Re: [ARSCLIST] 21st Century Discographies

[Steven Smolian <smolians@xxxxxxxxx>]

It's clear the world divides into people on the outside and those who are
institutionalized, living by different sets of copyright guidelines.

Steve Smolian

----- Original Message -----
From: "tom@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <tom@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] 21st Century Discographies


> > 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