Episode 067 Crystal Sanchez

Show Notes

Today we are diving deeper into the world of digital preservation in our visit with Crystal Sanchez, digital archivist for the Smithsonian Institution. So far, over the past two years and sixty six episodes we’ve visited with all kinds of folks involved in different aspects of preservation of works of art — but something we haven’t really looked at closely is the infrastructure that makes all of this possible. Without proper digital preservation storage, systems, procedures, protocols, and the people to build and maintain all of this — time-based media conservation would be impossible. Crystal is just one of those people — at the Smithsonian she is responsible for managing a Digital Asset Management system that serves 22 Smithsonian Museums, even including the zoo. In this chat we’ll hear all about how this works, and what it takes to maintain a system like this, as well as the winding path that led Crystal from mathematics, to film studies, and finally to digital preservation.

Links from the conversation with Crystal
> https://www.si.edu/tbma/
> https://www.si.edu/openaccess

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Cass: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host Cass Fino-Radin, and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. Today, we are diving further into the world of digital preservation. 

[00:00:18] Crystal: I'm Crystal Sanchez and I am a digital archivist for the Smithsonian Institution.

[00:00:24] Cass: I am so excited to have crystal on the show. Hearing about what she does at the Smithsonian really provides a new perspective that we haven't heard yet on the show. So far over the past two years and 66 episodes, we've certainly visited with all kinds of folks that are involved in different aspects of preservation of works of art. But something we haven't really honed in on yet is the infrastructure that makes all this possible. Without proper digital preservation, storage systems, procedures, protocols, and the people to build and maintain all of this. Time-based media conservation would simply be impossible and Crystal is just one of those people. At the Smithsonian, she is responsible for managing a digital asset management system that serves 22 Smithsonian Museums. Even including the zoo. In our chat. We'll hear all about how this works and what it takes to maintain a system like this, as well as the long and winding path that led. As well as the, as well as the path that led crystal from film studies to digital preservation.

 Just a quick plug. Before we get started. I was recently a guest on an absolutely delightful podcast called The C Word, the Conservators Podcast, visiting with wonderful host, Jenny Mathiasson and Kloe Rumsey. I had a blast, the episode is a nice intro to time-based media conservation, and a bit about my background and origin story. So definitely recommended listening for fans of this show. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, just search for The C Word. 

And now, without further delay, let's dive in to this week's chat with crystal Sanchez. 

[00:02:07] Crystal: So I grew up in Florida, I have four siblings who are my favorite people. My parents would take us on trips. and we would spend like a month every year for a good 10 years in a 34 foot motor home traveling through the country. And my mother loved national parks and my father was really into like nice hotels. So they kind of split the difference, like stay at a KOA one day with like hot showers and the next three days stay in the national park with no hookups at all, and they loved hiking and they loved camping. We lived very close to my father's mother, my grandmother. And she is the one who she would watch us when we were younger and she would take us to museums. she was really interested in art and craft. She was also really interested in PBS, which is like my love of Masterpiece Theater. But she taught me my first craft, which is stained glass. So when I was 14, 15, I'd just go over after school and make stained glass with her in her garage. And she taught me how to cook and she was just like my best friend for a long time. My father always taught us to keep learning to reach for more. He was a great reader. so I got a lot of that, a lot of different kinds of cultural interests from both of those influences. I think like the constantly exploring and the interaction with art and the institutions of art museums and science museums places like that where they would, constantly take us.

I really loved going to university because I spent a lot of time in school I think cuz I loved that atmosphere of learning. And there's always a lecture to go to and then a sports game and then a concert. I went to school at University of Florida I was a math major for three years. I loved math. I loved practical mathematics. It was easy for me. And clear, I think I have like a kind of logical side to my brain that , , you learn the formulas, you plug in the givens and you get results. So if you liked math, you went into like engineering, which I couldn't really find space there that I really liked, or math. And then you become like an actuary, which is just like depressing. And then I hit theoretical math like linear algebra. And I had like my first breakdown I was like, I can't, this is not practical mathematics anymore. So, I remember I failed an entire semester and I didn't tell anybody and I had a friend at the time who sat me down with like the book of majors and was like, you will pick a new one right now. Like, you're not getting up until you like, pick a new one. I was so grateful for her. But I came out of that weird introspection session with myself as an English major and I remember I was taking these classes, like erotic politics of Renaissance culture and like Freud and his mistresses, it was like what is going reading and talking in class, totally different from math. So I ended up graduating with an English major so I went to Florida State University. I got a master's in interdisciplinary humanities. Also quite vague, I did a certificate in museum studies thinking, I need to end up somewhere. And I really would love to work in museums, but I don't really know how, and I don't even know what the paths are.

