Knowledge Crowns Those Who Hear Her: Sound Archives in the 21st Century
Document Type
Video
Date
3-24-2016
Keywords
Sam Brylawski, preservation, conservation, audio archives, Brodsky Series
Language
English
Disciplines
Archival Science | Art and Materials Conservation | Audio Arts and Acoustics | Library and Information Science
Description/Abstract
The 2016 offering of the annual Brodsky Series for the Advancement of Library Conservation welcomed Sam Brylawski, co-director of the American Discography Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The program, titled “Knowledge Crowns Those Who Hear Her: Sound Archives in the 21st Century,” was in two parts; a public lecture and a workshop.
Sound archives in the United States are relatively new memory institutions. In fact, few are older than the Belfer Audio Archive, founded in 1963. The challenges facing all of them today are greater than ever before. In order to serve their constituencies, whether academic or public, managers of these collections are required to methodically acquire and preserve historical recordings before they are lost forever, and at the same time to navigate the relatively uncharted waters of born-digital audio that is never circulated in a physical format. Given these broad responsibilities, how can sound archives be sustained and best serve their constituencies? In fact, who are those constituencies? Brylawski’s talk briefly reviewed the history of U.S. sound archives, and the challenges and opportunities they face today.
Brylawski is the former head of the Library of Congress Recorded Sound Section. He is the co-author of the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Plan (2012), the National Recording Preservation Board study on audio preservation, “The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States: A National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age” (2010) and “The ARSC Guide to Audio Preservation” (2015). He served as chair of the National Recording Preservation Board from 2013 to 2015. Brylawski is editor of UCSB’s Discography of American Historical Recordings.
See more on the Brodsky Series Page at: https://library.syr.edu/scrc/programs/brodsky.php
Recommended Citation
Brylawski, Sam, "Knowledge Crowns Those Who Hear Her: Sound Archives in the 21st Century" (2016). Brodsky Series. 11.
https://surface.syr.edu/pres_brodsky/11
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
