By: Ima Oduok, Digital Librarian
Maintenance Culture (MC) is a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded program created by Myriad, a non-profit consulting organization that seeks to help smaller cultural heritage institutions preserve their collections. The focus of MC is on building a community of practice around the preservation of creative complex, born-digital objects. With several in-person skillshare and workshop events planned in major cities across the United States, MC seeks to assist creators and cultural heritage professionals (such as archivists and curators) to build off existing digital preservation knowledge and apply them to a variety of time-based media objects.
This past June 2023, MC held a workshop in Houston, Texas at The Menil Collection. For two days, we looked at specific case studies for born-digital creative objects, and collaborated on ideas about how to display, store, and preserve them. One of the pieces discussed was Max Neuhaus’s Sound Figure, a permanent audio installation, housed at the Menil itself. This piece is creates a subtle hum in walkway directly in front of the Menil’s front door, with sound projected from speaker arrays hidden underground.
Entrance of The Menil Collection.
“RPBW – Menil Collection” by timrsk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 .
The workshop provided the opportunity to learn the basics of digital preservation principles or reinforce existing knowledge on the topic. It confirmed what I learned about many aspects of the information profession – there is no one, absolute solution. Each creative, complex born-digital work will have its own set of issues in regards to preservation. Instead of focusing on a single workflow or policy, the workshop emphasized foundational tasks to be undertaken when acquiring works: communication, research, documentation, and preservation planning.
More information from the workshops and the Maintenance Culture project will be coming from Myriad. Project outcomes, such as a field guide and resource list, are expected to be published and made freely available in 2024. For more information about the skillshare events and workshops, you can check out this Myriad blog post about the Seattle events.