21 Aug Filip Šír’s Open Lecture and Workshop
Dear colleagues, collaborators and friends,
We invite you to the upcoming lecture organized within the project “Digitization of the sound archive of the Institute of Musicology SASA”, supported in 2024 by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia.
Lecturer: Filip Šír (National Museum in Prague, Czech Republic)
Moderator: Dr. Marija Dumnić Vilotijević (Institute of Musicology SASA)
Tuesday, August 27th, 2024
Room 410, 4th floor
Institute of Musicology SASA, Knez Mihailova 36, Belgrade
THE LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAINS OF ESTABLISHING NEW NATIONAL MUSEM SOUND LABORATORY
Open lecture with Q&A
10 AM
PRESERVATION OF PHONOGRAPH RECORDS IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC – BEST PRACTICES FROM WORKFLOW
Workshop with the Institute of Musicology SASA associates
12 PM
ABSTRACT
Cross-disciplinary project team was driven by enthusiasm for the subject matter. A mix of part-time workers and contractors whose knowledge is not limited to one aspect of the work has allowed us to address a multitude of problems that have risen, mainly, from a lack of funding. From building our own holders for cleaning records to taking a ‘develop-it-yourself’ approach to software tools, the team has drawn from each other’s knowledge and interests to act as an in-house department for research and development.
We developed strong partnerships with supliers and interested companies. In an attempt to rethink the way methodologies are used, we have taken inspiration from language books, infographics and more, to design the methodologies included in our research outcomes in such a way that they are accessible and offer a user journey which can be followed by those with only a basic understanding of audio documents. Furthermore, we have begun designing a ‘first aid kit’ for audio, one which offers an at-a-glance overview of how to handle the most common at-risk audio formats, as well as steps to identifying and preserving them.
To ensure our learning process is carried on to the next generation of archivists, the project has also begun to drive education across multiple trajectories. This has seen the launch of university courses, as well as our reaching out to collection management across the country and taking a proactive approach to online communication through social media to spread our findings in a way that benefits collections and collectors across the world, especially those with limited resources and subject knowledge.
BIOGRAPHY
Filip Šír is a librarian and a front-runner in preserving the historical audio legacy of the Czech Republic and he is working at the National Museum’s Sound Lab. He is a member of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC). He received INFORUM 2016 Prize for the Virtual National Phonotheque, ARSC Certificate of Merit in 2017, the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies (BIAAS) Research Grant in 2023. Filip was part of the University of Iowa team awarded the GRAMMY Museum Grant, and he gave the lecture at several prestigous institutions (Harvard University, New York University, University of Iowa, Fonoteca Nacional de México). Filip was the Principal Investigator of the project “New Phonograph: Listening to the History of Sound” (2018–2022), delving into historical sounds related to Czech emigration to the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as radio broadcasting during the World War II.
The lecture and workshop will be in English without translation.
Entrance to the lecture is free.
Welcome!