 I had thought about working in museums. I had volunteered in some museums in Florida and I didn't really know Pathways. I didn't really understand how to like get there. Getting jobs in museums is tricky and complex, I looked at museum studies programs. As full graduate programs. And I thought, that's so specific. I don't know. And I saw that, actually saw that there was a museum studies certificate of Florida State and then I was really interested in this humanities program and then I had a chat with them and they called me and said, Hey, we can pay for your full ride, if you will teach this class for us. They had this class called Multicultural Film, and it was, a mixture of cinema studies, history of American film, cinema and film language, sort of all wrapped up. You're kind of teaching these modules of like film and class issues, film and race issues. But you're watching office space and you're reading Karl Marx and you're talking about class issues and how that creates American identity and how like certain film shots, whether they're God's, eye view shots or certain kinds film approaches to like shooting film. And cinematography and lighting and things like that, how those contribute. So trying to build critical film watching in undergraduate students. And this class was so popular because you watched movies for credit and it was like a writing class, it was a humanities class. It fulfilled a lot of things for undergraduates that they needed. So we had a lot of students. And so we all taught a couple of sessions every year and had a group of us, like five or six of us, who were of teaching the same material that we would get together and talk about how to do it. Cause we were all kind of, we were all new. So I had this community of support and I loved it. I loved this material and the, critical studies and interrogating identity as an American identity as seen through film and media studies. So I really like accidentally kind of fell into it. And then teaching, you have to know a lot. So you know, you have to read everything and you have to be prepared. So I started teaching this class, it paid for my studies and then I was able to tack on this museum studies certificate that I was very highly supported in doing. And then you get closer to finishing, they want you to go and get a PhD. Cuz what do you do with the humanities masters you teach? So the jokes about teaching and academics and talking about tenure and just those kinds of demands in that way, even though the academic field really interested me the space of learning and discussing and communicating and all of that was, I always loved that energy.

But the practicalities of teaching in the academic world did not sit well with me. So I thought maybe the museum world , maybe there is, an, excellent other option. So I got this museum certificate degree. It was like four classes, And then you had to do an internship. My cousin who been very close with, she had just moved to Asheville, North Carolina. So I called up the Asheville Art Museum, this small craft based art museum in downtown Asheville, in this like little hippie mountain town. And I met Nancy, who was the adult programs director. And 20 minutes, turned into three hours chatting with her. It's just one of those great experiences. So I moved to Asheville and I worked in the Asheville Art Museum, which was a great experience because it was small enough. And I was interested and amenable enough to work anywhere that I think I worked in every single department by the time I left a couple years later they had hired me to like, write grants and then I worked on the capital campaign, and people were kind of turning over, right, leaving and coming. And there were holes that I, learned to update the website and write press releases and, we put on film festivals and I led book discussions and I think I worked in everything except with small children, just not my thing. So it was good. I learned everything. I learned about all the different areas of a museum. Like what is development, what is curatorial, how a museum is constructed as a organization. They're not all that way, but largely they have like advancement and, marketing these areas of a museum and there was one person in each one of those departments in Asheville. And it was a great town to live in for a couple years. Just really fun music and, people and potlucks and, I learned to play the ukulele. Just kinda fun space. I think people see it and they see how fun hippy mountain town it is, and now all the beer tours and everything, but it's really a small town. It's very small. And so after a couple years I was like, this town is too small. I would be fine if I wanted a family and I wanted to stay here for a long time, which is what my cousin did, which is great. But I didn't, I really couldn't grow any, further professionally.

So I started looking at programs again, started looking at school my default. And I started talking to people. I had met the film critic in town and the guy who ran the fine Arts theater. And I just started asking about one of my favorite areas in the museum was conservation. They didn't have a conservator on staff, but they did these projects with people on contract. And I love talking with them and working with them and thinking about like museum objects and care of them. So I just sort of was brainstorming and talking to everybody. And I remember asking, is there like a, is there like a field called film conservation I remember asking that one day we were eating oysters and I was talking to film guys I knew and they were like, it's called Film Preservation I, like, I would've been thinking about it. I had missed, you know, I was getting of bored and a little, , restless and I had missed working with film. I had missed my, cinema studies, like those programs and talking about film and everything. I wasn't a great film studies, person. Like, I'm not addicted, but I'm not like I actually don't even watch very many films anymore. But. I don't have a great knowledge of film history. I think I just kind of missed that side of my life. And then really liked conservation. Wanted to think about staying in museums, or at least with objects with collections. I guess I became like a, big fan of collections and collections care. And so I just put those together and started asking questions and discovered there were like three programs in the country for that, specifically for that. A lot of people learned, , different programs, putting things together, but the three programs and I just applied for them. And then I got into two and I started talking to people. I went up to New York and I met Mona Jimenez and just again had the greatest conversation with her. And I just moved. I just got in and I went, and I, liked what, was happening there and I liked what I was seeing and I was hungry for something very, very different.

