Monday, December 27, 2010

Thomas Jefferson on silent film

Today's New York Times has a fascinating article on crowd sourcing scholarly projects. The article, "Scholars Recruit Public for Project," can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/books/28transcribe.html

The article ends with a quotation from a letter by Thomas Jefferson, who was commenting on national documents destroyed during the Revolutioniary War. I think his thoughts might well apply to silent film and silent film history. "The lost cannot be recovered; let us save what remains not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.” 

1 comment:

  1. love it... what a fantastic quote- and the sentiments behind it.

    i agree whole heartedly... and of course the internet provides the perfect way to preserve "a multiplication of copies"... great stuff!

    vincent, in buffalo
    http://basicmagic.com

    ReplyDelete

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