Cold Storage
The Technology of Human Memory
Alain Resnais’ 1956 documentary, All the World’s Memory, presents the French National Library of the mid twentieth century as a cathedral consecrated to the glories of the book. Since that time, the digital revolution has been insufficient to absorb the growth of knowledge. And so formidable offsite storehouses have arisen to complement browsable libraries, preserving their holdings under delicate balances of climate. The towering shelves and expanding sprawl of one such storehouse, the Harvard Depository, grant a vantage point from which to contemplate the future of libraries as networked points of access to past and present for the generations of scholars to come.
An interactive documentary project
Larger interactive documentary available at: coldstoragedoc.com