Re: [ARSCLIST] Sound Archivists

[Archive Project <archive@xxxxxxxxxx>]

 "what do you do when the grant money is gone?"
 

 We're facing this here at the Naropa University Audio Archive.  While
we were tremendously successful at obtaining initial program grants -
NEA, NEH, Save America's Treasures - the University infrastructure will
not support continual grantwriting and fundraising for the matches.
We're looking for ways to become sustainable.  

There are two separate areas to address, and if anyone has experience to
share, please do. 

First, the processing (digitization, cataloging, uploading for online
access of audio files) of the collection needs to continue after the
grant period. While labor intensive and expensive, this phase will be
complete at some point and will not be a long term sustainability issue
- estimating a 5 year timetable to process the entire collection if
funding continues.

Second, we're in discussion now about what an ongoing digital audio
archive is/can be, and the decisions will drive our sustainability
strategy.  It's falling to our project to handle the preservation,
cataloging, collection promotion, creation of exhibits and derivative
content ........ our library is not currently staffed to manage the
collection and its development, promotion, etc.; our fundraising
department has more pressing priorities; our pr/marketing department is
not staffed to develop and promote to an audience. 

We're floating ideas around like: premium subscription service, academic
textbook creation from the archive contents, cd/dvd content creation for
sale.....but our primary goal is to preserve and make available this
material for scholars.  And yet,  we'll have to bring in enough money to
keep ourselves in jobs....

Any thoughts?

Sue Salinger
Naropa University Audio Archive
salinger@xxxxxxxxxx
303-546-3573

to hear a selection of digitized material, go to  www.archive.org, click
through "audio" to "naropa".