Digital Audio Projects and Collections

The Axe-Houghton Multimedia Archive at Poets House - This collection includes recordings of live poetry events spanning half a century from a range of literary venues, and includes audio recordings from over twelve years of programming at Poets House. A project is currently underway to digitize the collection.

The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Audio Archive - The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI) was founded by Robert Maynard Hutchins and was based in Santa Barbara, California, from 1959 to 1987. During that time it brought together many of the most capable and distinguished minds of the times to discuss vital issues facing American society of the day. The goal of this project is to digitize and make accessible on the web some of the most important conference proceedings, talks, and dialogues recorded by CSDI.

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project - The Department of Special Collections at the Davidon Library, UC Santa Barbara, has over 5000 digitized versions of cylinder recordings from the early 20th Century.

MSU Vincent Voice Library - The G. Robert Vincent Voice Library is the largest academic voice library in the nation. It houses taped utterances (speeches, performances, lectures, interviews, broadcasts, etc.) by over 50,000 persons from all walks of life recorded over 100 years.

Naropa University Audio Archive Project - The mission of the Naropa Audio Archive Reformatting and Access Project is to enhance appreciation and understanding of post-World-War-Two American literature and its role in social change and cultural criticism, by digitizing, cataloging and greatly improving access to their unique audio collection.

National Gallery of the Spoken Word (NGSW) and HistoricalVoices.org - NGSW is an ongoing five year research project spearheaded by the National Science Foundation. The NGSW is creating an online fully-searchable digital library of spoken word collections spanning the 20th century at HistoricalVoices.org. NGSW provides storage for these digital holdings and public exhibit "space" for the most evocative collections. From Thomas Edison's first cylinder recordings and the voices of Babe Ruth and Florence Nightingale to Studs Terkel's timeless interviews and the oral arguments of the US Supreme Court, the collections of the NGSW digital library cover a variety of interests and topics.

OYEZ - This project provides access to more than 2000 hours of Supreme Court audio, including all audio in the Court recorded since 1995.

Recorded Sound Reference Center (Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress) - The Recorded Sound Reference Center provides access to the commercial and archival audio holdings of the Library of Congress. The collection dates from 1926 when Victor Records donated over 400 discs to the Library's Music Division to supplement its print and manuscript holdings. In the custody of the Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division since 1978, the collection has grown to include over 2 million items encompassing audio formats from cylinders to CDs. The holdings complement the field recordings of the American Folklife Center and the moving image collections served in the Motion Picture and Television Reading Room.

Sound Directions - Sound archives have reached a critical point in their history marked by the simultaneous rapid deterioration of unique original materials, the development of expensive and powerful new digital technologies, and the consequent decline of analog formats and media. The Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music (ATM) and the Archive of World Music (AWM) at Harvard University have received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to undertake a joint technical archiving project-a collaborative research and development initiative with tangible end results-that will create best practices and test emerging standards for digital preservation of archival audio.

The Starr-Gannett Foundation Inc. - The Starr-Gennett Foundation is dedicated to preserving and promoting the legacy of Gennett Records and its parent organization, the Starr Piano Company. The Foundation is working to save this important legacy and foster worldwide appreciation for this remarkable piece of American popular music history.

Variations 2 - The Variations2 project aims to establish a digital music library testbed system containing music in a variety of formats, involving research and development in the areas of system architecture, metadata standards, component-based application architecture, and network services. This system will be used as a foundation for digital library research in the areas of instruction, usability, human-computer interaction, and intellectual property rights.

WNYC, Preservation and Archive Unit - This collection houses more than 50,000 recordings in a variety of formats, from early lacquer and acetate discs, to reel-to-reel tapes, to digital audio tapes and compact discs, relating to WNYC, New York Public Radio.