Sound and vision blog

The end of the ASR project is to be marked by the Unlocking Audio 2 conference. This international event presents an exiting opportunity to explore how large audio collections can be made available online.

The rewards for doing a project like ASR are many but there are substantial obstacles to be overcome if one wants to make significant headway. The project has addressed many of these issues head-on and not without success. Those wishing to undertake similar activities will be able to learn much from our endeavours but we equally wish to learn from others who have taken a different approach.

Those involved in using audio in teaching, learning and research should be particularly interested as this is one of the few conferences focused on this topic. Those who are engaged in online delivery of archival audio or those who are planning to make material available on a large (or smaller) scale will undoubtedly benefit from attendance. 

I hope to see you there. A call for papers has just gone out and I advocate a speedy response as the deadline is not far off.

Peter Findlay
Project Manager, Archival Sound Recording 2

In 1967, the central government of Uganda abolished the historic Bantu kingdoms that had for centuries formed the regional administrations of the country.  Out went the kingdoms, out went the kings, and out with them went generations of musical and cultural lore.

In 1993, the government restored the kingdoms, and the reinstated King of Bunyoro-Kitara is now tackling the daunting task of recreating the institutions, articles and music of the regional heritage.

Samuel Kahunde, a PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of Sheffield, began studying the royal music of Uganda through the Klaus Wachsmann collection on Archival Sound Recordings. In a fieldwork trip last June, Samuel visited the royal court to discuss the recovery of this music with the King of Bunyoro-Kitara. 

I read in today’s Guardian that a government-commissioned report on youth violence is due to be published on Monday.  It proposes that parents should be more responsible for controlling the bad behaviour or their children.  Causes of violence and crime in young people are also the topic of discussion in this recording from the Archival Sound Recordings St Mary-le-Bow Public Debates. It is remarkable that many of the issues we are contending with now were evident in 1973.

Digitisation of the Bow recordings presents a unique opportunity for researchers to look at the way issues were debated in a public space during the 60s and 70s and how social issues evolve (or do not evolve) over time.  Listening to the debates provides insights into the language and mores of a particular time but also offers an additional perspective on the here and now.

A key aim of the ASR2 Project is to negotiate over the intellectual property rights for approximately 20,000 recordings.  This is a complex undertaking requiring detailed research, legal support and negotiation.  We need to do this so that researchers and educators in institutions of Further and Higher Education can use the ASR2 recordings in a variety of academic contexts.  Audio is a particularly complex area in intellectual property because fair-dealing provisions for recordings are almost nonexistent within the UK Copyright Act.

Last week, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) launched its report Taking Forward the Gowers Review on Intellectual Property - Proposed Changes to Copyright Exceptions.  The report makes a number of proposals relating to the use of sound recordings.  UK-IPO is seeking feedback from interested parties.  If you use sound in teaching, learning or research - or perhaps feel prohibited from doing so - this presents a great opportunity to let your views be known.

Peter Findlay. ASR Project Manager

The Archival Sound Recordings (ASR) team is always looking for ways to expand the ASR site – not just in terms of content but in usability.  And usability these days means a great deal more than having a clear design and easily navigated menus.  What sites like ours really want to create is a community of practice around its content: a growing and dynamic body that will interact with the material, repurpose it, and share the results as widely as possible.

This is why two members of the team attended a seminar held by the Quality Improvement Agency (QIA) earlier this month.  QIA describes itself as a champion of “excellence and innovation in the provision of learning and skills”.  The seminar itself was the start of a four-month programme to see how the content of resources such as ours can be expanded upon and interacted with in Further Education colleges; in particular, how content can be recombined into multimedia learning “journeys”.

For the next two months, the Archival Sound Recording service will be on display in the House of Lords Library. In the first such exhibition to be held there, ASR is joined by two more of the British Library’s flagship digital projects, Turning the Pages™ and the new 19th Century Newspapers site.

The exhibition was opened on 16 November with speeches from Lord Avebury, Sir Colin Lucas, and the Lord Speaker, The Rt Hon the Baroness Hayman.  To mark the occasion, Archival Sound Recordings gave prominence to a 1971 St Mary-le-Bow debate involving Sir Peter Walker, Baron of Worcester (please click on this link to listen to the debate), who was then Secretary of State for the Environment.

The British Library’s Public Affairs Manager Victoria Carson, said:  "We are delighted to have this unique opportunity to host an exhibition in the House of Lords Library. It helps us communicate some of our key messages with regard to capturing and preserving material in the world of constantly changing technology."

We are currently looking for academics and researchers to join the Archival Sound Recordings 2 User Panel. Panel members will have the opportunity to help influence the direction and development of the project, and will be invited to attend a number of meetings and workshop sessions during 2007 and 2008. If you are interested in contributing but can't spare the time for the panel, we are also setting up an online group so that contributions can be made from afar.  You will need to be active in higher or further education in the United Kingdom.

Please email [email protected] and we will contact you to discuss your involvement with or use of audio in teaching, learning and research and how you may be able to contribute to the project.

Peter Findlay, ASR2 Project Manager

There are two main reasons for digitising analogue sound formats: ensuring long-term preservation of content held on unstable or obsolescent media and providing ease of access.

We are currently digitising the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) Talks collection, comprising nearly 1000 hour-long cassettes. The process takes considerable time and effort. A single engineer can process four cassettes in parallel, but this still adds up to 250 man-hours - the equivalent of seven working weeks.

To get the best quality digital transfer, we continuously analyse the signal extracted from the original carrier, set appropriate recording levels and convert the signal into an uncompressed WAV file - the digital archival standard. This file is sent to a computer server, where the engineer can correct for peaks or troughs in signal level, and apply noise-reduction where needed to produce an 'improved' playback WAV. The server automatically generates mp3 and Windows Media files for access on the Archival Sound Recordings website. All audio files are stored permanently in the British Library's new Digital Object Management System.

Digitisation is a key step in the process of making the recordings accessible. Documentation for ICA Talks is running in parallel with the digitisation process and this involves listening to the recordings, referring to documentary sources such as ICA event leaflets and online sources of information about those that contributed to the talks. We have identified approximately 5,000 contributors and we will be seeking to contact as many of them as we can to gain their permission to mount the recordings on the ASR service. This illustrates the complexity of the processes to make recordings accessible and most importantly discoverable.

For more information on transferring audio from analogue to digital formats, take a look at IASA's TC04 Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Objects.

Peter Findlay ASR Project Manager