So I went from tiny hippie mountain town to giant city, New York City. I moved in with this woman I met through a friend, through a friend as you do in like Sunset Park. I moved to Sunset Park way before it was, cool. And she was a musical theater actress, so I had this whole side of life that was that. And my boss the woman who runs the Asheville Art Museum, her sister is a private art dealer up there. So I got this job working for her one day a week. So I would go up to the upper west side and go pick up a Louise Bourgeois, like drawing across town and get in a taxi with it. It was like, no gloves on , like go across town to her apartment. I'm like, what is this life? This is crazy. And then I was in MIAP, I went to the Moving Image Archive and Preservation Program at NYU. And that was a whirlwind two years, and I had a lot of anxieties around that. The cost of it, the city wasn't my favorite. I didn't do it well. I worked too much and lived far away and had no money. there was like no peace for me. So I knew it wasn't my town, and for the first couple of semesters, I think I was still trying to figure out how to reconcile all these pieces and what I wanted to do with this. If this, very expensive education was worth it. And I remembered my museum love. I started volunteering at the Museum of the Moving Image on my own time , and I crafted my program in a way that I could work with museums as much as possible. I worked at Hallwalls in Buffalo, and the Albright Knox, I did my summer internship there. It was like a Squeaky Wheel, which is a media art center in Buffalo. And so it was this joint project. They had gotten a Sama Solo for Free at the time, it's like a sort of all in one box machine that you could put videotapes in and get files out, You don't have to build a whole setup to transfer your materials. That was a useful approach it was very popular, I think early in my career. I was seeing that because there weren't as many technically trained people to build setups and to understand signal flow and that whole piece of it, like, you're a video engineer or you're an archivist, so like, let's, build capacity for collection holders without needing them to have too much technical training. So that's why these like tools came out, which were useful at the time. I think the field has grown further into a lot of diy, a lot of people teaching each other, a lot of like, breaking down technical barriers so that people feel equipped and confident to learn that side of it so that there doesn't have to just be like, you're technical or you're not, you know?

So that's good. But at that time, I think they got this equipment donated and were trying to build a kind of network in Buffalo. So that's why I was working with Squeaky Wheel who had a backlog of their, art tapes, their public access, like they were, these media resource centers that were training people to like locally, like very local training people to use equipment to make media materials a lot of on video and then, show it on public access tv. So because of that, they also then had like this archive of materials that were on, VHS and Umatic. Older magnetic media tapes and then Hallwalls, which is just a wonderful gallery. And they had an archive too, but they were like a really, like a kind of a support mechanism. Worked at the University of Buffalo cuz they had a lot of tapes from like beat poet. There's like a whole beat poet era that came through Buffalo. So, the University of Buffalo's Poetry Center had this big archive of tapes and they didn't really know what to do with them, so they kind of got on board on this project. And then the Albright Knox kind of became accidentally part of it just cuz I was like, I love museums , let's go over there and talk to them. And they had an archive. Wasn't their collection, it was like their archive, but they had an archive of media materials. And like the history of their, the, I see this a lot, history of their exhibitions, like people filming doing artist interviews, but it's like the history of their own institution working with either, exhibitions or artists or, curators documentation, but really rich material now for their own history. So we transferred some material from that and it actually made it into a show. So the archival material ends up in the gallery. I can't remember what the exhibition was at the time, but it was like a history of media materials in Buffalo. I have to look that up. but it was a really cool exhibition and it an excellent moment for us to be like, look at the value of archival material. You know, let's give it more money and support. So it was a cool project and made me remember my love of museums. So I crafted the rest of my program, trying to think, okay, now I've built this weird niche field niche inside the niche field.

[00:18:38] Cass: Was time-based media conservation on your radar or were you still pretty like in cinema, world, so you were thinking like, moving image in museums, but like, had you been exposed to Pip and that whole world yet?

