General Advertising
Classified Advertising
Conference '99: Events & Arrangements
Conference '99: Program Excitement
President's Message
ARSC at Work (Committee Report)
Labelography Associates Committee
Membership Committee
Introducing ARSC People
Wendy Sistrunk
David Seubert
Sam Brylawski
Coming Events of Possible Interest to Members
Publication Information
Display ad. See the web site for information about this important magazine:
http://members.aol.com/reccoll/collector
1999 dues are due by March 1. Keep the ARSC Newsletter and Journal coming. Learn and
enjoy with colleagues. If you have NOT paid your 1999 dues, DO SO NOW. Make your check
to:
ARSC Executive Director.
Mail to:
P.O. Box 543
Annapolis, MD 21440-0543
If you are an ARSC member in good standing, the Membership & Outreach Committee would like to offer you FREE publicity in the ARSC Journal. All we ask of you in return is that in your next mailing to your clients, you include an ARSC membership brochure.
How can you take advantage of this opportunity?
To sign up, please contact Wendy Sistrunk at your earliest convenience for details.
She can be reached at:
Miller Nichols Library
5100 Rockhill Rd.
Kansas City, MO 64110-2499
Telephone: 816.235.5291
e-mail: sistrunkw@umkc.edu
Fax: 816.333.5584
Or, for more information and an order form, click here.
Mills Music Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is pleased to invite you to the 1999 Conference of ARSC, May 19-22, 1999. Local arrangements co-chairs Geri Laudati and Steve Sundell have worked diligently to make your visit to Wisconsin an exciting one.
Madison boasts numerous attractions including the majestic State Capitol building, the new Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, five downtown museums, the Oscar Mayer Theater, Henry Vilas Zoo, a nationally acclaimed Farmers' Market, Olbrich Botanical Gardens, and the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin, which is celebrating its Sesquicentennial this year.
The conference site will be the historic Edgewater Hotel, on the shore of Lake Mendota and a short walk to both campus and the Capitol. The Edgewater's stunning setting makes it Madison's most elegant hotel. Among its amenities are complementary airport limousine service,an outdoor pier with cabana service and great margaritas, health club passes, and lake view rooms. Lodging for conference participants will be at the Edgewater with overflow at the Concourse Hotel, a few minutes walk away.
The Edgewater is an especially appropriate venue for the ARSC conference. In November, the hotel released its own recording, Live at the Edgewater (Jerden JRCD 7033), featuring selections remastered from original 78 rpm acetates of Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey playing for the hotel's outdoor Starlite Roof dances in the early 1950s. The discs were discovered earlier last year upon the death of the former owner and general manager.
The conference proper will kick off on Wednesday evening (May 19) with an opening reception featuring Brian Brueggen and the Mississippi Valley Dutchman, one of Wisconsin's finest polka bands.
Other local arrangement activities include a demonstration of Sound Forge, by the folks at Sonic Foundry of Madison, and an afternoon session at Old Music Hall on the UW-Madison campus. A tour of the Center for Film and Theater Research at the State Historical Society, also on campus, will be available. Of interest also is the Mills Music Library Record sale of duplicate and surplus 78s, LPS, and other formats.
The Saturday evening banquet will feature regional specialties including entertainment by Madison's Lou and Peter Berryman. The Berrymans have achieved a classic level of comedic song-writing ranking with Tom Lehrer and Flanders & Swann. Responsible for such gems as "A Chat with your Mother" (the "F"-word song), "The Speculator," "Why Am I Painting the Living Room?" and dozens more, the duo recently have released their eleventh CD, Some Kinda Funny on Cornbelt Records.
We also have arranged for an optional trip on Sunday morning to Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's home in Spring Green. Set in the beautiful countryside along the Wisconsin River, the site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976. The 600-acre Taliesin includes six Wright structures. The cost including bus transportation and a guided tour of the original Hillside Studio (1902) and the grounds is $16.00. Participants will leave Madison at 9:30, tour Taliesin from 10:30-12:30 and be back in Madison by 1:30.
Conference attendees may wish to arrive early and take advantage of some area activities of interest. The Wisconsin Chapter of the Michigan Antique Phonograph Society meeting and the annual Bunny Berrigan festival are scheduled for May 15-16 in nearby Fox Valley. Toad Hall, one of the nation's largest antiquarian record dealers, is an hour's drive from Madison; Full Compass Audio, located in Middleton, Wisconsin, is ten minutes away. The House on the Rock, in Spring Green, features one of the world's largest collections of automated musical instruments, and the Circus World Museum in Baraboo has a remarkable collection of music associated with the circus.
