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Projecting Animation’s Past Onto Its Future By Stephanie Sapienza ( Reprinted from the Summer, 2008 issue of Cartoons magazine ) I’ve spent the last two years of my life in a rigorous academic environment, studying moving image archives. This includes the history of the industry, case studies with many different archival repositories, and the administrative and technical issues involved with storage, cataloging, access and preservation. The sticky term in the previous sentence is access. There has traditionally been a palpable tension between preserving moving image material and providing access to it, and preservation has typically taken precedence in the end. This is all changing in an era fueled by YouTube and Google, where researchers have come to expect immediate access to material. Archives tend to become overwhelmed by the technical resources and knowledge of copyright laws needed to provide such access, and so they lock their doors and say, “You come to us. We have a flatbed. You can use the rolling cart with the VHS player and headphones.” Luckily, I finally came across an archive that is boldly pioneering the realm of digital collections without fear. This archive exists in Burbank, but will be coming soon to a library or university near you! If an archive can be defined by its users, then the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is an artist’s archive. And although this facility is an animation historian’s dream, it doesn’t exist primarily to serve them. The primary focus is on serving creative professionals working within the business as well as students of the art form who want to acquire the necessary skills to become animators. These future animators have a tough road to haul. They are facing an industry where technical knowledge is valued at a level that is equal to, if not more important than, artistic prowess. But if the archive continues to grow and improve at the same exponential pace that is has in its first two years, it will grow to become a significant catalyst for change within the art of animation. Aspiring animators refer to one of over 4,000 digitized animated films in the ASIFA-Hollywood’s collection. The facilities are supervised by Archive Director Stephen Worth and housed in storefront offices in Burbank, California. Burbank is an ideal location due to its proximity to all the major animation and television studios, as well as all the local colleges and universities with prestigious animation programs– most notably CalArts, UCLA, USC, Woodbury University, Cal State Northridge and Art Center College of Design. Students may serve internships at the archive for school credit. The project consists of three elements: an archive, a library and a museum, each of which are now operational and open to the public. This in itself is proof enough that ASIFA-Hollywood is more progressive than most archives. Librarians and museum curators are notorious for being champions of open, free access, so a hybrid repository is a step in the right direction. Archivists are known to take a very careful (and therefore slow) approach to processing collections, establishing elaborate and often restrictive access procedures, and are especially cautious about setting up an infrastructure for digitization. It took ASIFA-Hollywood a mere two years to complete its proof of concept phase. This is proof of the archive’s commitment to open accessibility.
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