[Dixielandjazz] New addition to the LOC.

Fr M J (Mike) Logsdon mjl at ix.netcom.com
Sun Jul 29 18:31:47 PDT 2007


Makes me KNOW I've missed my calling,
----
Etc,

Fr M J (Mike) Logsdon, Vicar-general
North American Old Roman Catholic Church (Utrecht Succession)
Archdiocese of California
www.naorc.org

"Simplicity, when it is not a careless gift of the Muse, is the last and
most painful achievement of conscientious self-denial." - James Russell
Lowell.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com
> [mailto:dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com]On Behalf Of Bill Haesler
> Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2007 3:37 PM
> To: Rev M J (Mike) Logsdon
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] New addition to the LOC.
>
>
> Dear friends,
> This one from my mate Denis King of the Australian Dance Bands list.
> There is no mention of sheet music.
> So will this new location involve inconvenience and long,
> time-consuming, travelling times for our DJML angel and listmate Audrey
> Van Dyke?
> Kind regards,
> Bill.
>
> A Sound Investment
> Packard Heir Gives Library of Congress Va. Facility for Audio and
> Film Treasures
> by Jacqueline Trescott
> Washington Post, July 27, 2007
>
> CULPEPER, Va. -- On a hillside an hour or so southwest of Capitol
> Hill, the Library of Congress is moving into the newly completed home
> for its mammoth collection of U.S. recording and film history.
>
> There are 6.3 million items in all: footage of Charlie Chaplin's
> tottering gait, paper prints of early movies, the original negatives
> from "Casablanca," the first 45-rpm record (a 1949 RCA Victor disc of
> the music of Johann Strauss II) and kinescope reels of NBC broadcasts
> from the 1940s. There's a fine copy of Elvis Presley's 1964
> movie "Viva Las Vegas," a complete set of Ed Sullivan's variety shows
> and footage of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech on Dec. 7,
> 1941.
>
> The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, which was officially
> turned over to the library yesterday, will bring together all of the
> recordings and conservation staff in a single, specially equipped
> facility for the first time.
>
> The three-building campus is the largest addition to the library in
> 30 years. A $155 million gift from David Woodley Packard (son of the
> co-founder of Hewlett-Packard) and the Packard Humanities Institute
> made it possible. The Packard gift is the largest in the library's
> 207-year history. Congress appropriated $82 million for the project.
>
> "It assures for the first time the permanent storage and preservation
> and heightened access to the audiovisual heritage of the last 110
> years," said James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress.
>
> One crucial mission of the center is to transfer precious historical
> images and sounds from fragile cylinders, tapes or films to digital
> files, which are less apt to deteriorate. The electronic versions
> also can be summoned by researchers at the Library of Congress
> buildings in Washington.
>
> A 208-seat, art deco theater will show the films up to three nights a
> week. It even has an organ to accompany silent movies. While most of
> those visiting the center will be scholars and researchers -- who
> will have access beginning in September -- there is an audio-
> listening studio that will be used for exhibits, demonstrations and
> other public programs.
>
> The addition sits on 45 acres and contains 415,000 square feet, about
> eight times the size of the White House. The inventory: 3 million
> sound recordings, 2.1 million supporting documents (such as
> screenplays and posters) and 1.2 million moving images.
>
> It has 124 specially designed vaults for nitrate films, the highly
> flammable medium used from 1889 to 1951 for almost all movies. Some
> of the vaults are kept at 25 degrees. There are other specialized
> nooks and crannies; one electronic hub required 27,000 cables.
>
> One workroom houses a blue robot named SAMMA (System for the
> Automated Migration of Media Assets) that can load and digitize
> videocassettes 24 hours a day. The digital copies will last for
> decades and are more convenient for researchers and the public. In
> time it will make electronic copies of 500,000 video and television
> segments. In the film laboratory, employees will repair reels of film
> by hand before the movies can be transferred to new film. Not far
> away is a sound studio fitted with a special vibration-free
> transcription turntable. Only 20 exist in the world; the library has
> 13.
>