[00:18:53] Crystal: Yeah. I think it's the next year when I come back from Buffalo, I think working with the Albright Knocks, I had been talking with them and then they were like, oh, we have all this collection materials too that are in our collection. And they're like, hard drives on shelves at this time, And I was like, great, cool. They had like a old, like a Marisol wooden sculpture that had an audio component and they had a Nam June Pike tv. Player piano. It was a player piano piece. Mm-hmm. They had like documented how the player piano worked. And then I'd be like, okay, where's that file? And it'd be like, oh, it's on someone's desktop somewhere. I don't know. You know, like, okay uh, that's not a sustainable practice, but like, didn't have those words yet. It didn't really understand how to approach that, but I was kind of seeing it. And then the next year when I was in school, Mona taught us the complex media class where we worked with materials at MoMA. More like complex artworks to try to kind of document them and think about dependencies and, components and how components, different components are fragile in different ways. So a very archival approach. And then a couple of people from MIAP had entered that space, but it was still kind of new and still waiting how to bridge the two disciplines into a space that, needed expertise. So I think we didn't yet really think about it that way. We kind of took our training as media pres, which a very heavy media preservation. I actually didn't know I was being trained to be an archivist until my first job after school but I really loved it, and so I actually started reading a lot, started talking to Mona, and I built a thesis around working with the Albright Knox on their building like a collections plan for their collection material. And I went back there and I interviewed all the relevant people on their process of registration and acquisition and all these spaces and what they do with media components of artworks. And then just making recommendations for how they could bridge gaps or where the gaps were, or, things that I saw as maybe problem areas that they could focus on. That was a great opportunity to dive into that space a little bit more. And to work with the museum and to build them, a document of how their practices exist. And then some high level recommendations according to my own training. And I think I used the DOCAM model as uh, sort of underpinning the research. It's like a decision tree for care. and then when I was in New York, I cold called all of the time based media conservators I could find. I called Glenn Wharton at MoMA and he sat down and had coffee with me. So nice. I called Joanna Phillips at the Guggenheim and I went and saw her lab and chatted with her. I graduated and got a CLIR grant at the Smithsonian at the Archives of American Art, which is sort of a nice mixture of archives and art.

[00:22:03] Cass: Wow. I mean, it sounds like your time at Meap was, I mean, that was only two years, what you were just describing, that was a real whirlwind of internships and experiences that really formed you. So I know that you landed at the Smithsonian essentially like immediately after graduation, it looks like, at least on your cv. So I'm, just so curious, like how did that happen and, what was that like, and what were you doing initially?

[00:22:29] Crystal: I graduated from Meap and knew that I didn't love New York . I didn't wanna stay there. So, I was looking around for things and I applied for this grant. It was a CLIR grant for hidden collections. And the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian got this CLIR grant to embark on this few years program to deal with media materials inside their collections. They store their collections as mixed media. And they build finding aids. So they were targeting collections that had media in them to process them more fully. They had been like minimally processed, and that was part of the grant was to hire a couple of paid interns. So I applied and I got this position, which was great. It started almost immediately after graduation, and so I just like packed up all my stuff, and moved to DC and it was great. I didn't immediately love DC but I feel like it's like sort of the middle between Asheville and New York as a city. I've sort of grown into it and haven't left. So I started working with Megan McShea at the Archives of American Art. I remember the first day we picked a collection Robert Wiegand and Ingrid Weigand, his wife a media artist who also did like large scale paintings in New York. And they had a lot of his papers and photographs and then some media materials that were documentation of some of his works, and then a bunch of like artworks that they had made on I think like porta pack video. So a lot of video. My job was to process these materials and I didn't really understand what that meant. I was so trained in media preservation that I didn't know I was being trained to be an archivist too I mean, archival principles of original order and provenance, these things, metadata. I understood that on an item level, but I didn't really understand full collections and processing and creating finding aids. So Megan really taught me that. And I remember I they pulled these materials and there was like six boxes of video and two boxes of papers. And I was like, I don't know what to do with the papers. And she was like, that's so backwards. Like like I got the video down, no problem. like, they had a whole setup and I could have watched things and transferred for access, and I knew condition assessment and, formats and things like that, but I was like, I don't know what to do with the paper. So she like taught me how to process and how to be a processing archivist, which I then learned I did not like to do. So, That's okay. That's how you learned. And that position ended. And you're at the Smithsonian and Megan was such a great mentor. She would take me to all of these meetings and things and we still have a working group, the time-based media art working group, which largely was like doing brown bag lunches at the time. Just getting people together to kind of network and support each other who were doing this work at the Smithsonian. and they had been talking about building a website, maybe doing like some interviews with people in the field, just some fun projects. And they got an internal grant for that and they needed someone to help run it. So I met them at a bunch of meetings and you tell everybody that you're looking for jobs. And they hired me to work on that contract. So I did that for a couple of months and I was trying to kind of piece together enough work and making connections and networking and trying to think about where I wanted to go next. Really liking the Smithsonian. I forgot to tell you, my grandmother used to buy me gifts from the Smithsonian catalog when we were in Florida. those are my like holiday gifts. She loved the Smithsonian catalog and she'd buy like scarves and knickknacks and things like that. I once got this glass ball that you hang to like keep, dreams happy or something. And I remember it was purple and it had like webbing inside of it, glass webbing and it was very heavy and I definitely dropped it and shattered it one day and almost cried. It was just like this connection to the Smithsonian becomes like a big, thing for like culture and art lovers in this country. And I grew up with that around me. And so I remember it was like, oh, I'm working for the Smithsonian. So cool. it's a great, place but, complex and what somebody once told me, it's like a turducken, it's a museum inside of a research institution inside of the government. Every day you could hit, walls that remind you of all three of those things. Like some days you're like, oh, government bureaucracy, you know, when you run into a problem or, oh, so museum organization, you know, get so, academic, research oriented, it's pretty great. But. Yeah, so I was, building a time-based media website and interviewing people. That interviews are on the website still and they're great. and I was at a meeting and I think I was sit standing right next to Megan McShea and my current boss, Isabel Meyer, came up and said, hey I'm looking for someone to deal with video on the digital asset management system. Do you know anybody who works with video who would be great? And she looks at me and she, she looks at me and she points at me and she goes, Crystal . So they were hiring a contractor short term to Smithsonian's notoriously terrible at hiring contracts before federal positions get made. And I've realized you need like good champions There's like an entire thread through this story that I have about wonderful, amazing women mentors that I've had who have. helped me have inspired me, have been my champions. And this is, I do not, I am not here without them. I forgot to mention Mary Carmen at Florida State. , Mary Carmen Martinez, who is my mentor there, an advisor, but largely mostly women. And I think that's also. Very much crafted me. The way that I see the field, the way that I see the work that I do, the way that I perceive how we do this work is very much through a lens of women mentors. I think as a woman herself working in this field, especially as you move into tech, which is sort of my next space here where I start to work for the Digital Asset Management system at the Smithsonian, which is based in the IT department. 

