A presentation based on a paper I wrote about discographies and their usefulness to audio preservation.

1. Discographies
What are they, really?
And how can audio preservation make use of them?
William R. Vanden Dries
Intro to Audio Preservation
Fall 2012

2. Are these Discographies?

3.  Evolved out of early manufacturer products listings
and business records.
 First scholarly use in 1936 - Hot Discographie by
Charles Delauney
 Other terms suggested as alternatives, such as
"audiography," to cover the broad field of formats.
 Discography stuck because
 Discs were dominant at the time
 Widespread usage
 Needed a term to cover sound
recordings the way "bibliography"
covered printed materials
 Did, in fact, emulate bibliography in certain
theoretical aspects (historical, analytical, descriptive,
systematic)
Early Evolution

4. "Real" Discographies
“the documentation of all types of reproduced sound preserved on all types
of artifacts (e.g., commercial, non-commercial, disc, tape, piano rolls,
wire recordings, movie sound tracks, air checks from radio and television-literally
any type of recorded sound).”
~ Gordon Stevenson, 1972
"there is no formal agreement about what the subject is."
~ Michael Gray, 1979

5. "Real" Discographies

6. "Real" Discographies
• Very high standards
• Highest-quality sources
o physical copies of
recordings
o manufacturer ads, lists,
internal docs
o (can also use trusted discogs
if nothing else available)
• Abbreviations, codes,
typographical styles
Trying to gain INSIGHT!

7. Limitations of print - let's get digital!
So much stuff, so little space!
What if we left some stuff out? They'll figure it out, right?
Benefits of digital:
 Practically speaking, no space limitations
 Entries can be rearranged, resorted very quickly (if
stored at a very granular level)
 Easy to update
 Data can be easily transferred between systems
Drawbacks:
 Data longevity
Print discographies still popular - majority of ARSC Journals
printed in the last decade contained a discography
Forbidden Eye Archives
bsnpubs.com
78discography.com

8. Breakin' it down into databases
Relational
Document-
Oriented
<recording>
<performer>Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra</performer>
<title>Dinah</title>
<recording_date>1930-05-04</recording_date>
<matrix_number>404001-C</matrix_number>
<manufacturer>Okeh</manufacturer>
<issue_number>8800</issue_number>
</recording>

9. What the heck does this have to do
with audio preservation?

10. Encyclopedic Discography of Victor
Recordings (EDVR)

11. Database-driven, Web-based "Audio
Preservation Registry"
Registry

12. Bibliography
"AllMusic : Music Search, Recommendations, Videos and Reviews." Accessed November 6, 2012.
http://www.allmusic.com/
"Both Sides Now Album Discographies Main Page." Accessed November 6, 2012.
http://www.bsnpubs.com/discog.html
"Current and Back Issues List for the ARSC Journal (Association for Recorded Sound Collections)" 2007. Accessed
November 9, 2012. http://www.arsc-audio.org/journal-backissues.html
"Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings Project History." 2009. Accessed November 9, 2012.
http://victor.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/resources/detail/49
"Explore Releases on Discogs." Accessed November 6, 2012. http://www.discogs.com/
"Forbidden Eye Archives." 2006. Accessed November 8, 2012. http://forbiddeneye.com/labels/archives.html
Foreman, Lewis. Systematic discography. London: C. Bingley, 1974.
Gray, Michael H. "Discography: Its Prospects and Problems." Notes (1979): 578-592.
"National Jukebox LOC.gov - Library of Congress." 2011. Accessed November 6, 2012. http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/
Stevenson, Gordon. "Discography: scientific, analytical, historical and systematic." Library Trends 21.1 (1972): 101-
135.
"The Online 78 rpm Discographical Project." 2009. Accessed November 8, 2012. http://www.78discography.com/