The New Librarian | Media Archiving

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/6208db_2e88a78464124a4e9e33e07dac4fd328/360p/mp4/file.mp4

After decades of working in commercial art, music, film, and media, one thing has become abundantly clear to me:

If we don’t intentionally archive our work, we risk losing our cultural memory.

I’ve watched entire creative eras disappear—not because they lacked value, but because no one took responsibility for preserving them. Hard drives fail. Formats become obsolete. Film degrades. Websites vanish. Social media isn’t an archive; it’s a fleeting stream.

Every sketch, demo tape, photograph, reel, storyboard, poster, and independent film tells a story—not just about an artist, but about the time and community that produced it.

As creators, we often focus on making the next thing. But preserving what we’ve already made is just as important. Today’s forgotten files are tomorrow’s history.

Media archiving isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about stewardship. It’s about ensuring that future generations can see how ideas evolved, how movements were born, and how ordinary people created extraordinary things.

Whether you’re a musician with boxes of cassette tapes and CDs, a filmmaker with reels in storage, a painter with slides of your early work, or a designer with decades of digital files, now is the time to think about preservation.

Our creative legacy deserves more than an old hard drive in a closet.

Art only has a future if we protect its past.

I’d love to hear what others are doing to preserve their work—and what stories you think deserve to be saved before they’re gone forever.