New phonograph: let’s listen to the sound of history

The main objective of this project is to develop, test and introduce suitable procedures which would solve the complex issue of the long-term protection and availability of sound recordings stored on historical music media.
The solution to this problem will be demonstrated on two types of historical music media and, at the same time, the earliest recording media – phonograph cylinders (approx. 1895-1920) and standard (shellac) records (approx. 1900-1946) with a 25 cm diameter. Sound recordings stored on this media are usually of a high historical and cultural value, and the original reproduction equipment is almost inaccessible.
It is necessary to define the form of a unique identifier of the content of sound recordings and to determine its standardised recording method. Further, a national discographic database will have to be created, and methods of its utilisation defined and tested with the production of vinyl record-producing companies with a Czech repertoire. This means providing a secondary information channel for the verification and finding of information within the process of identification and subsequent registering of recordings in sound collections of various memory institutions.
A related important task will be to elaborate a set of recommendations and to develop suitable tools and methods for the process of efficient cataloguing. This requires a metadata description of sound recording contents to be designed, primarily for phono-cylinders and shellac records. The specifics of historical sound media and registering (cataloguing) needs of memory institutions of various types and functions will have to be taken into account. With respect to the target availability, it will be necessary to cooperate on the completion of the existing librarian standard (at least for the Czech union catalogue of the Czech Republic according to RDA rules, for the MARC21 format), and to participate in its further development towards its universal usability. These methods and tools must be verified in the processing of relevant collections in the Czech Museum of Music of the National Museum, or in partner institutions.
The project objective in an international context is to create methods and standards in a way ensuring that they correspond to international standards (such as IASA TC-05) and time-tested methods and are applicable by memory institutions on a national level, and that the software tools developed are freely distributable and connected to platform already used in our country (for example ProArc and Kramerius). Digitalisation devices created within the project will be available also to other institutions.

Project name: New phonograph: let’s listen to the sound of history. Creating methods and tools for registering, digitalisation, opening up and long-term protection of sound recordings on historical sound media in memory institutions
Code: DG18PO2OVVO32
Duration: 2018–2022
Agency: NAKI II. (Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic)
Project type: consortial (NM as the principal investigator)
NM’s investigator: Filip Šír, DiS.
Other participants: National Library of the Czech Republic (prom. fil. Zuzana Petrášková), Library of the CAS (Ing. Martin Lhoták), Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts (PhDr. Martin Krčál)

Anticipated results/outputs:
The main outputs of the project should be specialised software – a module for phonographic cylinders in the ProArc system, a sound player module in the Kramerius digital library, and a national discographic database.
Further, basic methodological documents for the protection of historical sound media, the digitalisation of record labels, and the digitalisation of phonographic cylinders shall be elaborated.
Secondary results will be specialised workshops, peer reviewed articles and two monographs.