[00:29:19] Cass: Joining that team with Isabel gosh, at this point more than 10 years ago, I guess, that was a big shift and I know the work that you and your team does is, really a huge part of the reason why I asked you to come on the show. It's just super exciting to me. And I think a lot of people, I mean, at the end of the day, you and your colleagues are responsible for essentially the entire infrastructure and backbone for digital preservation of really any kind of digital asset. At all of this Smithsonian Museums that's pretty incredible. What does that team look like? And how do you even ensure the preservation of all of the Smithsonian's digital things?

[00:30:09] Crystal: The digital asset management system I work on is really positioned to be like a digital vault for collections and supplementary materials that are digital. and we do service all the museums, which we have 22 now, the zoo. We work for administrative arms and oh, the archives. And yeah, so it's a big it's a big place. We house image, audio and video assets and some more complex works as needed, but we aren't really the repository for everything. We are a central repository in a unique way that I don't think. There are others. I know there's like a, D space instance at the libraries that deals with published articles. And the Smithsonian Institution Archives has some infrastructure in, I don't think they have a, vendor tool, but they do work with like more digital materials. Archives of American Art, has a big born digital materials space. But as an enterprise wide, like supporting all the units centrally, we really are unique in doing that. And it is an internal system, so we think of it as like a vault. Like, I'm a facility, so we don't do everything. We also have a 3D repository that's been in development for a long time, so like more like complex laser scans and data point cloud and, large scale photogrammetry, things that need to fit into a pipeline. So those are a little separate. I mean, we all know each other , and it could, you know, maybe one day they'll be integrated a little better. and we don't have like a central infrastructure space for complex born digital materials, like whole born digital collections, things like that. because we are a central robust and now core infrastructure to business needs. So we're sustainable. We do support storing of select like more complex works like the artworks if they're, generative artworks. They're packaged up in a way. And then ingested so we can store them and they can be protected and pulled out later. So I would just caveat, I would say we're not everything, but we are a lot. We're a lot, we have 30 million files in the repository now, and three and a half petabytes. We just moved storage platforms for the first time since being on that scale and ran checkon on everything. And that was quite instructive at that scale. Just learning what that takes and how good of a job we're doing. I think we're also kind of unique in the space that , we have a product that is a digital asset management system that we have kicked preservation into. We have built it as a preservation repository, and we did that because the Smithsonian is very access forward. , which is great. It's public institution. for a while it was like, we need to store these materials and be able to provide access to them immediately. Like let's protect them and send them out for web access. So it's nice that it was built centrally to be a space to protect and back up the original materials, like high res images and then build access pathways that are largely automated because scale is our largest problem. So that was really nice and when I started, that's where it was at that time. And I think over 10 years we've really, since we've grown so much and we've built, our space into core function of the Smithson. And if you wanna put something on the website, it has to go into the DAMS first. Because we were able to do that, it's sustainable and we could say, okay, now we need to really focus on digital preservation fundamentals, not just our access oriented management forward abilities. The great thing about our system is it's web accessible to Smithsonian staff with like lots of permission layers, which the dam gives us, but it's centrally stored storage managed by IT. So we can have three petabytes in our data center in Virginia, but someone at the Tropical Research Institute in Panama can have full management access over their files. That allows us to do that. But a DAM traditionally isn't really preservation forward, and so when we're thinking about collection materials, they really shouldn't be in the hands of IT. And collection holders who are trained in collections care at the Smithsonian or at museums are also cautious. They have their own processes and practices. And so when you're thinking about a different material type, like digital and handing off your materials to an IT department they become quite cautious about that. So in some ways I just with my training in museums and my technical knowledge and media preservation knowledge. I was able to just be bridge. I'm a broker, basically. The first couple years I just talked with people about what digital is, how it's not different from what they're used to. Really framing the conversation in terms that they understood. Like material science of files, it's just like plastics. We should learn a lot more about the digital infrastructure and the physical parts of it, how we can look at our files more and think about them and preventative care, how we can think about that in terms of digital. And then how you can trust us, right? How we can build trust as IT to those collection holders and prove it.

