More Classical Music Online - Chopin
The addition of over 1500 recordings of Chopin’s music - including key performances of piano repertoire, including all Mazurkas, Preludes, Etudes, Polonaises and more - is another string to the bow of the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings.
The Sound Archive has now built up a formidable array of early recordings of canonical composters, comprising over 500 hours. All the pre-1958 recordings are available freely to UK users.
Teaching and learning with sound recordings
Moving images and sound recordings are still relatively little used as support to teaching and learning in comparison to other, more established, digital resources such as images and text material. However, they do offer great potential for being exploited in innovative ways within teaching and students work, as well as, of course, research.
The digitisation of key sections of the London Broadcasting Company/Independent Radio News (LBC/IRN) archive, the most important commercial radio archive in the UK, offers over 3000 hours of news and current affairs between 1973-1990s, which often present a different approach to state-funded (BBC) radio programmes.
On the LBC/IRN web site one can download a brief but useful paper by Dr Hugh Chignell, of Bournemouth University, who’s been associated with the project since its inception, on suggestions for how the archive can be used by teachers and students, (Chignell, H., 2009. LBC/IRN Archive Teaching and Learning Case Study. Poole: Bournemouth University. (Unpublished))
In his introduction, Dr Chignell highlights some general points before delving into more detail:
-The archive is important both in terms of content (especially news and current affairs coverage of political, economic, social and cultural events and developments) and for also for production techniques employed (including interviews, vox pops, phone-ins, reportage and rolling news).
- The online resource lends itself to student centred learning in which the student can explore the archive using the search and key word functions. […]
- Perhaps the most exciting archive-based student projects will include examples of audio which have been downloaded and then edited and incorporated into a web based report with audio examples, possibly within a multimedia product.
Dr Chignell then proceeds to suggest some key themes of the period covered in the archive that can be traced through the recordings, such as:
- the election and politics of Margaret Thatcher
- the Miners’ strike
- issues relating to Health and AIDS
- others issues of social relevance such as Marriage.
This project was funded by the JISC Digitisation programme and delivered by Bournemouth University in collaboration with BUFVC.
Other sound and moving images projects funded by the JISC Digitisation programme are the British Library Archival Sound Recording, and the British Film Institute’s InView project.
JISC Digital Media announces Video Assist
JISC Digital Media recently launched Video Assist. This is a new in-depth consultation scheme offering a free bespoke advice and training in the creation of video resources, for a selcted number of successful projects.
Below are further details of this exciting new service:
JISC Digital Media today announces the launch of Video Assist, a new service offering free in-depth support to projects in higher and further education institutions which require the creation of moving image resources.Video Assist provides a service to complement JISC Digital Media’s existing support framework of a helpdesk, advice documents and workshops.A project which qualifies for Video Assist will receive 4 days’ worth in total of bespoke off-site support and on-site supervision, helping the project to achieve its ambitions more quickly and effectively.The interaction with project personnel will embed skills and knowledge, leaving as a legacy a team of people able to carry out similar work in the future with a new degree of skill and professionalism.
Video Assist will run during the 2009-2010 academic year in three rounds, with two projects selected for support in each round. For more information see the JISC Digital Media Website
British Film Institute puts 600 hours of film online
The British Film Institute has announceed the completion of a ground breaking project to give academics, teachers, students and researchers free online access to hundreds of hours of film and television. Available through the BFI National Archive these clips tell the complex social, economic and political history of Britain in the 20th century.
Funded by JISC as part of its digitisation programme, BFI InView: Moving Images in the Public Sphere comprises more than 600 hours of full-length films and television programmes, alongside over 8,000 pages of related documents that have been digitised and made exclusively available to colleges and universities via a dedicated website.
Accessible through federated access management, meaning HE and FE users can view the materials with a single sign-on, the BFI InView site is easily searchable with materials catalogued and organised under six main categories:
• Education
• Health
• The Environment
• Immigration, Race and Equality
• Industry and Economy
• Law and Order
Music Without Walls
From Indian ritual music to bawdy English pub songs to Ugandan court music to Nigerian Highlife, the British Library’s collections of world and traditional music are emerging from the shelves of the Sound Archive and appearing on the Archival Sound Recordings website.
Below are some of the new collections that are available from the Sound Recordings Website:
• Traditional music in England - Ranging from rowdy pub sessions to intimate settings in exponents’ homes, this collection represents a valuable resource for the study of repertoire and performance styles and provides unique insight into the folk scene of England.
• Music in India – Recordings of folk, devotional and ritual music from remote rural areas of India, recorded as part of a collaborative project between ethnomusicologist Rolf Killius, the Horniman Museum and the British Library.
• Decca West Africa Recordings – Commercial recordings from the British Library’s holdings of the Decca West Africa yellow label series, issued on shellac disc between circa 1948 - 1961. The collection includes music recorded in Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and possibly Togo, encompassing a wide range of popular genres of the time including Highlife, Rumba, Calypso and early Nigerian jùjú as well as some more traditional performances.
