In his 1966 article presenting the material--the ``stuff,'' as he called it--of music libraries, James B. Coover described the trio of books, scores, and sound recordings as the ``meat and potatoes'' of music library collections. While the book and score had been around for centuries, the ``record'' was the new kid on the block, and by the mid-1960s--several years after the introduction of the long-playing record--this kid had proved to be a handful, demanding of time and resources. Coover longed for the ``halcyon days'' when librarians had to deal ``only with 10- and 12-inch 78 rpm records, single- and double-sided, inside-out or outside-in, made of acetate or shellac.... But they are gone, and even though the variety of records available then presented some difficulties, the problems were in no way comparable in breadth or depth to those encountered today.'' 1
And that was over forty years ago, long before the onset of the cassette, eight-track tape, compact disc, minidisc, and digital audio tape. Throughout the relatively brief life of the sound recording, this hyperactive and needy member of the music-library family has been showered with attention by its weary guardians. While the format and content of books and scores have remained relatively unchanged over the course of centuries, near constant innovation in sound-recording technology has caused upheavals in collection development and facility planning at least every few decades. Large collections and costly equipment have been rendered obsolete as one format has succeeded another.
Until recently, these technological innovations have been realized through the introduction of new physical media--discs with grooves, magnetically charged tape, microscopically pitted aluminum discs. As each new format arrived on the scene, librarians met it with a mix of excitement and wariness. The excitement came from considering what the new technology offered--in most cases, enhanced fidelity, ease of use, and storage. The wariness came from calculating the expense of adopting the new format. Librarians approach new technology with deliberate caution, since the potential impact on collection budgets, shelving space, and facilities is great. It makes little sense to adopt a new format until it is clear the format has staying power. For this reason, libraries have usually been slow to embrace new technology, and a healthy skepticism has allowed them to avoid being stuck today with legacy collections of 8-track tapes and minidiscs.
During recent years, the development of digital sound technology has taken the sound recording down a new path. Advances in computer and networking technology have allowed the sound recording to take on a virtual existence, and the sound recording is no longer confined to a physical object--something to be purchased, stored on a shelf, and circulated. It is now also a file of data--something to stream over the internet, to download onto an iPod.
The benefits have been great. The listener is now off the leash, able to listen anywhere there is a network connection, and with the growth of wireless access points, the options increase daily. Librarians are also great beneficiaries, since we can now offer substantial collections of commercial sound recordings without the inconvenience of finding space to store them, and we can provide reserve listening services that make it possible for dozens of class members to listen to the same Bach fugue simultaneously--and scattered across campus--just hours before an exam.
The challenges and frustrations continue, however. Lying behind these digital audio services is technology that can be confounding. When working with a collection of physical sound recordings, we could meet listeners' needs simply by providing equipment for the various media in our collections and making sure our collections were properly cataloged and shelved. With digital audio, our role in bringing the music to the listener can be far more complex. For small-scale digital audio installations supporting curricular listening, a librarian might be expected to encode sound recordings for curricular listening, to maintain the server that stores and delivers the audio files, and to create a user interface for listeners to locate and select files for listening.
The technological knowledge and skills needed to manage digital audio services can be daunting. Sound can be captured in a number of digital formats and then compressed for network delivery in an even larger number of other formats. Librarians who are new to digital audio may find themselves grappling with technical concepts that are foreign to them--bitrates, codecs, streaming--and feel unequipped to provide the services that digital audio technology makes possible.