Preserving Jewish Music
This session featured four speakers from two institutes: Maxine Schackman & Nathan Tinanoff of the Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University and Lewis Glinert & Alex Hartov of the Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive
I found this session to be partly uplifting and partly frustrating.
The uplifting part is that these two institutes are doing tremendous work by rescuing Jewish recordings in many formats (78s, 45s, radio transcripts, etc.), transferring them to digital formats, and are working to make them accessible to researchers. Other people attending the session mentioned similar projects that they are working on or had seen.
This is all wonderful! But … with Elhanan's words from an earlier session echoing in my head, all I could think of what "how can these projects be coordinated?" It seems that some of the work is being duplicated (perhaps to the neglect of other unique items), and there is no overall list of digital sound archives. I also hope that one of Darmouth librarians will help out Lewis and Alex so that they don't have to re-invent all the wheels that librarians have already developed!
Maxine finished by playing hauntingly beautiful sound clips from their 78 collection. It was inspiring to hear some of the greatest cantors from a hundred years ago, singing to us again.
www.fau.edu/jsa
www.dartmouth.edu/~djsa/
I found this session to be partly uplifting and partly frustrating.
The uplifting part is that these two institutes are doing tremendous work by rescuing Jewish recordings in many formats (78s, 45s, radio transcripts, etc.), transferring them to digital formats, and are working to make them accessible to researchers. Other people attending the session mentioned similar projects that they are working on or had seen.
This is all wonderful! But … with Elhanan's words from an earlier session echoing in my head, all I could think of what "how can these projects be coordinated?" It seems that some of the work is being duplicated (perhaps to the neglect of other unique items), and there is no overall list of digital sound archives. I also hope that one of Darmouth librarians will help out Lewis and Alex so that they don't have to re-invent all the wheels that librarians have already developed!
Maxine finished by playing hauntingly beautiful sound clips from their 78 collection. It was inspiring to hear some of the greatest cantors from a hundred years ago, singing to us again.
www.fau.edu/jsa
www.dartmouth.edu/~djsa/
2 Comments:
I’m sorry that Sheryl felt frustrated after hearing my presentation about the Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University Libraries on Tuesday at the AJL Convention. Sheryl, I have good news for you! The JSA at FAU libraries is working very hard to create collaborative relationships with a number of other collections.
We have already created “The Alliance of Judaica Sound Archives” along with the Freedman Jewish Archive at the University of Pennsylvania and the Feher Jewish Music Center (at the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv) for the purpose of fostering collaborative projects.
Since you were at the presentation you already know that the JSA has been active in this field only since 2002. Our initial focus was on finding the recordings and the rescue of an endangered cultural legacy. Success with this initial goal brought us to our next goal, which was to establish a reputation and to become known to scholars and other Judaica Sound Archives. We have worked hard to “spread the word” about the work that we are doing and about our commitment to make as much of this music heritage available to as many people as possible (within the laws of copyright).
Now you have discovered the logical next step -- to work with others in the field to create a coordinated sound resource. Even though it is only a baby-step, we are very proud of our relationship with the University of Pennsylvania. Soon their catalogue information will be available through our website and their website will link to our music.
Thank you for your interest in our work and for imagining a future of collaboration and cooperation in the field. We hope your ideas become reality, but for now, as I said at the convention, “There is so much more to do.”
For further information please visit our website at www.fau.edu/jsa.
By Maxine Schackman, at 9:55 AM
We have initiated the process by which we will continue to link to the Freedman Jewish Archive as we make our albums available online.
See:
http://faujsa.fau.edu/belarsky/belarsky_playlist.php?jsa_num=400696&queryWhere=jsa_num&queryValue=400696
for an example.
Bob Vollmer
Webmaster, Judaica Sound Archives
at FAU Libraries
By Anonymous, at 9:18 PM
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