• Peter Cook Uganda Recordings – Made between 1964 and 1997 these ethnographic field recordings of traditional, ritual and courtly music complement the collection of Klaus Wachsmann’s Uganda Recordings from the 1940s and 50s.
The Traditional Music in England collection will continue to grow over the coming months, as will the ethnographic field recordings which will eventually include material from across Africa, Asia and Central Asia.
To receive updates about new collections as they become live please sign up to the Archival Sound Recordings blog RSS feed.
Classical Research in the Digital Age
The British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings project, supported by JISC, today launches a vital new resource for the exploration of western classical music heritage.
Bringing together nearly 1000 historic recordings, this freely available online collection allows researchers to easily compare various interpretations of great composers, tracing the impact of globalisation on performance style and its evolution throughout the early 20th Century.
Available works include:
- Bach - Brandenburg concertos, orchestral suites and solo concertos
- Haydn - Symphonies
- Mozart - Symphonies and concertos
- Beethoven - String quartets, symphonies and concertos
- Brahms - Symphonies, overtures and concertos
Celia Duffy - Head of Research, National Centre for Research in the Performing Arts, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama said:
“Digital collections, such as Archival Sound Recordings, have enormous potential for researchers and students. By placing previously inaccessible archives online, they create the potential for new fields of cross-disciplinary research, reflecting the social, cultural, technological and political changes that have shaped contemporary society. In particular, the Classical Music collection provides researchers with the means to easily assess how performance practice has changed over the years and gain fresh insight into familiar works.”
For further information about the archive visit the British Library’s Sound Archive
Learning on Screen Conference 2009
The Learning on Screen Conference 2009 will be held at The Wellcome Collection, on 7th and 8th April 2009 and will focus on:
Disability and Access to Moving Image and Sound.
The Learning on Screen Conference will offer an opportunity for academic service providers, web developers, lecturers, broadcasters, educationists, advisors, publishers and representatives of disability groups to meet to see examples of best practice, to learn about new techniques and to discuss the challenge of reaching the standards of delivery required by legislation to meet the needs and expectations of users.
For more information and details on how to book a place see the conference programme.
The launch of JISC Digital Media
JISC Digital Media is the new name for the Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI). The JISC Digital Media team will continue to provide advice, training and guidance on the creation and use of digital media collections, with the expanded service now providing expertise in moving images and sound in addition to still images and their use in learning, teaching and research.
From help with finding and using the right media, to advice on creating and delivering digital formats or consultancy on managing a digitisation project, JISC Digital Media promotes good practice, technical expertise, the use of appropriate standards and the sharing of knowledge within the UK FE and HE communities.
JISC Digital Media are also holding a number of reception events where you can find out more about the service. Visit the team blog to get further details, or email launch@jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk .
For further information about JISC Digital Media’s services please visit the website, email: info@jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk or call 0117 331 4447
First hand accounts of the Holocaust
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day and to mark the occasion the British Library’s JISC funded Archival Sound Recordings project has added a new tool for Holocaust research and education, available online.
Here are some of the details of the collection by the project manager, Peter Findlay (more can be read on the Sound recordings blog):
Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust documents the moving testimonies of Jewish immigrants to Britain, many of whom survived Nazi concentration camps. Over 440 hours of life story recordings explore 66 personal experiences of persecution across war-torn Europe and the impact of the Holocaust, covering:
- Anti-Semitism before the Second World War
- Ghettos and concentration camps
- Resistance and liberation
- Searching for family in the aftermath
- Building a new life in Britain
- The legacy of the Holocaust
The Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust resource will also support primary and secondary education, supplementing the study materials and lesson plans provided by the British Library’s Learning team’s Voices of the Holocaust package.
The testimonies now available are drawn from a major oral history programme The Living Memory of the Jewish Community which between 1987 and 2000 gathered 186 audio life story interviews with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their children. It was initiated by National Life Stories based in the British Library’s oral history section and funded by a number of organisations including the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, the John S Cohen Foundation and the Porjes Charitable Trust.
The collection joins a growing range of oral history recordings on Archival Sound Recordings, which makes selections of music, spoken word, and environmental sounds from the British Library Sound Archive available online. Recordings can be accessed from British Library reading rooms and are available for free to licensed UK higher and further education institutions. In addition, over 2000 recordings, including Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust, are available to the public via the website.
UK higher and further education librarians can email (asr@bl.uk) to request a free licence.
Ginevra House
Engagement Officer
Higher Education Team
The British Library
Ginevra.house@bl.uk
www.bl.uk
+44 (0)20 7412 7245
Make sure collection names are obvious
The British Library’s Sound Archive has some fascinating collections but they tend to have some quite obscure names.
For example, the St Mary-le-Bow public debates have contributions from Iris Murdoch, Peter Cook and Enoch Powell.
A previous version of the Sound Archive website replicated these collection names - and quite possibly put off users who failed to understand what may actually have been in each collection.
However, a new browsing structure has now been created.
It is much more obvious - collections are organised organised according to subject name giving users a more immediate understanding of what might be available.