Quantifying the inconceivable

In my last field report, I outlined four areas of archival work that I am coordinating at Center for Digital Storytelling. These areas concerned dark storage (for the long-term), RAID storage, physical storage, and networked storage. In the next week or so, we will be purchasing a RAID system that can hold up to 8 terabytes (TB) of data. This, my friends, is A LOT of data. What's even crazier though is that we have plenty more than just 8 TB that needs to be archived. 8 TB is only what we have precariously stored on our external hard drives, and doesn't include the 330 hours of Hi-8, VHS, DAT, and Mini DV, and 3+ TB that I just catalogued with some volunteers a month ago.

One of the questions this has raised for me concerns the value of narrative. Why do we create and preserve the digitized life-experiences of our storytellers?

My job is to find a home for all of our collected stories. I was hired to create a digital library–something not altogether different from a physical library that holds what appears to be an inconceivable amount of information. But the thing that makes the physical different from the digital in this case is that the digital has been quantified as we have attributed a storage amount to each storyteller's life.Is this the best way to capture the lives of our people? What is the value of storing the deepest secrets and concerns of our participants? Yes, we are an organization that uses these stories to show other storytellers the work we do. Yes, these stories help other storytellers better understand their own stories. And yes, preserving our digital stories helps us to stay afloat because it chronicles our progress as an organization.

But storytelling has an inherent context-based value. How one reacts and receives a story depends entirely on the place and space and time in which it is told. However, we pull these stories out of time, and out of context, and we store them. For what?
For the future?
For us?
For the understanding that human experience needs to be chronicled?

But who gets to see them? I do, for one. And the occasional workshop will highlight a few pertinent stories too.

Stories are the only product Center for Digital Storytelling has.

Our archives hold lived-experience in suspension, and my job is to make sure that we never let go of the string that holds it all together.

Comment from Bill Brown on October 21, 2009 - 3:03pm

Great post. Epic.