For example, magnetic media like audio tape is notoriously unstable. Preserving an audio archive, to say nothing of just listening to it, poses a particular challenge to a cultural heritage institution, Krafft said.
#Archive is archive
“The WGN Radio archive will provide a laboratory for future researchers looking at 20th century media as it intersected with Chicago’s cultural and political history.” - Sarah Pritchard, dean of Northwestern Libraries We trust their expertise and are proud they are the caretakers in this endeavor.” “While digitizing it will be a substantial undertaking for the Northwestern Libraries, ultimately, this will be a permanent and invaluable repository and resource for years to come.
“Given the long and storied connection between WGN Radio and Northwestern University, it is most fitting that this audio collection, drawn out of 70 years of our broadcast history, will be under their care,” said Mary Sandberg Boyle, vice president and general manager of WGN Radio. “In addition, the voices of WGN Radio’s most popular programs are represented here, making this an important archive for the history of the entire field of radio broadcasting.” “It’s a remarkable collection that represents a significant sampling of Chicago history, including local and national news,” he said. The archive contains thousands of hours of audio that will need to be cataloged and, where necessary, digitally preserved before they can be made publicly available, said Scott Krafft, curator of Special Collections at Northwestern. The bulk of the audio dates to the 1980s and 1990s, a period of innovation and surging popularity for the station. The archive, with materials covering 1941 to 2011, includes more than 15,000 items, primarily magnetic media (open reel tapes, compact cassettes, continuous-loop “carts,” U-matic videocassettes and VHS tapes) as well as other media such as grooved discs, CDs and minidiscs. Chicago history and WGN’s most popular voices
Thanks to a gift from Nexstar Media Group, Inc., parent company of WGN Radio, a 70-year swath of the radio station’s audio archive now resides at Northwestern University Libraries in the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives. Its lineup of memorable hosts, long-running cultural programming and avid local sports coverage has enshrined WGN Radio as a cherished companion for generations of listeners in cars and kitchens. The IIPC creates collaborative collections, with participation from around the world, to record websites related to trans-national issues and events.For 100 years, WGN Radio has been a source of all-talk programming that has connected Chicagoland - and well beyond, thanks to the impressive broadcast range of the 50,000-watt station at 720 AM. The British Library is a founding member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC). uk websites 1996-2013 acquired by JISC from the Internet Archive. We are also able to give access to a collection (SHINE service) of. london, and any website hosted on a server based in the UK. This collection includes only web resources published in the UK. We work with colleagues at the British Library and legal deposit libraries, as well as researchers, librarians and archivists across the UK to build these collections. Our ‘Topics and Themes’ section contains more than 100 curated collections of websites related to research, life and events in the UK. This is a small proportion of our total collection but includes some very interesting and significant resources. This allows the Library to take a copy of any UK digitally published resource (including websites and social media) and to make that archived copy available at UK Legal Deposit Libraries.Īdditionally, we request permission from some website owners to make our archived copy publicly available through our website. The vast majority of the collection is acquired under the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations 2013. The British Library has been collecting websites since 2005, initially on a selective basis and since 2013 at a ‘whole domain’ level.