JISC Digitisation Programme

Over 2000 recordings by British and Irish Muscians have been digitised and made available online in a project by Kings College, London.

The Musicains of Britain and Ireland 1900-1950 project is allowing listeners and researchers to rediscover leading musicians who were once household names.

Most of the recordings are making their first public appearance since they came out on shellac over 60 years ago and are linked to a range of research resources about the history of recording to help people make the most of the collection.

The discs were selected specifically to highlight world-class British and Irish performers recorded between 1900 and 1950, especially artists neglected by the newly-formed EMI after the merger of the Gramophone Co and Columbia in 1931.

For more information about this project and to listen to some samples,visit the JISC webpages

All the tracks and many more are all available on the CHARM website.

Despite the unbiquitous presence of moving image and sound in much of our daily lives, it has largely failed to make any impact in academic teaching, learning and research.

In an attempt to strengthen the role of film and sound in further and higher education, the Film and Sound Think Tank has recently launched a set of videos.

The films examine the role of audio and visual content in education, and how the protential of this media can be unlocked.

The fourth video is available on Vimeo:

JISC – Unlocking Artists’ Rights – JISC Film and Sound Think Tank

As an aside, it is interesting to note the number of views these videos have had in their short life on YouTube (one of the videos – Using Ausio in education – had 138 views).

While the numbers don’t necessarily tell us the whole story – how long were they viewed? – this may already signal the importance and levels of interest in this topic to the education community and beyond.

 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

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

On 16-17 March 2009, The British Library will be hosting the conference Unlocking Audio 2: Connecting With Listeners.

The conference is a key event exploring the use of sound recordings online, focussing on ways that researchers and other audiences expect to discover, browse, audition and analyse archival audio resources. It will be of interest to content owners, academics & students, service providers, user groups, resource managers, system integrators, and designers and implementers of search & content analysis tools.

Keynotes speakers include Charles Leadbeater, a leading authority on innovation and creativity in organisations, and Andy Powell, Head of Development at the Eduserv Foundation.

Unlocking Audio 2 is supported by JISC and will also celebrate the successful end of the 2nd Archival Sound Recordings project, funded as part of the JISC Digitisation programme.

Important dates

Deadline for abstracts: 12:00 hours GMT on 12 December 2008
Deadline for early registration: 12:00 hours GMT on 19 December 2008
Deadline for late registration: 12:00 hours GMT on 16 February 2009

For more information, see the conference web site.