Re: [ARSCLIST] 21st Century Discographies

["tom@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <tom@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: David S Sager <dsag@xxxxxxx>

>...call me old fashioned-
> a discography is a discography, used to identify factors that made up a
> recording session...it should not be a recording itself.

"You're old fashioned."

We are creating at the Arhoolie Foundation a discography of Mexican and
Mexican American 78s that includes: the discographical data, digitizing the
recordings, scanning the 78 labels, carefully listening to each recording
and noting key words so that one can search by subject matter and many other
criteria (sorry, Joel Bresler, "Child Ballad" is not one of our keywords).

The recordings, labels and discography will be accessible at the UCLA
Digital Library (copyright issues are their problem.)

We are also databasing and scanning, lyrics, artists photos, artist bios,
record company histories, record company graphics 78 record sleeves,
catalogs etc. This so far is only accessible at the Arhoolie Foundation.

So, from your computer screen you can view a data record of a 78 rpm
recording, view the discographical information, hear the recording, view the
label, read the lyrics,  read a bio of the artist, view photos of the
artist, read the record label history, view other record company graphics,
and have it pour you a beer (ok...that you have to get yourself.)

We have so far digitized over 14,000 individual recordings (about 7,000
78s). We are just at the beginning of the databases of lyrics, photo
archive, artist bios and record company information, but we are moving
forward on all of it.

This is part of a larger project that includes 14,000 78s, 16,000 45s, and
numerous lps and cassettes over 105,635 individual recordings cataloged so
far. Once we have competed with our 78s we will adding the discographical
data from other sources and asking for help to fill in the holes.

With computers getting faster, and memory cheaper, it all fits on my laptop
computer.  You can either see it as taking all the fun out of collecting,
(and I do like just reading long printed discographical lists and holding
78s in my hand) or as an amazing resource and new way to study music.

It's a start.

Tom Diamant
Arhoolie Foundation
10341 San Pablo Ave.
El Cerrito, CA 94530
USA

510-525-7471
fax: 510-525-1204
email: tom@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.arhoolie.org