By Lise Dyckman, Library Director
“Sound archives have reached a critical point in their
history marked by the simultaneous rapid deterioration of unique original
materials, the development of powerful new digital technologies, and the
consequent decline of analog formats and media.” (Indiana University Digital
Library Program 2008)
That sonorous prose echoes the same dismay that any of us might feel when we look at stacks of audiotapes – often rare gems, precious memories, irreplaceable treasures – that we cannot play anymore. Perhaps we no longer own a cassette player, perhaps the tapes themselves have begun to stretch, warble, even – horrors! – snap with use. What to do? Current wisdom points to digitizing old(er) analog sound recordings, as a way to preserve them as well as to listen to them.
We are currently in the process of digitizing selected audiotapes from Library and from CIIS Archives audio collections. We have chosen to start with lecture and other spoken word recordings that are not readily available elsewhere (in some cases, the only known recording). Once digitized, we’re saving these as .mp3 files, since this seems to be the most easily played format currently in use. We are storing archival copies online, and are copying files for use now onto compact disk; however, we’re planning in the future to make these files available to the CIIS community as direct downloads from the CIIS Library catalog.
The following recordings from previous CIIS sponsored conferences and lecture series are available on a CD, in MP3 format:
Robert Thurman Lecture Series (1996) Dreams, Spirit & Shadow Conference (1996) Ayahuasca Conference (2000) Huston Smith lecture Series (2002) Third International Conference on Integral Psychology (2003)
Also, available on a CD, in MP3 format are several previously unpublished interviews originally aired on radio in the 1970s, with such luminaries as Joseph Campbell, Humphrey Osmond, Julian Jaynes, Clive Baxter, Rinpoche Chogyam Trungpa, U. Utah Phillips and Jerry Garcia. And we have just reached an agreement with the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) to digitize recordings from the previous ITA conferences. Look for these in the coming months.
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