May is the best time to visit Madison. The snows have melted, the lakes thawed, and spring is in the air. The students are gone and the city is lovely. We look forward to seeing you.
The 33rd Annual ARSC Conference is shaping up to be a treasure trove of
great sessions! If last year's conference emphasized cylinders, this one
embraces diversity. We are fortunate to have some great local speakers like
Allen Debus and John Steiner, together with new and old ARSC regulars such
as Ray Wile, George Paul, Jerry Fabris, and Gary Galo. Among the topics
we'll cover are:
*The Nixon Tapes
*A three-paper session on Hispanic Discography (moderated by Dick
Spottswood)
*The Philadelphia Orchestra's Centennial CD Project
*The music of Earth, Wind & Fire
*and a live interview with Nipper (yes, the dog!).
I sincerely hope that you will join your fellow ARSC members in Madison, May 19-22, for three days of stimulating and exciting discussions.
Jim Farrington
1999 ARSC Program Chair
Despite the arctic temperatures that paralyzed much of the country in January (not to mention the 49 inches of snow that fell in Rochester, New York that month), the Executive Committee of ARSC has been working hard since the Board last met in November. At that meeting in Madison, the Board approved a motion to develop written guidelines to help clarify the role of ARSC committees and to provide direction and guidance to committee chairs. With the bulk of the work completed by Board member-at-large Bill Klinger, a set of draft Guidelines for Committee Chairs is now in the final stages of preparation. Bill has been busy compiling information on committee activities, researching ARSC by-laws, consolidating hear-say, and documenting facts. Once completed, these guidelines will provide an important document that effectively addresses questions and concerns raised by new committee chairs, long-time Executive Committee members and other ARSC members.
With a similar objective, the Board is compiling information on the current activities and goals of its individual committees. Committee chairs have been asked to submit brief committee descriptions and personal profiles for publication in the ARSC Newsletter in order to introduce themselves to the membership. The fall Newsletter featured the Fair Practices and the Education & Training Committees; this issue introduces Membership & Outreach and the new Labelography Associates Committee.
The Executive Committee used its listserve as a forum to discuss the possibility of hosting a joint conference with IASA (International Association of Sound and Audio-Visual Archives) in 2003. The consensus of the group was that past ARSC/IASA conferences, held in Ottawa in 1990 and Washington, D.C. in 1995, were very successful, and that we should take this opportunity to convene jointly with our international colleagues in the fall of 2003. Ted Sheldon, past president and ARSC's representative to IASA, is pursuing options and opportunities for this joint conference. In addition to finding a host and a site for 2003, hosts and sites for ARSC conferences in 2001 and 2002 still are needed. Member institutions are encouraged to seriously consider hosting a future conference, and to discuss possibilities with me (contact information below).
Check out our new ARSC website, which is now up and running (www.arsc-audio.org). Be sure to watch this site for information on the forthcoming ARSC Conference. I hope to see many old friends and meet many conference newcomers in Madison on May 19-22, 1999. I can guarantee that this will be a conference you won't want to miss!
As always, I welcome your comments, and I look forward to seeing you in Madison.
Suzanne Stover, President
Eastman School of Music
26 Gibbs Street
Rochester, NY 14604
e-mail: ssto@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
The AVRL Editor, a Microsoft Access application written to assist in the de-duplication of submitted entries, will be completed very soon. Shortly thereafter, a Beta version of the file will be released. Upon delivery of the Editor, AVRL managing editor, Elwood McKee, will divide the discography into smaller files and assign positions for editing and de-duplication to volunteers. The file held by Chris Hopkins, AVRL programmer, includes over 350,000 entries (record sides). Mr. McKee holds an estimated 25,000 additional entries. The number of entries will increase significantly upon the conversion of the Rigler/Deutsch Index files and the Richard Spottswood pre-1942 American ethnic recordings file. The project holds several other significant discography text files, but the conversion obstacles are formidable.
By incorporating ARSC's Rigler/Deutsch Index and providing efficient tools to edit that data, it is hoped that the AVRL finally will provide the means to enhance the innovative Rigler-Deutsch Index and make it available to the general public.
Sam Brylawski, Chair
Our number is up! No, we're not dying -- we're very much alive.
Since beginning an aggressive drive last year, ARSC has increased its membership 19%. That's 170 people who have joined us this year! (Now we won't discuss those of you current members who still owe dues B you know who you are.) The Membership & Outreach Committee is beginning the second year of a two-year plan to increase ARSC membership 25% and keep it there. As with any other organization, members come and go. We want the numbers coming in to far exceed the numbers going out.
You can help!
Continue advertising us to your colleagues and friends. Research has shown that many people simply do not know that ARSC exists (imagine!). Help us get the word out about this wonderful association. It will be a stronger organization for all our combined efforts.