So I think we really turned to digital preservation fundamentals that we had to build into the system. And there is a great field out there of digital preservation that has done this and documented it, and there are wonderful guides to follow for backing up your materials, maintaining the bits, which means, making copies on good storage and then checking the bits themselves, which is what we do with fixity, which is a concept where we run checksums, which are, like a fingerprint, a specific and unique hash code for the file. And we can run and store those, and then we can actually run the checksum again in a few years and validate it's data validation, right? that hash code should never change. If it has, then, you know, something in the file has changed. So we can do that. We can manage and store and build processes where we have to validate those. And then of course we need metadata. We need to be able to find our files in 30 million. So we need standards. We need governance. That was one of the things that we really needed to work on. We did an audit against the trusted digital repository specification a few years ago or due for another one. But it's really like a guide that's just says, are you doing all of these things? we came out great high on technology backups and infrastructure cuz we're based in IT, right? We have like the IT knowledge and understanding of that importance of that, but we really came out low on governance. We didn't have a mission statement. it was a sort of assumed that we're core business needs. So we're going to be around and no one's gonna shut us down. Like we ran outta money. What priority level are you? we needed the digital preservation community is like you need assurances from your leadership that you are important and that if something happens that you have an exit plan or you have a place where these collections can go. So we really needed to build that out. We needed to build out policies around what we take, selection policies, who our communities are that we are serving and how, what are their needs, those kinds of things that we had in our heads, as a team. And we had built up over the years by just constantly talking with people and understanding their collections and getting to know what they do every day and what their needs are and how we could support that with this system. but we needed to like write it down and have it be recognized by the institution itself. So we did that. The digital preservation community has wonderful guidance it took us a long time over time to build it up, but I think we're able to be pretty mature in that now. Even now to the point where we just migrated our storage platform I mean, a massive storage migration of the three and a half petabytes to new technology and it took us a couple of years of looking at the platforms that are out there, the one that we are on and doing a real investigation of them against now there's like good guidance for digital preservation storage and the questions you can ask vendors. And also talking with our IT staff about why these questions are important, like how we can think of this storage platform as something different than, say the storage platform where research data is computing all the time our share drives, that we store stuff on individually or our, OneDrive, you know, how, this platform is different and how that technology needs to be different or differently approached. And so that was a whole thing. which was very successful, but takes a while. we were able to do that successfully and I think it took us eight months, but we successfully ran new checksums and checked them to make sure that every bit, all the files that were over here on this platform are intact on this new one. With very minimal issues actually. But that is the work that it takes. And then communicating that back to your community, especially if they're collection holders, they are the ones who are responsible for taking care of their collections. And they do this in so many different ways with so many different material types. And the approach to digital shouldn't really be any different. Just the practical steps, the tools that we use, the words that we use are a little different.

[00:40:31] Cass: it's interesting, I think your positioning within IT is like pretty unique. That's great. you mentioned you have over three Petabytes of material. And, it sounds like it's everything from pictures of giraffes to you know, like a, I don't know, like a, Jenny Holzer artwork for instance. Just incredible span of kinds of stuff. Is there any kind of digital material that is the most challenging type of material to work with from a preservation standpoint?

