Projects...
PDAAP - Peabody Digital Audio Archive Project
The Peabody Archives holds about 10,000 hours of tape recordings of
concerts and recitals at Peabody over the past thirty years. All ensemble
recordings are believed to be in the public domain.
The long-term goal of the project is to digitize the entire collection.
The main goal of the current project, funded by the
Institute For Museum and Library Services,
is to digitize about one-third of
music to ensure scalability then determine the cost and the feasibility of
digitizing the entire Archive and similar collections. We plan to:
- Develop and design workflow management for audio tape ingestion,
including finding the best hardware (tape machines) and using appropriate
methods required to digitize aging analog audio tapes.
- Evaluate existing metadata formats (MPEG 7 / 21, Dublin Core,
MusicBrainz) for recorded music and expand if necessary to create a
catalogue.
- Evaluate the potential of using native XML databases along with
XSLT/XQuery for searching (remote access, exchange) of metadata.
- Evaluate the feasibility of using open-source software and inexpensive
hardware as foundations for search and distribution of terabyte-scale
data: IDLE (Inexpensive Digital Library Engine).
- Clarify the copyright issues of the Archive.
- Collect user feedback and assess usability.
Benefits and Applications
- Establishment of large audio collection of Classical music
- Access to rarely recorded solo repertoire for music students and
teachers
- Historical studies of performance practice and repertoire of a
Conservatory
- Important database for scientific studies in expressive
performance, tempo tracking, timbre recognition, performance style analysis, etc.
- Source of information for other similar digitization projects, including
phonograph archives.
