Tag: archive

Norway’s national public microfilm digitisation project

September 16th, 2010 · · Archives No comments - Tags: ,

Be interesting to see this sort of national cultural project applied to the music, wouldn’t it?

National Archives of Norway hits 13m record mark as part of a national digitisation project to make all microfilm archives available online to the public:

Kodak today announced that the National Archives of Norway has scanned around 13 million microfilm images as part of an innovative project to digitise a considerable part of its holdings and make all information contained on microfilm readily available to the public via the Internet. 

Three NextScan Eclipse 300 Rollfilm production level scanners, exclusively distributed and supported by Kodak in EMEA[1], are being used to digitise microfilm information stored in the archive, with one Kodak i1860 high volume scanner purchased to scan paper records. The equipment was supplied by long standing local Kodak reseller, Kibi Norge AS. 

In total, it is expected that around 15 million microfilm images will be scanned with the project expected to be completed soon. A huge and varied range of records will be made available online including probate and court records, parish church registers which list births, baptisms, still births, death and burial records, along with marriage registers, immigration and vaccination information.

 

(Via News Blaze.)

A newcomer to vinyl nostalgia writes

September 16th, 2010 · · Retail, Vinyl No comments - Tags: , , ,

Ta-Nehisi Coates visits his local music archive, who are having a sale of their overstock…

Of C’s and D’s – Ta-Nehisi Coates:

The first thing I learned is that even stupid music really does sound much better if you play it on a record. It sounds—I don’t know quite how else to put this—like actual music. At least it sounds that way to me. The way a supermarket in a run-down neighborhood, where the retail strategy hasn’t substantially changed since 1976, will always look to me like an actual supermarket. (As if someday the Whole Foods veil of illusion will fall away and I will find myself wheeled backward, by an affectionate giantess, down the aisle of a Giant Food … )

(Via The Atlantic.)

DISMARC – A digital music archive catalog

September 16th, 2010 · · Archives No comments - Tags: , ,

DISMARC – A digital music archive catalog

In which library can I find the book I´m looking for? The answer usually can be found quickly by using the digital library catalog OPAC. But when I ask, in which archive can I find recordings of maori music from New Zealand, I even don´t have a database to search for. But only until recently …

Supported by the European Commission the DISMARC project has opened up the way towards a digital music archive catalog, uniting more than 40 european institutions and music archives within archives of radio stations, museums and universities. 

Read more here.

Thanks, Bernie Andrews, for breaking the rules

September 16th, 2010 · · Archives, Good News No comments - Tags: ,


Bernie Andrews, who has died aged 76, was the maverick producer behind the early BBC radio appearances of many of the leading pop artists of the 1960s, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix.

Obituary: Bernie Andrews:

In his dimly-lit production cubicle, Andrews painstakingly strove to secure the best performance possible from his musicians, frequently letting them overrun their strictly allotted studio time. His nocturnal working habits earned him a reputation as a nine-to-five man — 9pm until 5am.

After these sessions, instead of lodging the master tapes in the BBC library, Andrews invariably — and crucially — took them home. This was in breach of the rules, but it meant that much precious material escaped the BBC’s infamous policy of “wiping” tapes to save money.

(Read more in The Telegraph)

Sony Unveils On-Demand DVDs for Film Buffs

September 13th, 2010 · · Retail No comments - Tags: , , , ,

The following article is from Wired.com’s Epicenter
(comments to follow)

Classic Film Buffs Rejoice: Sony Unveils On-Demand DVDs:

"Dollars" and other films are now available on DVD — even if only one customer wants them.

Performances by Anne Bancroft, Kirk Douglas, Omar Sharif and other silver-screen stars are available digitally, but too many of their films lack enough fans to justify, from a commercial standpoint, the printing of entire runs of DVDs leaving unfulfilled those viewers who would pay for them.

Making matters worse, some — by no means all — fans of those classics lack the equipment or inclination to stream or download movies to their television sets. What’s a movie studio to do?

To solve this long-tail riddle, Sony’s Columbia Classics’ new Screen Classics by Request department will manufacture any film from a catalog with 100 titles for starters, in the DVD format, accepting orders by web or phone. Titles available at launch include The Pumpkin Eater (1964, Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch), Footsteps in the Fog (1955, Stewart Granger, Jean Simmons), The Juggler (1953, Kirk Douglas), I Never Sang For My Father (1970, Melvyn Douglas and Gene Hackman) and Genghis Kahn (1965, Omar Sharif).

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