Creating an ongoing resource through digitisation

Abstract

The Music Archive in the School of Music-Conservatorium at Monash University contains a diverse array of original and often unique sound, visual and bibliographic materials. A large percentage of the sound component represents decades of ethnomusicological field research and comprises reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, a growing number of which are slowly decaying. Some of our sound collections, which include cylinder recordings and 78 rpm records, have also been acquired as donations from a variety of organisations and interested members of the public. Preservation of such a valuable and extensive resource is therefore a top priority. Accordingly, we have successfully completed two digitisation projects (both ARC funded), and are currently undertaking a third in collaboration with Monash University’s ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World) team. In fact, collaboration has been a key factor in all three projects because it has facilitated the resolution of a number of issues associated with each particular stage – preparation, process and product – of digitisation. Some of those issues will be discussed in this paper and include observations about the criteria used to determine choice of material for digitisation; the manner of transporting the original media to and from a digitising service provider given the invaluable nature of the material; the metadata elements to describe the digitised sound files; storage of the digitised sound files and whether said storage is for preservation only with very limited access, or for wider public access; and the question of copyright and its impact on access. Our aim is eventually to digitise all analogue sound material in our Archive in order to ensure that music recorded during the last century, music that reflects socio-cultural traditions in different regions and time spans, will remain an ongoing and accessible resource for future scholarly research.