At the 2015 meeting of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives in Paris, the IASA Discography Committee first discussed the idea of bringing institutions and collectors together in a collaborative project to build an online International Bibliography of Discographies.
Realizing that memory institutions and private collectors are both passionate about their collections but don’t always share the same goals, we saw connecting these two groups as the essential first step in an ambitious project of this scale. We reached out for cooperation from related associations all around the world, and “connect, collect and collaborate” became the goal of the committee and our project.
Our plan is to publish the Bibliography on the IASA website and make it available to everyone. Once complete, the bibliography will include information about all current and out-of-print discographies published worldwide in print and electronic formats, including unpublished work in progress. We begin with the 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 projected, long-range plan to create a collaborative international online discography of sound recordings.