[Dixielandjazz] Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Plan #2

[Robert Ringwald]

Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Plan

Library of Congress Has Plan for Saving Recordings
by Brett Zongker
Associated Press, February 13, 2013
WASHINGTON -- The Library of Congress unveiled an extensive plan Wednesday to help
libraries and archives nationwide preserve recorded sound to guard against losing
historic recordings as has happened with those by George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra
and Judy Garland.
About 14,000 public and private institutions hold sound recordings, according to
one survey. The plan carries 32 recommendations as a blueprint to coordinate their
efforts and enlist commercial recording studios and private copyright holders in
preservation efforts. Congress called for a plan in a 2000 law on preserving audio
recordings.
The Library of Congress already saves some key historic recordings each year, but
researchers say many others are being lost due to a lack of storage capacity, changing
technology, inadequate funding and disparate copyright laws.
"As a nation, we have good reason to be proud of our record of creativity in the
sound-recording arts and sciences," said Librarian of Congress James Billington in
announcing the effort. "However, our collective energy in creating and consuming
sound recordings has not been matched by an equal level of interest in preserving
them for posterity."
Researchers say more than half of the oldest recordings have already been lost including
some by Gershwin, Sinatra and Garland.
Patrick Loughney, chief of the library's Packard Campus for Audio-Video Conservation
in Culpeper, Va., said the nation has developed a "cultural amnesia," forgetting
how much of its history was captured in recorded sound. The library estimates 46
million sound recordings are held by institutions, but a very small percentage have
been preserved.
"Digital technologies, which are wonderful with YouTube and the easy access formats,
do create the impression that everything is on the Internet now or soon will be,"
Loughney said. "In fact, there are vast areas of America's recorded sound history
that aren't available."
The library plan calls for the creation of a national directory of all sound collections;
a national collections policy to preserve recordings, radio broadcasts and neglected
audio formats; and the creation of new university degree programs in audio preservation.
The library also is calling on Congress to extend federal copyright law to cover
audio recordings created before 1972 to establish a more uniform system. Those recordings
currently fall under laws of various states and common law, creating a burden in
tracking ownership of a recording. That often blocks efforts to make recordings more
widely available to researchers, said Patrick Loughney.
The acoustical era from the late 1800s to about 1926, for example, includes important
early recordings of jazz, vaudeville and burlesque that haven't been preserved or
made publicly available, Loughney said. Much has already been lost.
The Library of Congress partnered with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
at the University of California, Berkeley, to develop new technology over the past
decade to create high-resolution digital scans of the earliest wax cylinder recordings.
In late 2011, scientists and curators played back some of Alexander Graham Bell's
earliest sound recording experiments for the first time, using the new technology.
To raise public and private funds, the library has created the nonprofit National
Recording Preservation Foundation that will eventually award grants to small- and
medium-size archives that need funding for audio preservation work. The foundation
is setting up its operation this year and is beginning to raise money.
"America's recorded sound history is incredibly rich," Loughney said. "There's just
a lot of material that's sitting in archives that is slowly deteriorating, and unless
an effective national approach is taken to saving these materials, it's going to
be a tremendous loss."
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-Bob Ringwald
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