Too, the Membership & Outreach Committee welcomes new Co-Chair, David Seubert, who will be heading up publicity initiatives. David is very capable and is raring to go!
Wendy Sistrunk, Co-Chair
Wendy Sistrunk was hired three years ago at the University of Missouri-Kansas City University Libraries to, among other things, begin cataloging the holdings of the Marr Sound Archives, a collection of recordings representing the "American experience in recorded sound" from the earliest technology through the LP era. The Archives houses more than 170,000 recordings; approximately 17% of the collection is now cataloged. Wendy is very enthusiastic about cataloging the collection on a national database as well as for UMKC's local online catalog, because doing so provides bibliographic access to these wonderful items to patrons and researchers all over the world.
As a trained operatic soprano, Wendy always has had a fondness for listening to the great singers of the past and their interpretations of the repertoire. Indeed, it was an old crackly RCA recording of Caruso singing Massenet's "En fermant les yeux je vois" from Manon which convinced her to forgo Broadway for operatic study! Wendy has been a member of ARSC for four years. Her personal collection consists of mostly opera and early music LPs.
The ARSC Membership & Outreach Committee was recently formed combining the past Membership and Publicity committees. Two years ago, Wendy was asked to chair membership, and began initiatives on an aggressive ARSC Membership Drive. The two-year drive, now in its second year, has so far increased ARSC's membership by 19%! In addition to bringing in more members through publicity and by highlighting ARSC's many achievements, the Committee wishes to reach out to current members to address their needs. By working closely with other members of the ARSC Executive Committee and with all members of ARSC, Membership & Outreach hopes to help keep ARSC a healthy, dynamic, and vibrant organization!
David was recently hired as Curator of Performing Arts Collections at the University of California, Santa Barbara after receiving an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a BA in music history from Oberlin College. The Performing Arts Collections at UCSB includes the Archive of Recorded Vocal Music, the Bernard Herrmann and Lotte Lehmann collections and several large sound recording collections including the Todd and James collections. His own musical interests are far reaching, meshing nicely with the UCSB collections which have holdings in classical, jazz, popular and ethnic recordings as well as nearly 6,000 cylinders.
David has been an ARSC member for one year and joined Wendy as committee co-chair last fall to work on publicizing ARSC, particularly through an increased web and Internet presence and through networking with other organizations with shared goals.
Samuel Brylawski is head of the Recorded Sound Section in the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. He has worked at the Library since the early 1970s when he was hired as a summer employee to be an audio preservation engineer in the Library's Recording Laboratory. Much of Sam's work at the Library has been focused on providing access to the Library's collection of 2,000,000+ sound recordings. The size of the collection has precluded employment of traditional full-level cataloging for the hundreds of thousands of uncataloged works held by the Library of Congress. Because of that he has long pursued alternative means of inventorying and cataloging the Library's audio holdings. As a reference librarian in the 1980s he administered a project which resulted in control of over 70,000 broadcasts in the Library's NBC Radio Collection. To catalog the Library's extensive post-Rigler/Deutsch Index 78rpm collection, he enlisted the aid of the data compiled by Kurt Nauck for the American Vintage Record Labelography as resource information. He recognizes that most recorded sound scholarship has been conducted by amateur collector/discographers and is pleased to be involved in a project like the AVRL which will consolidate and disseminate this important work. Sam often writes and lectures on American popular music. His most recent projects at the Library have been the acquisition of the Bob Hope Collection and curator of the Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment in the Library's Jefferson Building.
AES = Audio Engineering Society
ANSI = American National Standards Institute
IAML = International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation
Centers
IASA = International Association of Sound and Audio-Visual Archives
To arrange advertising in all ARSC publications contact:
Ricki Kushner, Advertising Manager
4857B S. 28th St.
Arlington, VA 22206
Telephone: 202.707.0164 (w); 202.671.3434 (h)
Fax: 202.707.8464
e-mail: fkus@loc.gov
Claims or other notification of issues not received must be sent to:
Executive Director, ARSC
P.O. Box 543
Annapolis, MD 21404-0543
e-mail: peters@umd5.umd.edu
Submission Deadlines
Issue
No. 87 (Spring 1999) Advertising: May 14,1999 Editorial: May
24, 1999
No. 88 (Summer 1999) Advertising: August 6,1999 Editorial:
August 13, 1999
No. 89 (Fall 1999) Advertising: October 18,1999 Editorial:
October 25, 1999
No. 90 (Winter 2000) Advertising: January 22, 2000 Editorial:
January 29, 2000
© ARSC (Last modified: 21 March 1999)