Of Dilligence and Dullards
God bless archivists and librarians.
For all the stereotypes about them, I’ll say this: they hold getting things right as a sacred trust. As a journalist (and a pedant) I appreciate that.
Last week, CBC lost one of the wonderful archivists that toil behind the scenes to keep the broadcaster on air, and keep its millions of tapes for future generations. Andrew DeNew, a media librarian who helped us establish the CBC Digital Archives site, passed away at age 38.
In addition to being an interesting and compassionate human being and a good friend, Andrew was the consumate archivist. He was a collector of of oddities and of history, able to identify almost anything, from the model of a jet aircraft to the flag of an obscure island nation, from a mile’s distance.
Andrew’s memorial was held today. A lot of people miss Andrew dearly, and I feel odd writing about him now - I don’t know how he felt about blogs, and whenever I write about my friends, I try to ask permission first. Lord knows, I wish I could do that here. I wish.
But I also think that Andrew, as a keeper and treasurer of history, would have understood the desire to record it, regardless of format. And I think he’d particularly enjoy the story I want to tell.
Actually, it’s a story he liked to tell.
For the past several years, Andrew worked in CBC Toronto’s visual resources department, which records, catalogues and files the tapes for most of CBC’s national English television programs. It takes a special kind of person to be a media librarian. You can spend days shotlisting news items in boring obscurity, knowing that some of these items will never again see the light of day. Then suddenly there’s a deadline-harried reporter in your face, urgently demanding “that shot of the guy with the beard” - and you’d better know what he’s talking about, and get it in his hands right quick.
Andrew was one of those guys who always knew who the guy with the beard was. And he could shotlist a tape like nobody’s business.
Nobody was more diligent, or paid more attention to detail. He catalogued every scene and camera angle, every make and model of plane, train and automobile, plus what people were wearing and their posture while wearing it. Overkill, perhaps, but as I’ve learned from working on the Digital Archives website, a good item without a good record isn’t much good at all.
But back to the story. Andrew frequently had to catalogue reports from the Middle East, a job he relished because he was - of course - an expert in all things military. His shotlists read like a screenplay. Here’s an excerpt from the record for a stock shot tape from a Michel Cornier piece on Afghanistan (Oct. 15, 2001):
/ms/ 10:04:43 heavily laden donkeys climb up rocky path, several perspectives
/ms/ three soldiers in uniform march out on patrol from mud outpost
/ms/ several soldiers drinking coffee and lounging near frontline SOT
/mcu/ soldier talks into hand radio SOT
/ms/ soldier walks on spine of mountain, see lovely but desolate scenics in bg
(For those who don’t know, “ms” is “mid shot”, “mcu” is “medium close up”, “SOT” is “sound on tape” - see here for more.)
The cardinal rule in record keeping is objectivity and neutrality, and Andrew certainly followed the rules. But this particular tape irked him. The piece focussed on Afghan troops who clearly did not meet Andrew’s standards of military decorum; he loathed unprofessional behaviour, and such behaviour in the military was beyond the pale.
Andrew fought back, slipping some very uncharacteristic editorializing into the record:
“/cu/ bubbling cauldron of vile looking soup”
“/ms/ man holds RPG rocket launcher rather casually next to Tajik comrade with AK-47 assault rifle”
“/ms/ several soldiers in line, one with RPG, commander picks nose then calls them to attention”
He did, too. I pulled the tape; here’s a screen shot:
Finally, Andrew made the conscious decision to inject an entirely subjective plural noun that would become the stuff of (archivist) legend:
“/mcu/ dullards in uniform stand sort of at attention”
Dullards. Dullards! How often do you see that word used in a historical record?
Never, at least at CBC. But Andrew mischeviously slipped it in there, and it remains the only instance of the word in a database containing more than 50 years worth of records.
Funny thing happened, though. In future pieces about the sorry state of the Afghan military, that shot was frequently requested (becoming, literally, the guy with the beard.) And how do you search for that shot among the tens of thousands of shots of the Afghan military?
You search for “dullard”, of course.
Andrew was rather pleased with this. Obviously, injecting unique and arcane terminology does not make for a sustainable cataloguing system, but just this once… why not? How else do you find a needle in a haystack?
I find this lesson rather valuable. I’ve spent the last two weeks working on a very complex, neutral and standardized system for categorizing all the clips on the Digital Archives site that Andrew and I worked on. Taxonomy, they call it.
But we’re also exploring more casual taxonomies, such as tags - systems that make sense to the user. That’s known as folksonomy (how folks classify things.) We probably won’t create a subcategory called “Dullards” - though I can think of a few good candidates - but you can bet people would click on it. And probably find what they were looking for, too.