[00:41:07] Crystal: Yes. I think there's still work to do . And then a lot of that is about the complex works. Right now we kind of bag and zip up complex works, and then they're, treated, as individual files in our system. And we audit sections of our repository against certain criteria for our our collection holders. But the process of doing that is more complex for more complex pieces, things that depend upon each other and being able to store and report out on individual packages. That's a challenge. And also, the ability to unpack these packages and audit them. So I think, the approach is straightforward is still the same as a digital preservationist, I'm not responsible for the schematics and the lightning, you know, getting the equipment. All these other components of collections care for these pieces, or like, the act of making sure that they're still presentable in the appropriate format. But I'm responsible for the bits of like digital component parts, the approaches to those are still very much the same. It's more the challenges involved around trying to be aware how to audit I guess. Some pieces of the audit are clear, We run checksums. We know the bits are the same. That file is the same as that file. But if we need our files to be connected, if they depend upon one another, right? A Max MSP work has dependencies that need to be attached and connected and linked. Then we need to make sure that that is happening. And that is harder to audit, I think requires more people and less, machines. The file format obsolescence is a part of the field that I think is still growing, and that's like looking at file formats and determining whether they're at risk for being able to access them now or in the future. Like Real Video files, like those aren't around anymore, but FFMPEG can play them. So what kind of risk do I give it? I don't know. So I think just being able to document and appropriately have the right information for that data is important and a foundation right now so that when we run a report later and say all we need to find all the real video we can , That seems more important right now to me than I have accurate information for the 30 million files in my repository than say maybe flash video is something that I need to care about right now, but most of the stuff is okay, I think. But there aren't yet great mechanisms for that in the field. We know we need to do it. We don't yet know exactly how. And I think the third challenge that we have specifically is scale. And that's not just about files. Like I can handle ingesting thousands and thousands and thousands of files, but is it appropriate for me to put in a hundred thousand DPX files for one film or should we take a step back and see if, turning that into a video file with brand new tools now that, will let us output DPX again is more appropriate. Should we bag those up and zip 'em? if I have a hundred thousand files for a certain collection, do we have the right metadata for those? Is that gonna take another year? And do we need to focus on that? Can we find these files? Are they appropriately managed? Is there anybody there to manage them? Which is also a problem, I think. It takes a lot of work by people every day to actually make a system that is managed, the managed files. I think we have too much and not enough people. I'm not yet sure where that's going to end , where that's going to meet like less stuff or more people the thing that we're hopefully saying no to is not a middle space where it's all this stuff and nobody would manage it. That's what we're trying to avoid.

[00:45:21] Cass: You made a really important point in there. when you were talking about knowledge of your collection and metadata, and that's, that it's knowing what you have is just so important. With complex digital collections of things, because if you don't know that, then you don't know what the problems are. It's not like an object. You can just look at it and say like, oh yeah, this part fell off . So if you don't have good information, then you, yeah, you don't know, oh yeah, we have 40,000 flash things, or real video 

[00:45:54] Crystal: I think that's a huge part of my job, which I didn't realize would be. Again, I didn't, I didn't know this would happen, but I do like this. Part of it is being a system admin, if you have a system, even if that system is component parts like an Excel sheet and few hard drives, you need a process and a plan around how the workflow happens and how that's going to be sustained and how those tools will be available to you. So we have a system that has one big tool that is a dam, that is a vendor product, and then lots of other component parts, and we're all differently responsible for maintaining them. Like the maintenance is a huge thing. A third of my job is system admin, which is just taking care of this system and making sure that it's working correctly. And part of that actually interfaces with my digital preservation responsibilities. Where is this system and these tools that we have, are they working optimally? Are they working a accurately they are also tools built by people. So they're not always working exactly right. And you have to tweak them or configure them. You have to make sure you're pulling the right field out to put into the right, place in the database and that's accurate data and that it's controlled data. Right. How many ways can I write ProRes in my system? I can tell you there are 12 ways right now, to write ProRes over time with different tools. And that's not useful to me either. So, just making sure that our tools are working correctly.

[00:47:31] Cass: I envision your, workstation at the Smithsonian as like, a security guard's back of house office with like 20 screens and like lights flashing and blinking. It's exactly like that, right? Tell me, please. Yes. 

[00:47:43] Crystal: Definitely. It's definitely not my little MacBook Pro sitting at my nephew's desk. You know, it's much easier with multiple monitors. Yes, they've given me this big monitor for home, which is great. And then at the office, I have a standing desk, which is key because I say that my job is working on the system, but it's also meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, working with people all the time.

