Posts tagged: Florida Atlantic University

FAU sound archive has free vinyl records up for grabs Jan. 6-10

By , December 20, 2013 1:56 pm

By Scott Travis, Sun Sentinel

 

Alethea Perez, an operations coordinator at Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archives, holds a damaged children’s record that will be repaired, digitized and archived. (Mark Randall / Sun Sentinel)

Florida Atlantic University is offering a free and legal way for music lovers to add to their collections, with no downloading required.

The university’s Recorded Sound Archives at the Wimberly Library, which collects and preserves music, is holding its third annual giveaway of vinyl records Jan. 6 to 10. The retro collection includes more than 2,000 albums from some of the biggest stars from the 1940s to the 1990s, including Glenn Miller, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow.

There are also a number of Broadway cast albums, including “Fiddler on the Roof” and “South Pacific,” Christmas albums, Jewish albums and some specialty records like “25 Polka Greats.”

And if you think vinyl is dead, think again. It was the fastest growing music format for the first six months of 2013, according to Nielsen Soundscan, which compiles music sales. During that period, 2.9 million vinyl albums were sold, a third more than the previous year. Vinyl accounts for about 2 percent of all albums sold.

“Five years ago, 80 percent of my sales came from CDs and 20 percent from vinyl. Now it’s 90 percent vinyl,” said Ritchie Siegrist, owner of the Record Rack, which sells new and used music in Pompano Beach. “People have found that the quality of sound is far superior to a CD or an MP3.”

The FAU music archives has been accepting donations of old records since 2002. It started with a focus on Jewish music and later expanded to include classical, jazz, opera and children’s records. The music is digitized and archived, and available to students, faculty and researchers. Some recordings are also available to the public online.

The records that FAU is giving away either don’t fit into FAU’s collections, or they are duplicate copies.

“These excess recordings pile up over time, so each year we give the community a chance to browse through them and take what they want,” said Maxine Schackman, director of the archives.

Ben Roth, an archivist for the FAU Sound Archives, said vinyl has a “warmer sound, not as sterile,” as digital music.

Today every major music label is releasing new albums and re-releasing old ones on vinyl, Siegrist said. Turntables and needles are easy to find in stores. In addition to specialty shops, vinyl records and accessories can be found inside big chain stories such as Best Buy and Urban Outfitters.

Classic rock is particularly popular on vinyl, including albums by the Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, Siegrist said.

Roth said he was surprised at how popular the giveaway was last year, particularly with students. The collection started with more than 20 cartons of boxes, and by the last day, only two cartons were left.

“Some gave them to their grandparents. Some kept them for themselves and played them on turntables given to them by their parents,” he said.

The library will also offer a small collection of music on cassettes and 8-tracks, but demand for those has remained relatively low, Roth said.

stravis@tribune.com or Twitter @smtravis

If you go:

What: FAU vinyl music giveaway

When: Jan. 6 to 10, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Where: Fifth floor of the Wimberly Library, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton

Original Article – http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-12-20/news/fl-fau-vinyl-giveaway-20131220_1_vinyl-christmas-albums-music-sales

Recorded Sound Archives at FAU Libraries

By , July 19, 2010 8:36 pm

Historic sound snapshot from our past.

Visually stunning picture records, historic radio transcriptions such as President Roosevelt’s speech to the U.S. Congress following Pearl Harbor, and hundreds of original recordings by Italian tenor Enrico Caruso are among the treasures being inventoried at the new Recorded Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University Libraries.

These relics of the recording industry are among an estimated 50,000 vintage records that were recently donated to FAU Libraries and used to create its “Vintage 78s Collection.” The records, along with extensive holdings of Jazz recordings and Judaic music, inspired FAU libraries to recently establish the Recorded Sound Archives with more than 150,000 phonograph records and other sound recordings.

“This makes us one of the top 20 libraries in the nation for sound recordings,” said Dr. William Miller, dean of Libraries at FAU. “People know….that we are a library interested in rare and historic recordings.”

Unpacking the recent donation of tens of thousands of recordings from the estate of Cleveland collector Jack Saul has been daunting, but with the help of staff and volunteers, the materials are being digitized and eventually will be available on FAU Libraries’ website.

The Recorded Sound Archives has three major collections:

(1) Vintage 78s Collection: Early disc recordings were dubbed 78s, referring to their playing speed of 78 revolutions per minute, and were produced between 1901 and the mid-1950s. Music, speeches, radio transcriptions and even movie soundtracks were produced on 78 rpm records.

(2) Jazz Collection:  The Recorded Sound Archives is creating an inventory of the more than 20,000 jazz recordings donated by Dr. Henry Ivey in 2006 and later transferred to the library from FAU’s Department of Music. Volunteers are currently entering information about the recordings into a database so that musicians and others will be able to easily search for what they want.

(3) Judaica Sound Archives:  The Judaica Sound Archives (JSA), created in 2005, established FAU Libraries as an international leader in the collection and digitization of early phonograph recordings. It now boasts a collection of more than 15,000 non-duplicated recordings. Its website offers listeners over 11,000 songs in English, Hebrew and Yiddish.

Where has all the Jewish music gone?

By , September 4, 2009 2:25 pm

JSARS logoWhere has all the Jewish music gone?  Ever wondered what happened to all the Jewish music of days gone by?  Voices of the great cantors of the past.  Music from Yiddish theater. The Judaica Sound Archives may not have all the old Jewish music, but with tens of thousands of audio recordings it is well on its way.

The Judaica Sound Archives – Research Station (JSA-RS) was developed at FAU Libraries to provide a digital resource of recorded sound, containing tens of thousands of audio tracks from the archival collection of the JSA. The original source materials available through the JSA Research Station are 78 rpm recordings produced as early as 1901, LPs, 45 rpm recordings, cassette and 8-track tapes, and CDs.

Along with this wealth of audio recordings, JSA Research Stations allow access to discography and other pertinent information such as label and jacket scans which will greatly enhance a researcher’s ability to study this material. This includes the ability to search for and see listings of all recordings in the JSA archives, whether or not they have been digitized. Therefore, faculty and other researchers can conduct real-time, online research using the JSA-Research Station. Currently the JSA-Research Station accesses 19,000 songs from 2,000 different audio albums and 2,322 songs originally recorded on 78rpm. This library will be expanded throughout the coming year.

There are now 13 official JSA-Research Station sites in the USA, Canada, Israel and England. They are:

  • American Jewish University Library, Bel Air, CA
  • Florida Atlantic Univesrity, Wimberly Library, Boca Raton FL
  • Gratz College Library, Melrose Park, PA (near Philadelphia)
  • Hebrew Union College Library, New York City, NY
  • Jewish Music Institute Library and School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, London, England
  • Jewish Public Library of Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  • National Library of Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
  • National Yiddish Book Center, Amherst, MA
  • Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, Chicago, IL
  • University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia, PA
  • University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  • Washington University of St. Louis, St. Louis, MO

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