Jewish Music Online: Digital Fieldwork

Digital FieldworkFrancesco SpagnoloThe Magnes Collection of Jewish Art & LifeBancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Jewish Music Online
Analog Repositories, Digital Fieldwork
and the Web of Collaborative Tools
Association for Jewish Studies
Boston, Dec. 20 2010

Let’s try to clarify what Digital Fieldwork is NOT… I will use YouTube as an example.
This is what happens in doing “research” on Jewish music in Azerbaijanonline. (Link courtesy of Edwin Seroussi)

But on YouTube I can also find…
…my own wife (and primary sources on the development of new Jewish rituals)

…or a primary source on Jewish-Christians co-territorial repertoires in Piedmont, Italy
Way better than the archival recordings I researched worldwide (despite the grungy video)

YET, DIGITAL FIELDWORK
IS NOT THE SAME AS
RETRIEVING AND VERIFYING THE AUTHENTICITY OF
INFORMATION ONLINE…

Analog sources kept in archival repositories worldwide include
texts (books, articles, etc.) about music
literary sources describing musical practices
musical sources (manuscript & printed music)
audio recordings
video

Digital sources kept in archival repositories worldwide and in the www jungle include:
(Some of) All of the above:
texts (books, articles, etc.) about music
literary sources describing musical practices
musical sources (manuscript & printed music)
audio recordings and video
+
Catalogs: libraries, archives, music publishers
+
Social media content
(Some of all of the above, but not only from institutional sources: also scholars, practitioners, culture bearers, performers, educators, collectors, listeners, fans…)

Institutional Content:
The Digitized Book Repository of The National Library of Israel (Music Section)
Formerly known as Jewish National and University Library (JNUL): http://jnul.huji.ac.il

JNUL Digitized Book Repository – Music: A. Z. Idelsohn Vol. 6 (DjVu format)

Institutional Content: The National Library of Israel: National Sound Archives (NSA)
Full Catalog - Search Results for “nigun” (best searched in Hebrew)
The NSA is about to launch its digitization project online (currently non-public beta)

Social Media (Crowdsourced) Content: piyut.org.il
Piyut.org.il includes user-contributed content (texts and musical recordings of Hebrew liturgical poems) derived in part from commercial recordings and from the holdings of the National Sound Archives (NSA)

Disparity in access to sourcesakaanother aspect of the digital divide
"easy" access to digital sources online may penalize analog sources available onsite
yet, we all acknowledge that today’s fieldwork needs to include online sources,
including social media
In this presentation, I focus on sounds online

Dubious status of audio sources available through social media:
lack of metadata,
lack of metadata control
lack of unifying standard, leading to...

The Very Pressing Problem of Sound Online
How can we negotiate the contrast between:
A superb commercial interface (iTunes), dedicated to selling commercial recordings
The grim state of the visual representation of sound on the web (an eminently visual platform)
(this includes social media: there is currently no comparable platform to YouTube/video Flickr/images available to sounds)

Options for digital sound online: The Internet Archive (archive.org)
The Holy Quran is the most downloaded audio file on IA
Note:
Streaming box
Multiple download options

The Holy Quran is the most downloaded audio file on IA
Note:
Exportable metadata (.xml)
Support for “comments”

Summary:
good metadata structure – minimal visualization of sound – EMBED CODES – exportable metadata (xml) – "comments” – LONGEVITY

Options for digital sound online: SoundCloud(soundcloud.com)

Options for digital sound online: SoundCloud (soundcloud.com)
Individual sound track view (“soundwave” visualization)

Sound-friendly metadata support

A host of dedicated applications

Summary:
best metadata – best visualization – no directly exportable metadata – licensing – embed codes – "comments” & “tags” – LONGEVITY???

Options for digital sound online: YouTube (youtube.com)
Summary:
Worst metadata – visualization via images (stills, slideshows, videos) – embed codes – no directly exportable metadata – licensing – "comments” & “tags” – LONGEVITY? (google) – ANNOTATIONS – VARYING LEVES OF PERMISSIONS

Options for digital sound online: content-specific aggregators
Black Sabbath (Idelsohn Society)
Aggregates culturally-specific content from social media (including YouTube & SoundCloud), a dedicated platform-specific application (iPhone), and marketing tools

Options for digital sound online: content-specific aggregators
Summary:
Horrible metadata – visualization via images (stills, slideshows, videos) – no directly exportable metadata – no licensing – "comments” & “tags” – LONGEVITY??? – ANNOTATIONS via Social Media Aggregation – dedicated app – blurred lines between content and marketing are confusing

Where is fieldwork in all this?
Music online offers a platform for
collaborative fieldwork
But it currently requires making some choices regarding
Metadata structures
Platform

How collaborative fieldwork can, well, work:
The adoption of flickr.com by the Library of Congress and a host of other institutions worldwide joining the Flickr Commons established de facto a standard for images

How collaborative fieldwork can, well, work:
Flickr’s support for exportable metadata standards, dating tools, geolocation, tags (also machine-generated), licensing, comments, varying levels of permissions AND annotations
looks like an excellent model for sounds online

Digital Fieldwork
Emerging practice, based on:
collaborative tools & research practices rather than digital sources alone
notion of distributed rather than centralized knowledge brought forth by the digital humanities
pilot project
Jewish Digital Narratives
of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley

Digital Fieldwork
Agents of collaboration may include:
institutions
scholars
librarians & archivists
practitioners,
culture bearers
performers
educators
collectors
listeners & fans
…

Digital Fieldwork
The absence of a dedicated tool may actually present us with the opportunity of crafting one that supports all of the following:
Sound-specific metadata structure – dating tools – geolocation – sound-friendly visualization – embed codes – exportable metadata – "comments” & “tags” (including machine-readable tags) – annotations options – longevity (aka digital preservation) – licensing (including CreativeCommons)

Jewish Music Online: Digital Fieldwork

by Francesco Spagnolo

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