Hearing is Believing

1
Hearing is Believing Enhancing Collection Outre
ach and Access Through Audio -----------------
------ Robert Ray - Special Collections Librari
an Miller Nichols Library University of Missouri
Kansas City rayrc_at_umkc.edu 816-235-5712
2
Department of Special Collections
Audio Digitization Projects and Online Exhibits
Documentary sound and audio are among the most i
mportant resources available for teaching the
experience of the 20th century. Audios intimacy
and immediacy makes it a great resource for
understanding the past and indispensable for the
preservation of historical events from the 1890s
to today. The Miller Nichols Library at UMKC has
developed several digital resources that feature
digitized audio materials.
3
Liturgical Music from the Middle Ages UMKC's
Book of Gregorian Chant. Special Collections ho
lds a book of Gregorian chant from the Middle
Ages. Compiled from several sources and bound
together in a single volume, the manuscript
contains plainchant dating from the 10th to the
16th centuries. It was fashioned in its present
form probably during the 16th century when the
Medieval Latin church switched to the use of
large choirbooks in its liturgy, but the book
also contains original chants written by scribes
centuries earlier.
4
Visit the Jazz Age in Kansas City at the
Kansas City Paris of the Plains Web Exhibit
Kansas City Paris of the P
lains chronicles life in Kansas City during the
Jazz Age, a time when the city was one of the
most dynamic arts centers in America. The exhibit
examines the social, cultural, literary, and
political heritage of Jazz Age Kansas City and
highlights personalities of the era.
5
The Brush Creek Follies Photos, Sound Video fr
om the Arthur B. Church KMBC Radio Collection
For nearly 20 years in Kansas City and across the
Midwest, Saturday nights meant a date with KMBC's
"Brush Creek Follies." Whether in the audience or
in the living room, fans made the weekly
broadcasts an area favorite. For 14 years the
"Brush Creek Follies" held the number-two spot in
the nation among rural music radio programs.
This site was selected by Yahoo! Picks as the
website of the day for July 18, 2003.

6
"Voices of World War II Experiences from the
Front and at Home" A website created to focus on
World War II and how it was experienced in
Kansas City through the popular media - KMBC
radio. The project demonstrates best practices
and standards for digitization of archival sound
materials.
7
Selected Achievements as of August 31, 2002
- 160 Archival Sound Recordings Digitally
Preserved - 242 Metadata/Bibliographic Records wi
th live links created for Digital Objects
- Website features 210 Audio Selections on 120
html pages 1 Video, Silent BW 244 items in Bibl
iography 5,611 hits monthly (April to August 2002
)
8
Musicians Local No. 627 and the Mutual Musicians
Foundation The Cradle of Kansas City Jazz An
Internet Web exhibit on the history of Kansas
Citys Local 627, the African-American Musicians
Union founded in 1917 and now known as the Mutual
Musicians Foundation. The exhibit presents
photographs, sound recordings and other historic
information documenting union functions, social
events and the bands and members of Local 627 who
created the internationally recognized Kansas
City style of jazz.
9
A website devoted to Kansas City jazz history
featuring photographs, music and sound files, and
additional information about the golden age of
Kansas City jazz.
10
Nat "King" Cole The Early Years 1936-1942Bef
ore his international acclaim as a pop vocalist,
Nathaniel Adams Coles built an indelible
reputation as a jazz pianist in the
groundbreaking combo, The King Cole Trio.
11
Excerpts of Presidential Speeches of William H.
Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson
12

• An important aspect of these projects and the
  basis of the sound-recording collections at UMKC
  is the belief that recorded sound / aural history
  is important for the preservation of historical
  events because sound like text and graphics
  elucidates the interpretation of historical
  events from the 1890s to today.
• When sound is integrated with text and images,
  for example, images of a musical score, and the
  composite is made available this can greatly
  enhance learning.
• Perhaps more than any other resource, audio
  materials allow for a nearly unmediated
  engagement with primary sources and a near
  participation in the events, as with a radio
  broadcast or a speech.

