Information Bulletin no. 28, January 1999

Sally Hine

Members will be very saddened to hear of the death of Sally Hine, from BBC Archives and Information in London. Sally had borne a long illness with great fortitude, never once losing her sense of optimism and fun, which was her great charm. In Paris at last year's Conference, this was most in evidence. She had been a librarian for over thirty years, first for Westminster Council, then with the BBC Reference Library and, from 1986, the BBC Sound Archives. She had a great commitment to serving the needs of programme makers, and in particular I remember a decade of working together in the arcane but hugely enjoyable world of recorded sound effects. Sally enjoyed every moment of her BBC career, and everyone who came into contact with her very soon understood that. She will be much missed by her colleagues and friends, in BASC, IASA and the BBC.

Mark Jones

UNESCO publishes philosophy [amended February 22nd 1999, Ed.]

The full text of Ray Edmondson's A philosophy of audiovisual archiving is now available on the Internet at http://www.unesco.org/webworld/en/highlights/audiovisual_archiving/philo1.htm. There is a link to this from within the IASA website.

New members

One new full institutional member, Phonothèque québecoise, Canada. Contact: Marielle Cartier.

And one new Associate member, Régis Berdaa, Digigram, Parc de Pré Milliet, 38330 Montbonnot, France. Fax: 04 78 52 18 44. Régis Berdaa is a marketing analyst with Digigram in charge of a research programme for audio collections.

IASA Conference 1999: Call for Papers

This is the first call for papers for the IASA Conference in Vienna, Austria, September 18-23, 1999. This message first appeared on the IASA website at the end of December.

A Century of Sound Archiving

The first sound archives, known as phonogramme archives, were founded at the turn of the century, among others, in Vienna and Berlin. Their original scope was limited to the spoken word and cultural traditions. Subsequently, these archives and their followers, archives of sound and audiovisual documents, most of which have been concerned with recorded music, preserve a vast proportion of the 20th-century heritage. In fact, it is impossible to consider the life of our century without reference to recorded sound and the business of sound archives.

The centenary of the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, is an appropriate context for the theme of IASA's next annual conference in 1999: the historic aspects of sound archiving.

Scholars and archivists of all areas connected with recorded sound - musicologists, ethnologists, technicians, historians, sociologists, etc. - are invited to give 20-minute presentations on topics such as rare historical formats, the history of field recording, artistic attitudes to sound recording, training for audiovisual archivists, different national approaches to sound archiving, and sound recordings as primary source material for research. A selection of these will be published subsequently in the IASA Journal. The conference language will be English. Please submit abstracts of a maximum of 150 words by 1 March 1999 to:

Dr. Martin Elste, Vice President, IASA, SIMPK, Tiergartenstrasse 1, D-10785 Berlin

All abstracts will be screened by the IASA programme committee and applicants will be informed if their contributions are accepted by 15 May 1999.

IASA travel and research grants

Members are invited to apply for travel grants for assistance to attend the Vienna Conference in September.

The purposes of the travel grants are to encourage active participation at the IASA annual conferences by those who have no alternative funding and to encourage continuing participation in the work of IASA.

Individuals submitting requests are required to be currently paid-up members of IASA and willing to participate in the work of IASA. Your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that such participation is current or planned.

IASA Committees may also consider bringing members from less developed countries to join the conference and share their experiences. Funding for grants is limited and they will only cover a proportion of the costs involved.

Proposals for travel grants to attend the Vienna conference must be received by the Secretary General of IASA by the end of April 1999 in order to be considered at the mid-year Board meeting to be held in May. Please send your application to: IASA Secretary General, Albrecht Häfner, Suedwestrundfunk, Sound Archives, D-76522 Baden-Baden, Germany, Fax +49 7221 929 2094

Research grants are also available to assist in carrying out specific projects and these are always open for application. Anyone planning a project which concerns the interests of IASA and which requires start-up funding or which requires financial support for work already underway is invited to apply to the Secretary General in writing (see address above). Applications will be considered as and when the Board of IASA meets, so the next chance will be at its mid-year meeting in May and then at Annual Conference in September.

Board change in FIAT

The new FIAT/IFTA General Secretary is Lasse Nilsson, Tevearkivet, Sveriges Television AB, RH-N2G, S-105 Stockholm, Sweden.

Phone (+46 8) 784 5740
Fax (+46 8) 660 4000
lasse.nilsson@svt.se

The new President of FIAT/IFTA is Peter Dusek of ORF.