> David Woodley Packard, chairman of the Packard Humanities Institute,
> purchased the property from the Federal Reserve System in 1998.
>
> Conservation is part of the foundation's mission. It helped save the
> papers of Benjamin Franklin and also helped preserve many original
> Latin and Greek texts and put them online.
>
> The Library of Congress project is the largest in the foundation's
> history. "The reason we spent so much money is that it required a lot
> of money. There wasn't any way to do it unless we were willing to
> make a large commitment," Packard said. He said he hoped there would
> eventually be broader access to the collection, particularly for
> people outside Washington.
>
> At a ceremony last night at the library's main building, the Culpeper
> property was transferred from Packard and his architecture and
> construction team to the office of the architect of the Capitol,
> which oversees the Library of Congress.
>
> The nerve center of the campus is the collections building, a 135,000-
> square-foot facility that once housed the Federal Reserve Bank. The
> structure was completely gutted and refitted. There is also a
> conservation building and a separate building containing the storage
> vaults.
>
> "These storage facilities are better than the library has ever had in
> the past and better than some standards for preservation recommend,"
> said Gregory Lukow, the center's chief, standing in the three-story
> atrium.
>
> The public will have access to the facility and materials. Programs
> will begin at the theater next winter, and the stored recordings also
> will be accessible electronically to researchers in the reading rooms
> on the Hill. When a researcher asks for a film or recording that
> hasn't been digitized, that work moves to the top of the list and a
> digital version should be available in two days. Already-digitized
> items will be available immediately.
>
> The staff is happy to have everything in one location. For years,
> materials were divided among centers on Capitol Hill and in Landover;
> Jessup; Dayton, Ohio; Boyers, Pa.; and nearby Elkwood.
>
> Several new technologies have been developed for the center. The
> Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed IRENE (Image,
> Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), a machine that reconstructs damaged
> or broken recordings and clears out the noise created by dust or
> deterioration. It means that old 78-rpm records that had cracked when
> dropped can be heard again, digitally.
>
> The library must contend with many now-obsolete formats ranging from
> 1889 wax cylinders to eight-track tape from 1964. The oldest moving
> image in the collection is a five-second kinetoscope movie of a
> sneeze, made by Thomas Edison in 1894. (The kinetoscope was a
> forerunner of the modern film projector.) The oldest sounds are on
> two wax cylinders produced by Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner
> Tainter in 1889.
>
> Much of the collection is in analog formats, such as grooved records
> or electromagnetic tape. "That is becoming obsolete," said
> Lukow. "For film especially, it is not a matter of how we are keeping
> it but how it was developed 100 years ago, how it was stored 100
> years ago. It is a ticking time bomb."
>
> On the third floor are a sound lab, a videotape lab and a film lab,
> which are located behind a firewall because the materials handled are
> fire hazards. The staff has work stations that can be used for
> viewing the digital or pre-digital materials. There is also storage
> for spare parts, because the library staff doesn't know when it will
> have to use one of its old machines.
>
> Film can present challenges because of the large image resolution and
> the space it takes up. In one room, there is an Imax movie propped
> against a counter, waiting for a spacious nook.
>
> Some images don't have to be digitized. There are shelves of video
> games -- Reader Rabbit, the Sims, Myst -- being inventoried and
> prepared for storage.
>
> The library receives 120,000 gifts of film and sound a year. Mitch
> Miller just sent 200 boxes of 16mm copies of his TV program from the
> 1960s. Collector and former recording engineer David Hummel donated
> recordings of 12,000 musical theater moments, including a rehearsal
> by Judy Garland in 1968.
>
> Eventually, the library will make electronic copies of those items
> and, because the library's holdings are so precious, copies of the
> copies will be kept elsewhere in Virginia.
>
> The librarians won't say where.
>
> --- End forwarded message ---
>
>
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