Archive of technology, entertainment and everyday life
A comparison of two milestones cited for 1992 and 1994 and today’s debates on digitisation, access, and loss of context. The available evidence traces a move from cultural content distributed through FTP to a museum’s presence on the Internet, while requiring a distinction between putting materials online and preserving their documentary meaning.
Open storyThe history of the National Museum of Decorative Arts makes it possible to read decoration as material culture: between its early commitment to industrial arts, a later turn toward works of high decorative value, and subsequent reassessments that restored the importance of production, consumption, and use.
Open storySpanish museums, archives and associations show that conserving video games also means caring for machines, software, documentation, images, publications and the means of access that make the whole intelligible.
Open storyA reading of the computer as a museum-documentation tool: useful for structuring records, images, movements and conservation reports, yet dependent on the context attached to every object.
Open storyThe Museo Universitario del Chopo opened in 1975, and its Information Centre and Media Library holds materials useful for researching musical cultures and practices. Available documentation places it as a landmark for Mexican underground cultures in the 1980s and as host to the first Tianguis de la Música.
Open storyA reading of film heritage that goes beyond the movie as an artwork: prints, negatives, posters, equipment, documents and exhibition contexts help explain why conserving cinema also means enabling access and interpretation.
Open storyThe appearance of Rattan Body, by Issey Miyake and Koshige Shochikudo, on Artforum’s March 1982 cover provides a way to examine a broader change: the gradual arrival of contemporary fashion in museums as cultural expression, while acknowledging the material and curatorial limits involved in exhibiting and preserving garments.
Open storyStickers did not begin as isolated toys. In Spain, the evidence gathered places their antecedents in commercial wrappers from the late nineteenth century, their spread through consumer products in the 1920s, and the sale of packets in the post-war period. This history explains why the album, the duplicate, and swapping form a cultural system of their own.
Open storyBetween the second half of the 1970s and 1990, magazines were a decisive route for adult comics in Spain. This piece examines their expansion on newsstands, their editorial diversity, and the reasons attributed to their later decline, distinguishing available evidence from interpretation.
Open storyAn analysis of The Food Timeline, the project associated with reference librarian Lynne Olver, and what it reveals about documenting food history without reducing it to a simple list of “inventions.”
Open storyA guide to working with catalogues, photo archives, periodicals, and academic studies when reconstructing everyday practices. It starts from available evidence on Mexico, Spain, and Ibero-American archives, distinguishing what a source documents from what it only permits as a hypothesis.
Open storyOn 6 December 2006, the creation of Mexico City’s Museo Archivo de la Fotografía was published. Drawing on the available institutional information, this article places that milestone within a broader history: photography as a record of urban administration, the challenge of describing large holdings, and the role of museums and photo libraries in preserving visual memory.
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