Retrospective Swedish National Discography

Björn Englund writes:

Since January, 1995, ALB has been running a project, financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Fund, which is aimed at documenting every 78 rpm record made in Sweden from 1899 to 1958, when the last regular schellac records were issued. When completed, in December 1999, it is estimated that the catalogue will contain details of some 30,000 discs on nearly 200 labels. The work is in the hand of the discographer Björn Englund and his assistant Gunilla Österbäck.

The aim is to include every single Swedish 78 recording, including advertising discs and private issues and even unissued recordings. All foreign recordings which are classified as having a Swedish connection will also be included. They will include the classification suecana and are, for example, recordings of the Cuckoo waltz (a Swedish composition from 1913, which became internationally popular from 1930) and Swedish singers abroad (like Karin Branzell, Göta Ljungberg, and Torsten Ralf).

Since we list the complete Swedish catalogue series of major international labels like HMV, Columbia and Decca, many of the issues will contain non-Swedish recordings.

In fact, Capitol (in its C 9000 series) and MGM (in its 6000 series) contain only American recordings. In this connection it might be mentioned that many titles by important artists like Nellie Lutcher (on Capitol), Les Brown, Doris Day, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Gene Krupa, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra (on Columbia), Jimmy Durante, Ziggy Elman, Earl Hines and Lena Horne (on MGM) were issued only in Sweden.

In the first stage of the project, we have only listed electrical recordings from the 1925-1958 period, since the acoustic recordings are already documented in two publications (Karleric Liliedahl: Svenska akustiska grammofoninspelningar 1903-1928 and Karleric Liliedahl: The Gramophone Co. : acoustic recordings in Scandinavia and for the Scandinavian market).

As of November, 1998, there are 22,700 catalogue records in the ALB database. Most major labels have already been entered, except Sonora (more than 2,500 issues). Other important labels remaining are Orchestrola (321 issues), Pathé (210 issues) and Toni (250 issues).

The cataloguing rules are neither AACR2 nor the Swedish version of AACR2, but rules established in 1967, when the first discographies were published by ALB's forerunner at the Swedish National Library. The main rule is that artist and title credits are given exactly as presented on the label. If a correction is needed, it is given within square brackets [ ].

Since the same title can appear in many different forms on different recordings, we have decided that the correct form is that used by the composer on the original sheet music. Fortunately, there is a yearly publication (which is cumulated every fifth year) listing all music published in Sweden since 1891, and this serves as our main source.

If we need to check non-Swedish titles we use the ASCAP and BMI databases on the Internet and also the ASCAP dictionary. We also use the database of the Swedish equivalent of BMI/ASCAP, STIM. As for the pseudonyms used by the composers/lyricists (which are very frequent in Swedish popular music), we do not disclose them, but when we publish our label discographies we include a table giving the real names. Artist pseudonyms, however, are disclosed in every catalogue record.

We use all sorts of reference works to make every catalogue record as complete as possible. Fortunately, several major companies, including Swedish EMI, have donated their archive material to ALB. The ALB library has an extensive collection of Swedish record catalogues and supplements and also hundreds of discographies and various reference books.

This makes it possible to include the following details of every title listed: Artist (not only the main artists, but also the leaders of the accompanying orchestras or groups and even the personnel's of these, when available), titles, composer(s), lyricist(s), full matrix number (including the take number or letter), recording location (including the name of the studio, if known), recording date (even the time of the day, if available), release date, first supplement and deletion date (if known). Further, we give all other issues on 78's and reissues on vinyl or CD. If a tune is taken from a work such as an opera, operetta, musical, film or revue, the title of that work is also given.

When the 78 database was established, our intention was to use the database to publish discographies from this material on a label-by-label basis. So far 4 volumes have been published (Parlophon, HMV 1925-1945, Odeon 1926-1934, the Polygram labels). However, the high printing costs and the low sales have made ALB decide to cease publishing the label discographies. We will, however, publish the remaining HMV volume covering 1925-1957, and also a revised version of the volume covering 1899-1925: Karleric Liliedahl: The Gramophone Co. : acoustic recordings in Scandinavia and for the Scandinavian market (first published in 1977 and long since deleted).

Since a copy of the ALB database is now available on the Internet (updated four times a year), anyone can make a printout of the desired material. We hope our effort can inspire other countries to start making retrospective discographies before time runs out. As record companies are taken over by other companies, much archive material is lost. That makes for instance establishing dates a difficult matter. Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland have nearly completed their retrospective cataloguing. In England, private researchers like Frank Andrews have made a great effort and in Germany Rainer Lotz has started the German National Discography on a private basis. When will we see similar efforts in other countries? [Sooner than you think - Ed.]

