The Discography Committee of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) has launched a collaborative project to create an online International Bibliography of Discographies. Guided by our motto - connect, collect and collaborate – one of our primary goals is to connect members of institutions with private collectors in the shared work of discography. We will use this network to collect information about all current and out-of-print discographies published worldwide.
Collaboration is key in building the Bibliography, and in order to be successful, we seek to create a network of partners who share our goals for such a resource. These will include representatives from peer associations, memory institutions, and individual collectors and discographers. We absolutely need the expertise of others who have studied and worked closely with the recorded output of specific labels, genres, artists, regions or countries.
Our plan is to publish the Bibliography online via the IASA website and make it freely available to everyone. Once complete, it will include information about all current and out-of-print discographies published worldwide in print and electronic formats, including unpublished work in progress. We also plan to create a stored archive of full digital (pdf) versions of discographies, including those which have thus far only been available in print. These digital versions will be linked to their corresponding entries in the Bibliography.
We begin with a bibliography in order to accomplish the first truly international survey of discographic work done to date. But we also envision this work as the first phase of a long-range plan to create a collaborative international online discography of sound recordings.
Workshop:
To start off we’ll provide an overview of definitions and formats, and offer some historical context for discography. We’ll then cover the advantages our network offers to private collectors and public institutions, the role of “ambassadors,” and the ways organizations and individuals are already supporting the project.
Next we’ll introduce our Google form, showing participants how this tool will be used to gather bibliographic data on discographies – including author, title, publisher, date/place of publication, format, language, and type of discography. We’ll provide examples of entries that have already been submitted, and offer a preview of the Bibliography.
We’ll also discuss two future phases of the project - linking full digital versions of discographies to the Bibliography, and conversion of legacy discographic data for a worldwide discographic database. We’ll show participants how to use a link on the IASA website to submit digital versions for the Bibliography, and we’ll also provide examples of electronic conversion of discographies (spreadsheets, PDFs) into data for a database.
We’ll talk about how you can connect to our project, what you can do to assist with collecting information about discographies, and why it is important to collaborate on this international project. We need you... you might be the right contact for your country.
Please join us!