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I haven't read all this - just found it. Thought y'all might be interested.
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub148/pub148.pdf
Recorded Sound Preservation (181 pages +/-)
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dennis
- Victor I
- Posts: 137
- Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2009 5:51 pm
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Starkton
- Victor IV
- Posts: 1063
- Joined: Thu Jan 08, 2009 7:00 am
Re: Recorded Sound Preservation (181 pages +/-)
The report clearly shows the all important position of private collectors. Without them many records were lost or, till this date, not found worthy of collecting. As this is mainly a machine board I asked myself what percentage of types of talking machines ever manufactured from 1877 is safely stored in public collections? 1% or less?!
I collected a few passages from the report:
Public institutions were not the first to recognize the importance of collecting sound recordings, and, as a study conducted by CLIR reports, “There is no reason to conclude that libraries hold most of the nation’s preservation-worthy audio collections.” Record collectors—originally hobbyists—recognized the cultural value of commercially issued sound recordings and began to build personal collections many years before public institutions committed resources to collecting and preserving them.
Today, some of the most significant, as well as rarest, commercially issued sound recordings remain in private hands, and public institutions acquire many of their most important commercial recordings as gifts or purchases from private collectors. In fact, some of the largest and most specialized recorded sound collections held by institutions and archives could be described as “collections of collections”; that is, large collections had their origins as small collections accumulated by private individuals.
Cylinder recordings are one example of what private collectors have helped save. Production and sales of cylinder recordings—once the dominant commercial recording medium—were in steep decline before any U.S. institution began collecting them. An informative overview of commercial cylinder production was submitted to the NRPB in support of this study by board member, collector, and independent researcher Bill Klinger.
Klinger estimates that U.S. companies published more than 47,000 individual titles before Edison ceased manufacturing commercial cylinder recordings in 1929, that no copies exist of 52 percent of these titles, and that only 17 percent of titles published on wax cylinders before 1902 survive today. It is only because of the diligence of private collectors devoted to the medium that 48 percent of pre-1929 titles are extant.
Aside from the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, the three institutions that hold the largest cylinder collections in the United States are the Library of Congress, Syracuse University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). All were acquired from private collectors.
Many collectors are in effect private curators, approaching collection development and custodianship with highly focused interests. Some of these independent scholars have published articles and books and have edited reissue recordings that represent their collections or fields of expertise. Many have built their collections within a narrowly defined universe, often achieving completeness within a genre or an artist’s oeuvre
I collected a few passages from the report:
Public institutions were not the first to recognize the importance of collecting sound recordings, and, as a study conducted by CLIR reports, “There is no reason to conclude that libraries hold most of the nation’s preservation-worthy audio collections.” Record collectors—originally hobbyists—recognized the cultural value of commercially issued sound recordings and began to build personal collections many years before public institutions committed resources to collecting and preserving them.
Today, some of the most significant, as well as rarest, commercially issued sound recordings remain in private hands, and public institutions acquire many of their most important commercial recordings as gifts or purchases from private collectors. In fact, some of the largest and most specialized recorded sound collections held by institutions and archives could be described as “collections of collections”; that is, large collections had their origins as small collections accumulated by private individuals.
Cylinder recordings are one example of what private collectors have helped save. Production and sales of cylinder recordings—once the dominant commercial recording medium—were in steep decline before any U.S. institution began collecting them. An informative overview of commercial cylinder production was submitted to the NRPB in support of this study by board member, collector, and independent researcher Bill Klinger.
Klinger estimates that U.S. companies published more than 47,000 individual titles before Edison ceased manufacturing commercial cylinder recordings in 1929, that no copies exist of 52 percent of these titles, and that only 17 percent of titles published on wax cylinders before 1902 survive today. It is only because of the diligence of private collectors devoted to the medium that 48 percent of pre-1929 titles are extant.
Aside from the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, the three institutions that hold the largest cylinder collections in the United States are the Library of Congress, Syracuse University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). All were acquired from private collectors.
Many collectors are in effect private curators, approaching collection development and custodianship with highly focused interests. Some of these independent scholars have published articles and books and have edited reissue recordings that represent their collections or fields of expertise. Many have built their collections within a narrowly defined universe, often achieving completeness within a genre or an artist’s oeuvre