[00:48:15] Cass: So you have been in the field for over 12 years at this point. I would imagine you have in that time seen a lot of things come, a lot of things go, a lot of things change. How has, of what you do changed over the years? How have you seen things change and evolve, 

[00:48:36] Crystal: I would say in my job I have seen the need for people to be involved in digital preservation work especially growing scale that we all see with digital files requires more people. And we've seen that grow, at least at the Smithsonian. We've seen I didn't mention my team. We just got a new team member. I think we're eight people, half are archivists and half technology people. I think if you put a archivist with a developer together, they could change the world. the productivity goes out of control. I mean, just through the roof, it's great. when I started, I was the third member. So we've seen that grow tremendously. But also we have unit partners at every museum and every unit who are now solely responsible for digital asset. collections, digital asset care. There are time-based media conservators. There are now a dozen audiovisual archivists and there was like one when I started, so, we've seen that grow tremendously. And that's a true testament to like how much work it takes and how much advocacy we've done over the years and how the scale has grown and the importance of digital collections. I think that's a good sign. I can't say that's happening across the field. I don't really know. what I've seen in the field though, related to that is that there is a real focus on people, on people's work, on labor practices, on diversity and equity, on how we treat each other and how we can support each other. I think the digital preservation field, when I saw it initially, was about tools. You know, the, rhetoric, I think, and the literature was about tools and practicalities and guidelines and OAIS and you know, models which are great right? Foundational underpinnings of how we do this work. But I've really seen over the years, this focus on this work involves people and we cannot forget that, and we have to adequately staff and support and be attuned to how our work affects, the work that we all do as, global citizens that our actions have consequences that they affect how we behave and see ourselves as cultural heritage, employees, as stewards of culture. We're not neutral in any way. So that is a rhetoric I did not hear in the beginning of my work. We need both, right? You need tools and you definitely need to support and care about the people who are doing this work. and then the visibility of the work inside the museum itself, the museum space. I've seen that at the Smithsonian. It is a great place to work though. So, I can't say that that's happening everywhere, but I hope so. and I think there's Absolutely. Still constantly work, to do in that space.

[00:51:44] Cass: So for anyone listening who is interested in getting into this field do you have any advice?

[00:51:51] Crystal: Well, I think there's a lot of work to do and this part of the field, there are a lot of positions actually. And like I tell my students to not, be afraid, That you're not going to know everything, especially even if you look at a job maybe you're not there yet. But taking a look at the job requirements, thinking about what the work involves, and knowing that you'll never know everything. I'm constantly working with new tools all the time, and I think it's the confidence to try out tools and work on them and know that you'll constantly be learning and approaching new tools and that you won't know everything. Getting some practical experience is a good, idea. thinking about the digital preservation fundamentals and how we can support those, how we can build on those, knowing that every program is not in any way fully mature. It's a constant evolving practice. I am a great fan of cold calling as I said, you know, call me. I'm happy to talk to anybody about My journey and the opportunities that are there and ideas for how to enter the field. But I think there are lots of different programs and opportunities out there in digital preservation knowing that like people come from so many different fields, so you don't need a full, degree in this. There are small programs, there are workshops, there's funding for it. So, just starting small and moving towards it is a good goal. 

[00:53:36] Cass: That's really good advice. I'm curious, Crystal, what is coming next for you?

[00:53:42] Crystal: The Smithsonian a, a few initiatives that I would love to tell you about earlier I mentioned, the time-based media digital art working group. And we have a website, si.edu/tbma. So if you're interested in case studies or tools labs, there's a big website out there that we've built. And we also have the open access initiative, which went live right before the pandemic, making 3 million objects, open access digital. Files, so you can download those on our open access site and like make a shower curtain or whatever you want. That was a big project that we worked on to make that happen. And then our brand new initiative is AVMPI just went live a little bit ago, Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative, and it's a central initiative at the Smithsonian to help all the museums and units digitize and preserve their audiovisual collection materials. We have quarter million objects that we've counted, and they're obviously not all digitized or preserved. So the goal is to support each other in this that is centralized and be able to make more AV content available. So hopefully we will have lots of content available and the process of doing that and the obstacles that we encountered all documented too. So pretty excited about that one. We've been working on that one for years.

[00:55:17] Cass: Awesome. looking forward to checking that out. Well, Crystal, thank you so much for coming on the show and giving your time and telling your story. It has just been so nice to catch up.

[00:55:29] Crystal: Thank you so much. An honor to be here

[00:55:31] Cass: And thank you, dear listener for joining me for this conversation with Crystal Sanchez, as always, if you like what you're hearing on the show listener support is hugely important to making it all happen. You can always join us over at patreon.com/artobsolescence. Or if you are interested in making a one-time tax deductible gift through our fiscal sponsor, the New York Foundation for the Arts you can do so artandobsolescence.com/donate. And there you can also find the full episode archive, including full transcripts and show notes. And last but not least you can always find us on social media @artobsolescence. Until next time, take care my friends, my name is Cass Fino-Radin and this has been Art and Obsolescence.