Godfather of Soul: everything must go

This one cropped up this week, and relates to my last post. NYTimes writer Guy Trebay describes what the Christie's auction of James Brown's possessions will do for music history:

"...it is increasingly unlikely that there will be a James Brown museum for writers like Greg Tate and R J Smith, both embarked on biographies of the singer, to visit. And there will be no archive for Spike Lee to consult for a film the director is said to be planning about the Godfather of Soul. There will be no Graceland to contain the clothes and furs and costumes and gold records and awards and record collection and personal photos and handwritten love notes and jail records dispersed at the sale. Perhaps for this reason — and regardless of the jolly media hubbub that attended the sale — a somber aura seemed to hang over the proceedings."

Sad! Apparently the auction didn't even earn as much as expected. Here's the link to the full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/fashion/20james.html?scp=5&sq=james%20brown&st=cse

20th Century Fox closes its research library

I am no film scholar but have often wondered how accessible research materials documenting film history are. Has the market value of every tangible scrap from tv and film productions atomized previously intact collections? (Check out Profiles in History's latest auction, you can buy Lou Ferrigno's latex nose from the Hulk TV show!) How does this impact film scholarship? In particular, where has the history of the studio era been preserved? Am I over-estimating the importance of keeping records in public (or at least publicly-accessible) institutions?

This link, courtesy Nikki Fink's Deadline Hollywood Daily, brings up the closure of 20th Century Fox's "research library." The terminology in Fox's publicity statement (instead of using "archives," for example) seems to be an attempt to underplay the historic value of the documents.

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/fox-to-close-its-film-research-library/