There's a fascinating NY Times article about the challenge of maintaining and organizing materials from September 11, 2001 as there's no official organization up to the task. The World Trade Center Memorial Museum is easily years from happening, all while there is so much information from the "best-documented catastrophe" that needs to be sorted through. According to Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, there may be thousands of possible collections. Some mentioned:
- Camera Planet has a 7,000 gigabyte collection of clips, some of which can be seen on Google Video; the Camera Planet site, however, seems to be down, probably from the NY Times traffic. Camera Planet's owner, Steven Rosenbaum, has been collecting footages since September 2001, and is looking for a way to keep the collection together and continue to "make the videos available to researchers, filmmakers and the public."
- Louis E. V. Nevaer has a collection of 5,200 missing person fliers (Dr. Nevear says, "These fliers were going to be discarded as litter, and if we didn't save them, then they'd be lost.").
- The Port Authority has a collection of gifts left for the families of Port Authority employees killed during the attacks.
The article suggests that the the WTC Memorial Foundation might work with other museums, but the bigger question is will whether they'll be able to lead anything, given all of the other turmoil. Gothamist imagines that another institution, perhaps a museum and a university, might have to take the lead.
And the NY Times has a video that accompanies the story.