The Virtual Gramophone: Canadian Historical Sound Recordings

Richard Green write: "Marking the Millennium by celebrating 100 years of recorded sound in Canada is the slogan under which a two-year digitization project is being proposed which will establish an extensive World Wide Web site devoted to the first half-century of recorded sound in Canada. This project will dramatically expand an existing small-scale web site and database, providing details on thousands of Canadian 78-rpm discs, images of the record labels, histories of the early record companies to operate in Canada (the earliest of which, the Berliner Gramophone Company of Montreal, was the world pioneer in flat-disc technology and issued its first commercial discs in January, 1900), information on the recording technologies of the period, biographies of Canadian performers featured on 78s, and digital audio reproductions of many discs.

Known as The Virtual Gramophone in homage to Emile Berliner, this Web site will permit researchers and enthusiasts to learn about Canadian achievements in music and recording technology up to the mid-20th century, to hear Canadian performers of that era (many of whom were internationally renowned but are now largely forgotten), to study Canadian musical tastes of the period and, in general, to experience anew the cultural richness and diversity of the 78-rpm era in Canada.

The Virtual Gramophone digitization project will permit the National Library of Canada's Music Division to create a widely-accessible digital archive comprising a significant portion of its national preservation collection of Canadian 78-rpm discs, to facilitate the promotion and dissemination of Canada's recorded sound heritage, and to mark the 100th anniversary of recorded sound in Canada in a very special way at the millennium. The Virtual Gramophone Web site will allow, for the first time, on-line public access to the most historic elements of Canada's recorded sound heritage and will be a digital testament to the early days of sound recording. Here's the address: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/gramophone/.

Digigram

Régis Berdaa (new associate IASA member) has some questions, and possibly some answers....

Digital audio technology offers greater efficiency and flexibility than its analogue predecessor. Random access, advanced indexing capabilities, and reduced storage requirements are the key benefits. Audio archives now face the dual challenge of incorporating digital audio methods into their current operations while transferring existing archives to new formats.

For more than a decade, Digigram has been at the forefront of digital audio technology research and development. Among our collaborators are Europe's top research institutes and an international roster of development partners. We tailor our hardware and software applications to meet the evolving needs of customers in archiving, broadcasting, audio and video production, and commercial sound. With tens of thousands of PC-based sound cards and custom products answering the needs of users around the world, Digigram's digital audio technology has become the standard for superior audio processing power and performance.

Among the audio archives using Digigram technology are Bibliothèque Nationale de France and IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique).

Digigram wants to help archive project managers install the best digital audio tools to create the most appropriate, customized solution. To accomplish this goal, we seek to involve you, the experts! We would appreciate your taking a few minutes of your time to share your knowledge by answering the 7 questions that may be found at http://www.digigram.com/consultation/audio_archive.html .

If you prefer a paper copy of the questionnaire, kindly contact Mr. Regis Berdaa at: +33 (0)4 76 52 47 47. Your input is important to us and we thank you in advance for your co-operation. To learn more about Digigram visit us on http://www.digigram.com.

Anyone for training?

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) has recently formed the Education and Training Committee which will study the current state of and future needs for education and training in specific areas of the recorded sound field. The committee is co-chaired by Sara Velez of New York Public Library's Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, and Nancy Seeger of the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Other members include: Esther Gillie (Eastman School of Music, U.S.), Ross Laird and Wanda Lazar (National Film & Sound Archives, Australia), and Susan Stinson (Syracuse University's Belfer Audio Lab).

Currently the committee is gathering information for an international resource guide to training programs for people interested in careers in recorded sound archiving and preservation. The committee feels that such a guide would be extremely helpful to those interested in pursuing careers in these areas. All types of training programs will be included, such as courses, assistantships and practicums offered in academic settings, seminars given by organizations, workshops held during conventions, and courses conducted over the Internet.

If you are an organization that provides training in these areas or if you know of such organizations, please help us make this guide as comprehensive as possible and send us information describing the program(s).

Please send to:

Sara Velez , Assistant Chief, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Rodgers & Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound, 521 West 43rd St., New York, NY 10036 USA

or

Nancy Seeger, Recorded Sound Section, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540-4698, USA

Interfaces and technology for digital libraries

The 8th DELOS workshop on User Interfaces in Digital Libraries was held in Stockholm, Sweden, 21-23 October 1998. Papers are available at: http://www.ercim.org/publications/ws-proceedings/

The DELOS working group is an action of the ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) digital library initiative: . More on the DELOS working group at http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/DELOS/, More on ERCIM at http://www.ercim.org/.

