Neon Genesis Evangelion Genesis 0:5 Laser Disc Packaging Art

劇場版グレンダイザーシリーズ

Philips and Sony invented the Compact Disc. This Mini Laser compact disc system (1986) can play that!

Cliff Hanger (Stern, 1983) arcade flyer

Came out three months after Dragon’s Lair. Uses footage from late 70s Lupin III films “The Castle of Cagliostro” and “The Mystery of Mamo.”

– Cliff Hanger - Stern-Seeburg (Video Game, 1983) - USA | The Arcade Flyer Archive – Cliff Hanger (video game) - Wikipedia

What you see when you play the “dead” side of a single-sided Laserdisc that was mastered by Pioneer.

Dragon’s Lair Arcade Flyer (1983)

Cinematronics

Source

I’m Supposed To Be In This Laser Beam Do-Hickey Thingamajig Here Somewhere… “Critical Condition” (1993)

Thoughts on the decay of electronic storage mediums?

): I wish it wasn’t a thing, but death is inevitable

For those unaware, no storage media will last forever. Tape (VHS, Cassette, Floppy) will deteroritate, optical media (CD, DVD, LaserDisc) will experience Bit Rot, Flash Storage is only rated to be stable for 20-100 years, and even Hard Drives can experience mechanical decay

The only true shelf-stable media is Vinyl. Record discs, if treated right, will last forever. It’s just a chunk of plastic! Hell, make it out of solid metal and they’ll last even longer. How efficient is vinyl as a storage media? Making new discs isn’t easy, and they will quickly start to take up physical space, but if you want data that’ll last forever* then Vinyl Discs are the way to go.

*until people lose the knowledge and tools to retrieve the data

Tot Tunes Battery Operated CD Player & Lazer-Disc Player (1994) 💿

1996 Pioneer Anime Magazine Ad featuring Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki

グレートマジンガー対ゲッターロボ / グレートマジンガー対ゲッターロボＧ 空中大激突

Friday the 13th part 2 video disc

Archie the Archivist, the laserdisc, and preservation of analog data

Some time ago, I went through all the major animated series and searched the fandom pages related to them for terms like "library" and "librarian." One of the series that came up was Regular Show. I watched a few specific episodes, one of which was "The Last Laserdisc Player." At first, I thought a character was a librarian, even listing him on the list of Western animated series with libraries and librarians at one point. But, I learned in the credits that this man, voiced by John Cygan, was named Archie the Archivist. Enter one of the strangest, wildest, most bizarre depictions of an archivist that I've ever seen, seriously. So, I just had to write about it. I had no choice in the matter, ha. Anyway, warning for spoilers for those who haven't watched the episode.

Reprinted from my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks WordPress blog. Originally published on Jun. 10, 2021.

Before getting that far into this series, I'd like to bring in what is noted on the blog, #ArchivesInFiction (herein AIF) on this blog it is noted that for archivists, archivists often aren't protagonists in fiction, if at all, leaving those in the archives profession unable to reference a fictional character as a shorthand when explaining what they do. Even worse, archivists and archives are often misrepresented in fiction, with writers falling back on various cliches and tropes. I used their posts to determine whether any of them are the case here.

The protagonists, Mordo, Rigs, and their friend, go to the local library to search for a laserdisc player. They are told by two older patrons who declare a VHS is better than a laserdisc (I guess the equivalent of a Blu-Ray?). Archie hears about this and takes them down to the basement where thousands of formats are stored. He believed they are the ones who will end the "format wars."

At this point, this could be called a basement archives and Archie could be called #AlmostAnArchivist which AIF describes as when a character managing the archive is doing their best but isn't a professional archivist. Archie goes on to tell the story of how VHS took over from laserdiscs, having a goon squad which destroyed all the players in society, so VHS could be dominant. The laserdisc itself opens a secret chamber in this basement archives (treated as the basement of the public library). Inside, they find the last laserdisc player. Again, I would say this falls into a few tropes, specifically by heists, robberies, and theft from archives. [1]

Anyway, the episode continues as they fight off the “ancient order of the VHS” so they can watch their film, with the library getting destroyed in the process. The librarian turns into the laserdisc guardian and they later watch the movie together, which is an absurdly long film. All in all, however, the archives is in a "dank, dark, subterranean setting for the repository in question," what AIF calls #DustyArchives, which is a trope common in journalism and fiction. However, there is not any #InvisibleArchivesLabour, as the characters don't seem to ignore the work that has "gone into compiling, ordering or preserving the records is forthcoming." I suppose you you could say this falls into the #AcknowledgedArchivalLabour trope, which is, surely "all to uncommon in fiction" as AIF notes, but is worth nothing for sure.

In this story, however, there are no aha moments where characters find exactly what they need without finding aids, convenient finding of archival records with minimal research, no death-related imagery used to describe interactions with repositories or records, with no buried records. I vaguely remember something about records being compromised due to their lack of provenance, but he was not an unapproachable curmudgeon who views archives as their "personal fiefdom and is therefore protective of their records and their knowledge." And you could argue that power of archival records is "acknowledged within the context of the narrative."

Notes

[1] AIF defines #ArchiveHeist as a "scenario in which the planning and/or execution of #ArchiveTheft is as important as the theft itself," while defining #ArchiveRobbery as "similar to #ArchiveTheft only with force and or destruction," and #ArchiveTheft as  a common trope for archives in fiction, a "self-explanatory generic term but with some nuances regarding the subtlety (or otherwise) of the theft in question.

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