Sunday, September 7, 2008

Iowa Sounds

My first digital library project is working on Iowa Sounds. This is a group of recordings of Iowa musicians and radio broadcasts that will be digitized and made available on the internet as a digital library collection. I am beginning by working with vinyl LP recordings of U of Iowa School of Music performances.

The idea is two-fold: First, to transfer priceless recordings from outdated and deteriorating media to something that can be preserved more readily for future use; and second, to make the recordings, which have been shut up in the music library, more available for people to hear.

This is cool. I wish that KU would do something like this. It might mean that I would be able to hear my choir performances from music camp in the summer of 1976 again. I was crushed when my record got left in a hot car in the summer of 1988, and melted completely out of shape.

Preservation and access seem to be what libraries are all about. One of the things that I think is neat about digital is that preserving information in digital form often makes access to it easier. That wasn't always so; in the world of paper-based libraries, handling documents is hard on them, so allowing access impedes preservation.

It's a constant trade-off: letting people handle and read books and papers makes them wear out faster. Keeping the books and papers locked up in a darkened, climate-controlled atmosphere keeps them in good condition. But what good is a well-preserved document if nobody can see it?

It's the same problem with vinyl records and tape recordings. Playing them wears them out. And copying them diminishes the quality of the sound.

Not so with digital recordings. Converting to digital keeps the performance in a format that won't degrade, and also makes it possible to distribute it far and wide. Preservation and access in one move. Excellent!

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