13
D-Day 1
14

• These projects enable more than simply improved
  access to primary resources. They enhance the
  educational value and appreciation of original
  materials by bringing related additional
  resources together at a single site.
• Our working theory has been that digital
  resources can be catalysts for increased human
  interaction - a way to engage people and elicit
  responses. Rather than emphasizing ease of
  acquisition, if done properly they instead
  promote increased attention spans and greater
  interaction with materials.
• People surf the Internet it is hard to capture
  their attention and even harder to maintain it.
  We have integrated audio into these web resources
  from the opening page in order to get people to
  enter the site and keep them there afterward.
  Flash - embedded audio.

15
Why Does Sound Matter?

• Sound is the most natural source of information
  for humans.
  
• But sound is so significant for our lives that
  ironically we take it for granted and overlook
  the centrality of audio in everyday use.
  
• The humanness and directness of sound allows a
  more unmediated engagement with primary sources
  and a more direct participation with the events
  of the past. Audios intimacy and immediacy
  makes it a resource for a greater empathetic
  understanding of the past.
• We can loose the video of MLKs I have a dream
  speech, but not the sound of it.

16
Why Does Sound Matter?

• Music and sound are transcultural in a manner
  that is not so for text. Whether white men can
  play the blues may never be resolved in some
  purists' minds, but there is no doubting that the
  representations of history and culture that are
  captured in music can be processed and enjoyed by
  people outside that culture. The rise of world
  music, the merging of cultural styles, and the
  worldwide love of opera by people who cannot
  speak a word of Italian are testimony to the
  emotional response people have to music.
• Dean Andrew DillonSchool of InformationThe
  University of Texas at Austin

17
Two Decades of Development

• In the mid-1980s, a radical shift occurred in
  computing when more computing cycles came to be
  spent on words vs. numbers.
  
• The shift from numbers to words is continuing to
  pictures and now sounds - all are needed to
  exploit the dream of hypermedia.
  
• Audio is the great underutilized resource to the
  realization of this dream.
  
• We have misunderstood the role of sound in
  information use. ALA statistics indicate that
  about as many people use the library to borrow
  CDs as they do to use the Internet.
• Dean Andrew DillonSchool of InformationThe
  University of Texas at Austin

18
What do students, scholars and researchers want
from libraries?

• In 1999, the Council on Library and Information
  Resources, together with task forces appointed by
  the American Council of Learned Societies
  reported that students, scholars and researchers
  want what they have wanted all along the full
  range of resources they need to do their work.
  And this includes audio resources.
• The consensus of the task force on audio
  materials was that the store of audio materials
  available in repositories in the U.S. is, at
  once, indescribably rich and, for various
  reasons, under-utilized by both scholars and the
  general public.
• Audio materials are under-utilized partially
  because the lack of cataloging has made it
  difficult for researchers to know they even
  exist. Yet even when they are known to exist,
  the lack of remote access to audio compared to
  the access enjoyed by text and image necessarily
  contributes to this under-utilization.
• The audio task force, therefore, stressed the
  need to
  
• Catalog audio materials in order to disclose what
  is available, providing at least subject access
  to collections.
  
• More importantly, perhaps, make audio materials
  accessible remotely to promote use - which itself
  will stimulate evaluation and promote still
  greater use.
• Furthermore, remote accessibility to sound alone
  may be insufficient for research and
  instructional purposes. However, when sound is
  integrated with text and images, for example,
  images of a musical score, and the composite is
  made available this can greatly enhance
  learning.

19
Hearing is Believing Enhancing Collection Outre
ach and Access
Through Audio
Department of Special Collections
Audio Digitization Projects and Online Exhibits

• Robert C. Ray, Special Collections Librarian
• rayrc_at_umkc.edu
• 816-235-5712

- Thank You for Your Time and Attention -