Two years ago, the Library of Congress’ National Recording Preservation Board founded the Radio Preservation Task Force. Initially a collection of about 100 radio history scholars and archivists, the RPTF now counts more than 150 members and 300 member-archives.
In 2015 the Task Force conducted a multi-phase survey of existing radio recording archives and identified caches heretofore lost to history, particularly as they related to noncommercial and educational broadcast stations. Enriched by this metadata, where do we go from here? Continue reading “Radio Preservation Task Force Convenes in D.C.”
Tag: library of congress
Professional Miscellany
It’s been a busy academic year, and we’re only two months in! Here are some things going on in my professional life that might be of interest to you:
Radio’s Digital Dilemma will be released in paperback next year, somewhere in the January/February timeframe. This came as a pleasant surprise, and signifies that Routledge thinks there’s a larger readership beyond the few hundred that can afford the exorbitantly-priced hardcover.
RDD will be available via Routledge Paperbacks Direct, a publish-on-demand system which absolves the need for bulk print-runs. Continue reading “Professional Miscellany”
Next Steps for Radio Preservation Task Force
Just received a comprehensive update on the work of the Radio Preservation Task Force, an initiative announced last year by the Library of Congress to digitally preserve local radio history. About 100 scholars spent last fall scouring libraries, museums, historical societies, and stations around the country looking for recordings large and small. More than 100,000 were discovered, and that impressed the LoC’s National Recording Preservation Board enough to move on to “phase two,” which (in part) will involve more detailed examination of our finds.
The Task Force is also lining up some specific preservation programs in conjunction with other media preservationists. Continue reading “Next Steps for Radio Preservation Task Force”
Library of Congress Launches Local Radio Preservation Project
I mentioned this initiative a few months ago when I first heard about it, but the details have only recently been released. Can you help us assemble a national archive of local radio broadcasts?
The official name of this project is the Radio Preservation Task Force, being conducted under the auspices of the LoC’s National Recording Preservation Board. For many years, the NRPB has pursued various study-strategies to get a sense of just how much of our nation’s broadcast history has actually been preserved.
Turns out, it’s not much: sure, you can easily find and watch pretty much any of the “Big Three” national TV newscasts of the last 40+ years, but radio has no such archive, and local radio is especially unremembered. The Radio Preservation Task Force hopes to change that, with special focus on radio broadcasts from 1922-1980, and especially those from the noncommercial, educational side of the medium. Continue reading “Library of Congress Launches Local Radio Preservation Project”
Library of Congress to Expand Radio Archives
I was recently invited to join a new national project devoted to archiving local radio history. It’s tentatively called the Radio Preservation Task Force, and it’s working under the purview of the Library of Congress’ National Recording Preservation Board (NPRB), in conjunction with the National Archives and several major broadcast museums.
The task force’s primary goal is "to develop strategies and tools to collect and preserve historical broadcast content"—more specifically, content from "public, educational, local, and regional radio" stations and organizations. In simple terms, ample archives exist of national radio and television broadcasts, particularly at the network level and on the commercial side of the dial. But there’s been no coherent preservation strategy beyond this, and that needs to be rectified. Continue reading “Library of Congress to Expand Radio Archives”
Fair Use (Partially) Trumps DMCA
Good news on the intellectual property front this week.
First, the Library of Congress conducted its triennial review of intellectual property law and its effect on the sincere sharing of information. This week, the LoC announced some new exemptions in several areas that bode well for fair use. They fall into four basic categories: Continue reading “Fair Use (Partially) Trumps DMCA”