The musical performances of
Joshua Bell and Menachem Pressler …
INDIANA UNIVERSITY BLOOMINGTON
Audio interviews with Alfred Hitchcock
and Orson Welles …
Lectures by Mikhail Gorbachev,
the Dalai Lama, and Bill Gates …
I
ndiana University Bloomington is home to at least 3 million sound and
moving image recordings, photos, documents, and artifacts. Well over half a million of these special holdings are part of audio, video, and film collections, and a
large number of them are one of a kind.
These invaluable cultural and historical gems, and many more, may soon be lost.
Forever.
A comprehensive, detailed survey conducted in 2009 revealed that nearly all of
IU Bloomington’s audio and video media recordings are suffering the fate of similar
media everywhere—most are deteriorating rapidly, many of them catastrophically,
and nearly all of them are carried on formats that are now obsolete. For example,
In the Archives of Traditional Music, rare collections of wax cylinders,
including Native American music recorded by renowned photographer
Edward S. Curtis from 1907 to 1913, are affected by serious chemical deterioration.
Open reel tapes in the Lilly Library collection, among others, are beset by
fungus, acetate degradation resulting in curling, and other damage. These
tapes include interviews with Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, John Ford,
Alfred Hitchcock, Judy Garland, James Dean, and many others.
Media
Preservation
Survey
Download the Media Preservation survey at
http://research.iub.edu/communications/
media_preservation/
“The careful and thorough
design and scope of the IU
[media preservation] study
might serve as a model for
other institutions. …The
need for audio preservation is often articulated, but
without surveys such as the
one undertaken in Bloomington, the exact scope of the
challenge will remain vague,
efforts to address it will be
scattered and uncoordinated,
and important targets will be
missed.”
— The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States, Council on
Library and Information Resources for The
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
IMAGE ON COVER: Ethnomusicologist Laura Boulton makes a wax cylinder recording of an Umbundu
musician playing an olumbendo, a royal flute, in Dondi, Angola, 1931 (image from the Archives of Traditional Music, Laura Boulton collection).
The Lilly Library collection also contains hundreds of recordings of Orson
Welles radio shows on lacquer discs, which are chemically unstable and
experiencing severe degradation.
Our history
is at risk
Indiana University Bloomington
Media Preservation Initiative
The Music Library holds audio and videotapes containing numerous
premieres and performances, including a 1985 performance by violinist
Joshua Bell to earn his IU Artist Diploma. These tapes are unstable, and
the machines on which they can be played are no longer manufactured.
Copyright © 2011 The Trustees of Indiana University
IU Bloomington’s vast audio, video,
and film holdings are not only of wide
cultural interest, but also have extremely
high value as primary sources for scholarly research in fields such as anthropology, history, and music. IU Bloomington
film holdings are among the largest and
most diverse at any American university.
But these irreplaceable parts of our
cultural and intellectual heritage will
certainly be lost without preservation.
Now.
While IU librarians and archivists are
working diligently to save the campus’s
holdings, the volume of endangered
materials and the speed of their degradation make the task monumental. For
example, Music Library staff calculate
that it would take 120 years for the staff’s
sole audio engineer to complete digitizing the library’s holdings of more than
195,500 recordings.
Most experts believe there is a short
15 to 20 year window of opportunity to
preserve audio and video media through
digitization. After that, the combination of degradation and obsolescence,
multiplied by the large numbers of holdings, will make digitization impossible.
We have even less time to save some
formats, such as the lacquer discs that
hold Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre
radio shows.
IU Bloomington has the expertise
and experience to carry out first-rate
media preservation. Faculty and staff
on the Bloomington campus possess
the needed vision, skills, and talents.
The university’s information technology
organization can provide state-of-the-art
resources and infrastructure.
No other university in the United
States is organizing their media preservation efforts at the scale and level
that Indiana University Bloomington is
undertaking.
No single campus unit, however,
exists to handle the volume of media
preservation required within the window
of time available. The IU Bloomington
campus needs to establish a home for
media preservation and digitization that
can serve as a crucial resource regionally
and nationally.
The creation of a center for media
preservation efforts will enable the priceless collections at IU Bloomington to be
saved according to international standards and best practices.
IMAGES AT LEFT: [clockwise from top] A 1941 lacquer disc recording held by the Lilly Library (photo by Mark
Hood); His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama on a visit to IU Bloomington (photo courtesy IU); label from box of
open reel tapes in the Lilly Library (photo by Patrick Feaster); IU Bloomington alumnus Joshua Bell in concert
(photo courtesy IU).
IMAGES AT RIGHT: [clockwise from top] Color 16mm film of a parade in Evansville, Ind., in the 1950s (photo by
Alan Burdette); audio engineer Mark Hood reflected in a lacquer disc from the Harold Courlander recordings of
tales and songs in Haitian Creole made in 1940. Despite being stored in climate-controlled conditions, the disc
is unplayable due to delamination damage (photo by Alan Burdette). Tapes stored in a file cabinet at an IU
Bloomington department (photo by Patrick Feaster).
Such a center would provide
Audio preservation transfer
Video preservation transfer
Film conservation and digitization
Digital files
Secure file storage
Training for students
IU Bloomington is poised to create a
solution for the survival of its invaluable
audio, video, and film media. A center
for media preservation will not only save
the incomparable collections at Indiana
University for generations to come,
but also will serve as a model for other
institutions who face similar challenges
in preserving our shared history.
“Even though [IU Bloomington's] needs are now
documented, and it is far better equipped than most
universities in the country to meet them, there is no
guarantee that IU can adequately preserve its collections in the near future.”
— The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States,
Council on Library and Information Resources for The Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C.