Fiddles, Banjos and Mountain Music: Preserving Audio Collections of Southern Traditional Music

FAIN: PW-50094-08

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)
Steven M. Weiss (Project Director: July 2007 to October 2010)

The transfer to digital format of 2,350 hours of analog audio recordings from seven collections held in the university's Southern Folklife Collection, which documents the history and culture of the region through music and oral history.

The Southern Folklife Collection (SFC) of the Louis Round Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill plan to preserve and make accessible unique audio recordings documenting southern traditional music. For this project, the SFC will create preservation master files and reference copies from recordings presently at risk and unavailable for public research. The materials will be processed and cataloged according to national and local standards and be made available to researchers in the Wilson Library reading room. Based on prior audio preservation experience we expect to preserve and make accessible 2350 hours of audio recordings over the two-year period (a ratio of three hours studio time to one hour playtime).