(excerpt) 4. Before you handle tapes or set up computers to catalogue stuff, here are simple things you can do that will immediately add years to the life of the media: Move materials on the windowsill in the sun to the shade. Pile media in cool, dry spots. Put a pallet under stuff on wet floors, and plan to move them to cool-and-dry soon. Move stuff out of basements and attics and foul storerooms, even if it means temporarily taking over the coolest, driest corner of the office. Tell everyone (staff, board members, makers, families, the public) to spread the word: Media materials like people-comfortable space. Let film breathe easy; get it out of coffee cans or Tupperware. Give co-workers the window on the sunny side of the building. Tell jokes while you move stuff.

5. If the technology, material, and terms are not familiar to you, get help now. Help can be as close as us “old, weird film guys” (or our brethren, those “videots” sharing air at this NAMAC salon).

Find a knowledgeable older film or video maker who still has memory (joke). (You do not have to fly me in to train you but I will consider any offer this month from Italy or the Antilles.) Or find a media teacher, local professor, or a retired Kodak, Sony, or Fuji rep with enough years’ experience to have handled all these various materials. Make a sample pile of strange items, and have her or him show you what each tape, reel, gauge, or format is. Take a picture of each item, and write down where it fits in the history of technology—film, audio, or videotape.