That actually will require the public to give a shit and to want to fund historic preservation. But pretty much ANYTHING in the humanities is way on down the list of things most of the public actually care about… because they’ve been told that what really matters is what makes money, so fields like history and historical preservation (especially of culture, which most people see as a commodity anyway) are simply a luxury to be handed over to the wealthy to deal with in their spare time…
We have both the National Archives and the Library of Congress that do some of that work already. LoC has a pretty extensive collection of sound recordings across time periods. And anyone who makes an album can send a physical copy to the LoC to ensure their copyrights are protected (with the proper paperwork along with it) and they will hold a physical copy of the media in their collection.
But the ideology of “gubmit bad/ corporations gud” is not just a right wing problem. People across the political spectrum think that private entities can do a better job than publicly funded organizations like the LoC or Nat. archives, or that official archives are somehow inferior because of the influence of the state. And it’s true that official state archives can be problematic, in that they’ll preserve certain things over others, but that’s precisely why we need these things to be under the control of experts who have a broad base of experience and that they have broad public support and greater public inclusion in shaping institutions like these. Historians and archivists have often failed to make it clear why these things matter, not just in terms of pushing a particular narrative about the state, but in terms of making the public aware just how important it is to preserve things so that we can better understand the past from the broadest possible perspectives. Private archives often only just serve the needs of particular constituencies, while a well-run state archive can represent a broader base of voices and preserve a broader swath of history when done right and when the public makes demands on these institutions.
All they care about is amassing wealth. From their website:
Hipgnosis owns and manages over $3 billion worth of the most successful and culturally important songs of all time. Our portfolio consists of over 40,000 songs from more than 150 catalogues. We create value by optimising revenue generation, driving consumption and advocating on behalf of songwriters.
I don’t see anything about historical preservation and public education in that mission statement, so… it’s not as important a goal as “revenue generation”… state institutions are ultimately unanswerable to us, unlike something like hipgnosis. But also the public has to give a shit about historical preservation in the first place.
That absolutely could be the case, which is why we should give more funding to public institutions to expand their preservation efforts already underway. That’s on us if we don’t.
