documents in danger of disappearing. Oral histories of marginalized communities. Photos of historical events from alternate visual perspectives.

What type of media?

Paper. Floppy disks. Audio cassettes. Video cassettes. CD-ROMs. mp3s. If it can be seen and heard, it all counts.

What about copyright?

Yeah... be careful. There are constant discussions about interpretation of copyright law in the digital arena and there are exemptions and allowances for archiving under Fair Use that involve whether or not the copyright owner can be found, whether the item exists anywhere else, and other considerations. It's up to you to check into this because TSINAL (This Site Is Not A Lawyer).

Suggested resources for digitizing

How to digitize

Library of Congress' Personal Digital Archiving Day Kit
Scanning Documents and Photos for Beginners
Sustainable Heritage Network's Introduction to Audio Digitization
Amateur guide to VHS digitization: from zero to hero
National Archives' Audio & Video Resources
Archive Team - Dedicated to preserving endangered web content

Places to upload

Your own web site
Internet Archive

What else can I do?

Send folks here. Use #ArchiveTheUnimportant to share your own unimportant archives. E-mail ryan at archivetheunimportant dot org to share your favorite unimportant item or if you've got some ideas.