A Concrete Example

In the first place it is necessary to create a clear image of a selection process, because it is the image, which is the starting point of the analysis. It is not unimportant what kind of selection process you imagine. Some archives have very rigid selection-typologies - so rigid that it is almost meaningless to speak of selection - and other archives take everything they can lay their hand on. It is clearly unfruitful for our analysis to take such procedures as a starting point. It is necessary to build up our image from elements of a selection process which is reasonably free from rigid selection-typologies and at the same time considers it absolutely necessary to make rather thoroughgoing selection. When one is investigating philosophical problems it is important not to get lost in practical problems - we want to analyse the structure of the selection problem, and to that end it is necessary to construct a kind of ideal-typical image of the selection process - ideal-typical in the sense that the image consists only of elements in the process which are relevant for the analysis. The ideal-typical cannot be found in any existing archive but, nevertheless, our construction of the image has to originate from a knowledge of existing archives. I will, therefore, describe very briefly the selection process in my own archive and thereafter, you must supply this image with elements from other archives, which are known to you. In short: we want to create an image of a ‘clean’ selection-process, and in this creation or construction we only use the elements which characterize and accentuate the structure in the process.

The archive used as an example is Radio Denmark’s archive for spoken word and non-commercial music. The only principle we need to take into consideration in our selection of material is ‘possible re-use in radio programme production’, and as radio programmes are being made about almost everything - or at least one can imagine so - we are relatively free from rigid typologies. But we are restricted by the fact that if the collections become too large, they will at the same time become unfit for programme production - a problem which is normally greater for journalists than for researchers. 95% of the material is actively selected by archive staff and the selection is based on short descriptions of content which are sent to the archive from the programme production departments, including television when the sound track is sometimes relevant for our collections. Every day we receive these short descriptions of content covering about 50 hours of production and we select on average 5% from the large number of complex problems being treated in a nation-wide non-commercial broadcasting station. The intention of selection is that the material shall contain the essence of the subject and its treatment; and that, of course, cannot be done by selecting some ‘objective’ percentage from news and cultural relevant programmes - in fact it is a question open to debate as to whether ‘objective’, automatic percentage-selection deserves the name ‘selection’ - rather it should be called ‘sorting’. The selector is supposed to possess an educated problem-consciousness - an education which not only derives from knowledge of the radio-medium itself and its specific way of treating the problems, but also from independent and thoroughgoing knowledge of the problems essential and characteristic of his own time and our knowledge of man.

In Radio Denmark the selection procedure is mainly founded on one staff member who examines all the radio and TV programmes each day. After this first examination the selected material is secured by other persons such as technical staff and the programme departments themselves - but the important thing here is the principle - one person/all the programmes - which forms the corner-stone of selection in Radio Denmark. One of the advantages of this principle is that it makes it possible to build up the collections systematically around essential themes and developments in the medium. For example, all the small but perhaps important elements from news and magazine programmes are examined in the selection procedure. Separately they are perhaps not relevant for the archive, but if systematically pieced together they can be used in the future description of many important problems, some while ago in Copenhagen there were episodes in connection with young people who illegally moved into empty houses. Several programme departments, both television and radio, reported these episodes, which were rather interesting in bringing into focus otherwise unrealised problems. But the reports where only given as short items in magazine and news programmes, and they would have been lost if selection was limited to the large, unique programmes. This is often the case if the programme department has a monopoly of selecting material for the archive. One problematic point in the procedure is that the basis for selection is short written summaries. To what extent is it possible to use written abstracts as a basis for selection of audiovisual material? Another facet of the selection process, which cannot be covered in this paper.

To sum up, the process of selection can be described as follows. Each day short abstracts of about 50 hours of transmission are received representing about ten pages of written abstracts. On average you must select five per cent and it must happen in such a way that the selected material does not give a passive reflection of the broadcast material. The selection ought to be active and creative, so that new problems can be treated and researched in the selected material.

The next step in the analysis is to move from this newly created image of the selection process to a precise formulation of the selection problem itself