I’m glad this little gem slipped into the mighty databases of the CBC-TV archives, and I’m glad it’s still there as a memento. Somewhere, Andrew is having a well-earned chuckle, and making a pun about the inevitability of death and taxonomy. We folks appreciate it, Andrew.
Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 03-03-2007 | 11:03 PM
Posted in: CBC
Loading ...
Thanks Paul for writing this nicestory about Andrew. On Thursday, I found the last email he wrote to me. That’s when he left the CBC Digital Archives project. I had chills to the bone reading a message I just couldn’t reply to even if his name is right there. Sad.
Thanks so much, Paul. Christine’s comment (above) made me wonder what Andrew had written to me. Here’s an e-mail I found in which he describes the latest playing cards in his collection. He would send up word, after he left the Digital Archives project, and I would wander down to his desk to inspect. His descriptions are crisp and witty:
___
Hot off the presses! (Well, okay, now available for scrutiny at 4F103-P.)
* One deck of “Discover Atlantic Canada,” featuring scenic photos of historical and natural sites in the Maritimes and Newfoundland & Labrador
* Russian royalty deck, feature the cruellest, ugliest and stupidest kings, queens and hangers on of Russian history, including Rasputin (where’s Boney M when you need them?); two decks in one box
* the enchanting Piatnik Symmetrical deck, in which every card looks identical from both ends (no half measures here!); sadly, the box opens in an asymmetrical manner even though the printing on it is not
* “A Bug’s Life”, all your favourite characters from the Pixar animated cartoon, with love interest aces and special suits (green leaves, green mushrooms, brown acorns and brown beetles)
___
At home we regularly use the cards he bought for my family; they feature photographs of the earliest to the most current hockey sweaters from the “original six” NHL teams. He was generous in this way, and it was fitting that at the memorial yesterday his collection of cards was laid out with an invitation for us to take one away in memory of Andrew.
We will remember Andrew.
V.
There’s another lovely post about Andrew to be found on this blog. (Be sure to read the pieces before and after this one - they’re relevant, and make me thankful for my workplace and colleagues.)
So sorry to hear about Andrew - I didn’t know him well because I only worked with him for about a week, but he was always so friendly when I ran into him. Ages ago we had talked about getting together some lunch hour to play a board game called World Wise, but never did - and now I really regret it. Sigh.
On a cataloguing note, I recall seeing a shotlist that described a politician in a crowd who was “kissing hands and shaking babies” - I thought at the time that it was a sly joke slipped in there, and I wondered if it was Andrew’s.
Andrew was a great friend of mine. We met through my husband, his best friend Tariq. He was sweet, gentle, caring and careful. I will miss him dearly. The world is a sadder place for having lost him, but a better place for because of him.
I’m Andrew’s sister and I want to thank you so much for your kind words. Reading this gives a different perspective of my brother. He knew he had a lot of friends that cared about him and it’s nice to know he brought a smile to his friend’s faces with some of his off-the-wall humour. He will be greatly missed.
I am Andrew’s brother-in-law. I have been part of the family for over 20 years now. Thinking back to when I first met Andrew, the things that stand out in my mind are his t-shirts, his uncanny ability to win at almost any game, and his sense of humour. Andrew was the kind of person who would be there when you wanted to talk, and of course walk.
I was fortunate enough to have met some of his friends at the memorial; although unfortunate to not have met them earlier. Thank you for your thoughts and words.
Reading your great stories here is reassuring to me that Andrew is somewhere inviting someone to a game or to guess which flag is connected to which county.
Your words will create a stonger memory for us all tomorrow.
Thanks so much for your comments, Tracy, Janine and Robert. To be honest I agonized over this post, because I wanted to be sure it was appropriate - your kind words mean a lot to me.
The memorial service was really special, and my CBC colleagues and I have spent a lot of time recalling the wonderful ways Andrew touched our lives. Almost everyone in the office had something that Andrew had given them - he was always so generous - and between the keepsakes and the memories, he’ll remain with us.
i would like to thank all the cbc comrades (as andy would call you ) for taking the time to come to his memorial. it meant a lot to me in that i had chance to see and meet the people And’ worked with. andrew and archives were meant to be, this was something he had in him . i remember having a chance to get larry robinson autograph of the 70s & 80s montreal canadians . i called him up to see if he still had the hockey cards that my brother john and i had collected as kids. he said that he had and proceeded to pull out a shoe box carefully indexed with team names , players names and eras, he had kept larry’s rookie card which i now have signed. i hope you continue to find little gems in future archival searches, as these will be reminders that andrew was here. i hope they are found when you’re not having a good day and that might bring comic relief even just for a moment. thank you, peace be with you, peter
This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything - and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”