For a researcher with a serious interest in studying popular culture, the collective negligence of the entertainment industries, the scholarly community, and the government is a given, but some action to preserve American mass media artifacts can be undertaken. Contrary to the myth of unlimited access to information, certain regions of the public realm keep getting harder and harder to find. Original negatives no longer exist for many classic movies and TV shows, and the budgets of film and television archives are grossly inadequate to the task of preservation. It is not difficult to see that many of the thousands of music videos being produced today will soon be lost without a serious effort at collection and preservation. The Bowling Green State Popular Culture Center is preserving many popular music artifacts, but back issues of music industry trade journals and music magazines are fast disappearing, and it is currently impractical to plan a research project around such materials. The rerelease of old records is flourishing, however, proably because there seems to be a market for these musical "dinosaur bones." If trade journals and old music magazines were reprinted, there might be a market for those also. Since 1969, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive has videotaped the nightly newscasts of the three major TV networks--an example of the contribution the academic community can make to posterity. The Library of Congress should collect all issues of music tabloids, and send them along to Bowling Green if they find it impossible to keep them. (Contains 21 notes.) (NKA)