How many of us first developed an understanding of the Indian subcontinent and its peoples from the writings of Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie or Rohinton Mistry? Their stories, A Suitable Boy, Midnight's Children and A Fine Balance, introduced the rest of the world to the socio-political tensions fomenting in India since its independence from Britain in 1947.
Working in a large archive means you're always discovering collections - sometimes even collections that are already open and available. In this case, it was a group of audio tapes related to 1950s gay rights organization the Mattachine Society. In the midst of preparing for a vault move, we came across a tape labeled “Reel #6” which had been misfiled and listed as lost. After considerable sleuthing the reel was finally returned to its rightful box.
Welcome! As summer draws to a close, it's time to highlight hot news in digital library services.
Featuring contributions from: Cathy Aster, Hannah Frost, Dinah Handel, Amy Hodge, Michael Olson, and Sarah Seestone.
In the last week through the concerted efforts of Benjamin Bates, Chris Walker, Gurudarshin Khalsa, Jonah Reidel, and the Stanford Media Preservation Lab the Archive of Recorded Sound has released 4 new finding aids. The collections include the work of Reese Erlich and his now Stanford streaming interviews with top tier Jazz artists, the complete catalog of Fidelity Recordings featuring band music from around the world, a collection of ARS research files, and a selection of sound recordings tied to the West coast traditional jazz revival. Read on to find out more.
Buckminster Fuller has loomed large over the Stanford Media Preservation Lab ever since his archives were fully processed and described in the mid-2000s. Over the past eight years we've been slowly reformatting the extensive media component of this collection, but there was one media format that remained elusive: wire.
At the Archive of Recorded Sound we have all been adapting to working in a variety of situations ranging from wearing masks all day to child care while nursery schools are closed. With the shift to working from home the Archive of Recorded Sound staff transitioned from processing physical collections and helping researchers in person to virtual office hours and the digital collection description backlog.
As the Stanford community continues to navigate the new world of remote teaching and scholarship, the library hopes that two new e-resources will make things a bit easier for students and scholars working on Modern Turkey and the Ottoman Empire.
To attend online office hours fill out this simple form for the video conference link. If looking for streaming archival sound recordings, view this online research guide.