Tuesday, September 30, 2008

How Quickly It Becomes Routine

I've spent the last week working in the Information Arcade, converting LPs into .WAV files. Which sounds impressive, but really, the computer does all the work. Once you have everything set up correctly (and that can be VERY challenging, and VERY annoying), it's mostly just a matter of putting the record on the turntable, turning it on, lowering the needle, and clicking the RECORD button on the computer. Then you listen through the headphones until it ends, press STOP on the computer, raise the needle and stop the turntable, save your recording, then flip the record over and do it again.

True, it's not just a normal save; you have to "export" the file in a particular format. And you have to make sure that all the options are set correctly. And sometimes an LP is scratched or warped or sticks, and you have to make a note of the problems and set the record aside to be checked by the preservation department.

But mostly you just listen to music while it records.

I'm becoming a fan of the Mirecourt Trio, which was a trio of violin, cello, and piano in residence at Iowa in the 1970s. I've listened to more "new music" (that is, experimental, avant-garde stuff) than I ever wanted to. And I've had fun listening to high school honors choirs and university choirs singing music that I sang when I was in high school and college. (So far, I haven't run across my particular choirs, but it could happen. I did participate in a few events here. I might find a performance I'm in some day.)

And I've had a lot of time to think. In some of my classes, we've been learning about an ongoing debate: is librarianship really a profession? There have been detractors over the ages who claim that library work is basically clerical. The librarians, of course, talk about all the specialized knowledge that is needed to do what we do.

Well, what I'm doing this week would be a vote for the "clerical" side. But setting up the systems to do what I'm doing, and processing and cataloging the resulting files, and designing what the result will look like... that takes higher-level thinking skills.

That's the problem with digital libraries: you can do all sorts of cool things with digital data, but first you have to have the data. And *somebody* has to input it!

It makes sense that professionals (or would-be professionals, like me) have to do some of the inputting, so that they'll know what's involved and be able to supervise the people who do it. But I'm glad I'm not destined to be creating .WAV files for the rest of my life!

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Audacity

The last couple of weeks, I've started using a program called Audacity to convert analog recordings (like phonograph records) to digital.

I'm working with LPs made by School of Music students and faculty. I start out at the Information Arcade, where there is a computer with a turntable attached. I use Audacity on that workstation to record each side of the record as one large .WAV file. I also copy information from the record jacket about the tracks on each side.

Once I have several sides recorded, I move to a standard workstation that also has Audacity installed. There, I listen carefully to the recording and determine the exact points where each track begins and ends. This can be difficult -- some LPs include times on the record jackets but those aren't alway accurate. Some LPs include applause at the end of each selection, and that makes it easy. But others don't have applause, and it can be difficult to tell the difference between pauses between movements (which are generally within the same track) and silence between tracks. And a few recordings have had so much static that there is no identifiable silence between tracks. So I use the record jacket information in combination with what I hear to identify the tracks as best I can. When that's done, I copy each track to a new file, also in the .WAV format.

The purpose of this is preservation. .WAV is an audio file storage format that produces very high quality sound. It also takes up a lot of space -- too much space to be practical for use on the web. So the .WAV files will be like the "master copies" kept on file. We're saving them as both sides and tracks to make them as useable as possible for future researchers.

Later, I will convert the files to another format that is good for posting on the web and will meet the needs of general listeners.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Copyright Woes

Posting recordings on the web sounds like a wonderful idea. Gives students, music lovers, researchers, and anyone else who might be interested access to them. Provides publicity for the performers and record companies that made them. Sounds like a win-win situation, right?

Wrong.

Or at least, not so fast.

Copyright issues rear their ugly head.

The problem is, whoever produced and issued the recording holds the copyright to it. Under the fair use provision of copyright law, the library can circulate its physical copies of copyrighted recordings without getting additional permission from the copyright holders. But posting it on the web is a whole other issue. That's "broadcasting". And just like radio stations have to have permission to broadcast their recordings, we do to.

Many of the recordings were produced directly by the University, and those are no problem. "We" own the copyright to the recording and can do what we want with it.

But some of the recordings were made by outside recording companies. Some were actually issued by commercial record labels, like Columbia or Philips or Mercury. Others were done by small, independent labels, like TR Records from Des Moines, or ISQ Music from Cedar Rapids. Many of them were issued decades ago. There are lots from the sixties, and several from as far back as 1956.

We have to get permission from the recording companies to put their products on the web. That means finding contact names and addresses, so we can send letters requesting permission. Which seems like a simple task. And it is, for recordings produced in the last few years. But for older records, it gets complicated. Some of the companies have been merged or combined or bought out or otherwise changed their names -- sometimes two or three times.

Philips was absorbed into Decca, which became part of Universal Music Group, for instance.

Other companies, especially the smaller ones, have simply vanished without a trace.

So my first task is researching record companies, trying to collect enough information to be eble to send a permission letter.

It can be frustrating. After a week of work, I've got letters written covering 32 of the 70 recordings for which we need permission. It put all the skills I learned in the Search and Discover class I took last summer to the test. Many of the rest of them are probably "orphan records" for which no copyright holder can be found, so permission can't be granted. I'm not sure yet what happens to those records -- maybe we can post them after documenting a good-faith effort to get permission, or maybe we simply aren't allowed to post them at all. I'll keep you posted.

But before we declare anything an orphan, I've asked the music librarian if she can suggest any other sources to check. I'm hoping that, being current with the field, she "just knows" who now holds rights to some of the older companies' catalogs. Or maybe she knows of information sources that neither my project mentor nor I could find. Hopefully, we'll hear from her soon.

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!