Friday, February 19, 2010

Digital doomsday

There is a new article on the possible loss of digital information in New Scientist. It naturally focuses on scientific data and seems to strike a good balance between alarm and acceptance. The issues affect us all, but in the end it does seem a bit short-sighted when compared to the incredibly vast amount of information that has already been lost through the centuries (or even decades: interestingly enough, a lot of the information on, say, natural remedies that was commonplace two generations ago is quite obscure these days).

What we need to accept is that civilizations and cultures change and with them there is always a change in priorities, which inevitable implies losses. But the article makes a good point in that the amount of energy needed to keep digital data current is very large. When I hear of efforts to keep our audio heritage digitally alive for generations and generations, I cannot help but be a bit skeptic.

Digital preservation is to analog preservation what a car is to a bicycle: yes, theoretically you can get much farther (without wear), but you need much more energy to get there.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Audio Preservation Class at Long Island U

I will be teaching the Audio Preservation class in the Fall at Palmer School's NYU campus. If you are a library student interested in learning all about audio preservation (but were afraid to ask), contact Alice Flynn at alice.flynn@liu.edu. I will be posting more details as I fine-tune the syllabus.

Interview in Spanish journal

The latest issue of the official journal from Spain's Asociación Española de Documentación Musical (AEDOM) starts with an interview with yours truly. It was fun to wax philosophical about the issues facing the profession. I predict that most of our audiovisual heritage will be lost, and it is up to us to actively choose what we save.

AEDOM is part of the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML). The interview appears to be only in print, but you can contact AEDOM if you are interested.

ARSC NY Chapter tomorrow

Join us for the free monthly ARSC NY Chapter meeting on Thursday, Feb 18 at the fabulous ARChive of Contemporary Music --Marcos


ARSC New York Chapter

February 2010 Meeting
Thursday, 2/18/10
ARChive of Contemporary Music

54 White St., Tribeca, New York



GUEST SPEAKERS



THE JAZZ LOFT PROJECT
From 1957 to 1965 legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith made approximately 4,000 hours of recordings on 1,741 reel-to-reel tapes and nearly 40,000 photographs in a loft building in Manhattan's wholesale flower district where major jazz musicians of the day gathered and played their music. Smith's work has remained in archives until now. The Jazz Loft Project is dedicated to uncovering the stories behind this legendary moment in American cultural history.


Sam Stephenson is a writer and director of the Jazz Loft Project at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. His book, The Jazz Loft Project: The Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in November 2009. He has been studying the life and work of Smith for thirteen years, authoring two additional books about him. His biography of Smith, Picture Paradise, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.


Christopher Lacinak has consulted on a broad range of preservation and access topics for moving image and sound collections and organizations. Some of his past and current clients include the Library of Congress, Stanford University and the Image Permanence Institute. Chris is a former Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at VidiPax, a well-established magnetic media preservation reformatting facility, and is an Adjunct Professor at New York University's Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Masters Degree program. Chris continues to remain active and chair committees in relevant and standards forming organizations such as the Audio Engineering Society, Association of Moving Image Archivists and the International Organization for Standardization. Chris is well known for his work in developing high efficiency reformatting systems, quality control systems, metadata standards, assessment, prioritization and workflow design.

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions is a consulting firm that provides effectiveindividualized solutions for collections of moving image and sound regardless of size, variety of formats, or budget range.

DIRECTIONS

SUBWAY: Take #1 to Franklin St; A,C,E and the N,Q,R,W to Canal Street at Broadway, or #6 to Canal at Lafayette. White Street is three blocks South of Canal Street and one block North of Franklin Street, between W. Broadway and Broadway

Meeting from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM~ doors (and refreshments) at 6:30 ~voluntary contributions to help defray our expenses are welcome!

SAVE THE DATES OF OUR REMAINING PROGRAMS THIS SEASON
3/18/10 Elizabeth Davis of Columbia University will be joined by a representative of New World Records to discuss support for the recording of music by American composers4/22/10 Legendary Jazz producer George Avakian will be interviewed by Dan Morgenstern of Rutgers University's Institute of Jazz Studies
(29 May and June to be announced)

All ARSC NY Chapter meetings are free and open to the public.
To join ARSC, visit
http://www.arsc-audio.org

The WNYC Archives DATs

I have been working at the WNYC archives for a couple of weeks, transferring old transcription discs, reels and DATs of WQXR and WNYC materials, including a great program on women's athletes from 1949 (Did you know that the Bronx's Budge-Wood Laundry Service was started by tennis-greats couple Sidney Wood and Donald Budge in the 1940s? Still going strong!)

Despite their relative youth, DATs (Digital Audio Tapes) are actually considered among the most endengered audio carriers. Some of the WNYC DATs are over three hours long (90 meters) and are actually DDS (data) tapes. DDS tapes are recognized by Indiana University's Facet to be even more problematic than regular DAT tapes. So these have two additional strikes against them: the fact that they are DDS tapes, and that they are less than 13 μm (!) thick. It is amazing that they work at all.

At the ARSCList there has been a recent interesting thread resurrecting the idea of transferring audio DATs with computer drives. David Rice of AVPS is an expert on such systems, as is Tim Bathgate of Radio New Zealand, who may be presenting on the subject at the IASA conference in Philadelphia in November. In the meantime, his findings are published in the IASA journal.