The Third European Conference on Research and Advanced Technologies for Digital Libraries (ECDL'99) will take place in Paris, 22-24 September 1999, http://www-rocq.inria.fr/EuroDL99/.

DRH 99: call for proposals

The DRH (Digital Resources for the Humanities) conferences have established themselves firmly in the UK and international calendar as a forum that brings together scholars, librarians, archivists, curators, information scientists and computing professionals in a unique and positive way, to share ideas and information about the creation, exploitation, management and preservation of digital resources in the arts and humanities.

The DRH 99 conference will take place at King's College London 12-15 September 1999. Proposals for academic papers, themed panel sessions, posters, demos and workshops are invited. Deadlines are:

  • Papers and panels : 8 March 99

  • Posters and demos : 29 March 99

  • Workshops : 29 March 99.

EC news

A Conference is to be held to launch the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme for research. Venue: Messe Essen, Essen, Germany. 25 to 26 February 1999. Cost: 125 ECU. (Nationals of countries that have applied to join the EU pay 50 ECU. Further information is on the Web at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg12/fp5/conference.html.

Two projects of interest to libraries have been selected for support under the Raphael cultural heritage programme. PJAECH (Preserving Jewish Archives as part of the European cultural heritage): the project aims to organise a conference in July 1999 on the preservation of Jewish archives all over Europe, as a first step to further European-wide initiatives. Partners include the European Council of Jewish Communities, based in the UK. DACE (Summit europeo 'modello per un sistema di descrizione degli archivi storici delle capitali europee'): the project aims to conduct a study on where collections about the history of European capital cities are stored.

Rural communities in Europe have historically relied on social meeting places such as inns and local hops to exchange information. Increasingly, such local information points are disappearing, leaving rural communities isolated, and without an infrastructure to support initiatives. In the UK, the Norfolk and Norwich Millenium Company is making resources available that will allow rural communities to become networked through ICT. These developments are being co-ordinated with activities in Saxony, Edinburgh and Rome, through ETHOS. Reports will be available on the Web: http://www.ethoseurope.org/. A general article on UK rural communities and their information needs by Penny Yates-Mercer and Gillian Wotherspoon of City University can be found on pages 7-8 of the Autumn 1998 (issue 21) Research Bulletin of the British Library's Research Innovation Centre (ISSN 1366-6526).

In Saxony (Germany) grammar school students are teaching older persons (50+) how to use the internet, using their own school computers. The students develop their abilities as teachers, and relate more closely to the older people in their neighbourhood. Seniors overcome technology fears, and learn of the information available on the Internet. A 1997 study showed that in Saxony 29 per cent of those aged over 50 were afraid of the complexities of new technology. Web sites: http://www.marvin.sn.schule.de/, http://www.set.saxony.de/senior.

The IMPRIMATUR project (Intellectual Multimedia Property Rights Model and Terminology for universal Reference), is coming to an end. Some of the partners have established a company, IMPRIMATUR Services Ltd, to continue the work of the project, especially the Consensus Forums and other events. IMPRIMATUR was funded under the EC ESPRIT programme. Web: http://www.imprimatur.alcs.co.uk.

Multi-media history journal

The Department of History at the State University of New York at Albany has presented the first issue of The Journal for MultiMedia History. It is the first peer-reviewed electronic journal that presents, evaluates, and disseminates multimedia scholarship.

This free on-line journal, http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/, offers a new vision for presenting historical research. Adhering to the highest research standards and utilising the most innovative multimedia technologies, The Journal for MultiMedia History (JMMH) combines audio, visual, and hyperlinked materials with thoughtful historical analysis. By exploiting the almost magical potential of digital code, authors can explore and present a range of scholarly source materials impossible to incorporate into traditional texts. The journal also provides in-depth reviews, including audio and visual clips and links, of multimedia resources such as CD-ROMs, videos, and Web sites.

The first issue includes pieces by accomplished scholars. One item centres on a radio interview conducted in 1960 with the Nation of Islam's Elijah Muhammad, accompanied by an analysis by his biographer, Claude A. Clegg III. This issue also contains the audio and text of a lecture by Professor Kathy Peiss that focused on her new book about American women and the making of the modern consumer culture. Tom Kriger explores a labour strike in New York that took place during the Great Depression. He uses a dazzling array of photographs and oral history interviews. Adrienne Hood and Jacqueline Spafford make use of hypertext to demonstrate the promise and perils of integrating Web construction projects, and Corrine Blake offers a comprehensive hypertext review of Web-based resources for students and scholars of Islam and Islamic Civilization.

Oral Traditions conference in Thailand

Organized as a Satellite Meeting of the General Conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), a four-day Conference will be held August 16-19, 1999 in Khon Kaen, Thailand, on the theme of "Collecting and Safeguarding Oral Traditions" in Khon Kaen, Northeastern Thailand, from 16-19 August 1999. This Conference is open to all with an interest in the preservation of oral traditions.

Within the context of the UNESCO "Memory of the World" Program, the Conference will deal with various aspects of collecting and safeguarding oral heritage, including the socio-cultural context; collection methodologies and selection criteria; care, handling, storage and preservation issues; and technical matters. Included in the Conference will be an excursion to the Research Institute of Northeastern Arts and Culture and the Sirindhorn Isan Information Center (Mahasarakham University, Thailand), an academic resource centre with comprehensive information related to all aspects of northeastern Thai cultures.

The Conference venue will be the Khon Kaen Sofitel Hotel. Special rates have been arranged, beginning at US$45 per night. There are frequent flights between Khon Kaen and Bangkok.

This Conference was originally planned as part of the series of biennial Pre-Session Seminars for developing countries, held under the auspices of the IFLA Professional Board. In 1999 it will be organized as a Satellite Meeting. Procedures for registration, including the registration fee for this event will be announced early in 1999. Participants attending this Conference may wish to attend the 65th IFLA Council and General Conference in Bangkok from 20-28 August, 1999.

Subsidies for travel and registration will be available to a limited number of candidates from the developing world. They will be selected from the nominations already presented earlier in 1998 for the originally planned Pre-Session Seminar. Funding will be made available from UNESCO, DANIDA, the IFLA ALP Core Programme and the IFLA PAC Core Programme (South East Asia and the Pacific).

Additional information may be obtained from IFLA Headquarters or from the Chairperson of the Satellite Meeting Planning Committee: IFLA Headquarters, P.O. Box 95312, 2509 CH The Hague, Netherlands; tel. +31 70 3140884; fax. +31 70 3834827; email: ifla@ifla.org

Sites and Sounds

  • The Click-Through Guide accompanies the book, Digital Collections: Museums and the Information Age: http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~s-keene/infoage/contents.htm. This is a new, concise, and well-designed electronic directory developed by Suzanne Keene Head of Collections Management at the Science Museum in London to accompany her recent hard-copy publication Digital Collections: Museums and the Information Age. Although concentrating on digital collections and museums the Guide is wide-ranging and includes an excellent selection of links to web pages on wider information issues. There should be something new and of interest to most visitors to the site even if they are not museums-based.
     
  • Version 2 of the Elib Standards Guidelines (version 1 issued Feb 1996)was released on 23 October 1998. The document covers concisely a wide-range of electronic format and interchange standards and includes references to more detailed reading. It is available from the UKOLN website: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/other/standards/.
     
  • As are the JISC/TLTP Copyright Guidelines (ISBN 1900508419), released on 24 November 1998. The document is targeted at a higher education audience and deals with a wide range of copyright issues in electronic media. It is available from the UKOLN site and can be downloaded as a PDF file from: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/other/jisc-tltp/jisc.pdf.

Calendar of events

Date Event Location
1999    
March SEAPAVAA Annual Conference Kuala Lumpur
April FIAF Annual Congress Madrid
July 18 - 23 IAML Annual Conference Wellington, New Zealand
August 16 - 19 Collecting and Safeguarding Oral Traditions
(see page 10)
Khon Kaen, Thailand
August 20 - 28 IFLA Council and General Conference Bangkok
August 19 - 25 ICTM World Conference Hiroshima
September FIAT/IFTA Conference Rio de Janeiro
September 18 - 23 IASA Annual Conference Vienna
November FIAF Executive Committee Toulouse
2000    
April FIAF Annual Conference London
August 6 - 11 IAML Annual Conference Edinburgh
August 13 - 18 IFLA Council and General Conference Jerusalem
September ? IASA Annual Conference Singapore
November FIAF Executive Committee New York
2001    
July 8 - 14 IAML Annual Conference Périgueux, France
September ? IASA Annual Conference London

This Information Bulletin was compiled by:

The Editor of IASA, Chris Clark,
The British Library National Sound Archive, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK,
tel. 44 (0)20 7412 7411, fax 44 (0)20 7412 7413, e-mail chris.clark@bl.uk

Printed in Budapest, Hungary
PLEASE SEND ANY COPY FOR INFORMATION BULLETIN NO 29 BY 15 MARCH 1999