Download Curating

[albion]

For very nearly a year now I have been 'curating', i.e. expanding, my personal and prejudiced collection of British music with the dual purpose of accumulating a representative archive of otherwise-unavailable recordings of British music and then sharing these with a view to their long-term survival. Although I will not pretend that there is no work involved, this has been a real pleasure and has introduced me to some truly wonderful collectors who have been remarkably generous with their donations.

Perhaps composers of other nations would also appreciate their works being available in some sort of orderly format: it is easy to miss downloads without a central 'port of call', thus causing often-very-important works to 'drop off the end of the conveyor-belt' (as when a subsequent post takes the thread onto another page, thus seemingly disappearing to members who are averse to back-checking). There is surely enough accumulated expertise and knowledge amongst members with particular national interests for some individual to seriously think about this issue before the burgeoning relevant downloads threads become too intimidating?

[Mark Thomas]

My thoughts had been turning in the same direction and, oddly enough, I have just written to Dundonnell on this very subject.

Ideally, I'd like us to have parallel national resources to BMB, but it seems to me that the only way that this can be achieved is to have a whole series of "curators" (good word!) who are as diligent, reliable, focussed and prompt as you are, John. There's no problem in restructuring the Forum: I'd simply set up a whole series of boards - one for each "Nation" - each moderated by the nominated curator. As now, posts would only go live once they've been approved by the curator, presumably after they've also been incorporated into the national equivalent of BMB. That much is straightforward and I don't think that the job of maintaining each national library would be too onerous once they're established BUT there is a mountain of work involved in syphoning off all the existing posts and organising them into libraries paralleling BMB, and that's the part which worries me about going ahead. We either do it properly, or we don't do it at all. It could well be necessary for there to be a moratorium on download posts whilst the board is reorganised and that moratorium might well last weeks. How would members feel about that?

I'd appreciate some feedback, please.

[albion]

there is a mountain of work involved in syphoning off all the existing posts and organising them into libraries paralleling BMB, and that's the part which worries me about going ahead. We either do it properly, or we don't do it at all.

The curator would need their own mediafire account and be willing initially to methodically transfer all uploads from the relevant national thread (an extremely simple click of a button) to one or more shared folders within that account, and then to provide an annotated list either simply duplicating or supplementing information supplied by the uploading member (this can quickly be done by cutting, pasting and editing). For this reason it is enormously helpful if members who donate files can supply as much detailed information (on the work, the performers and the source of the recording) as they or the internet can provide.

How catalogues and archived files are annotated would be entirely at the discretion of the curator. I gradually evolved a format for BMB which seems to work in terms of supply and demand, but that is not to say that it should necessarily be emulated: a catalogue need only be a simple listing (either chronological or alphabetical) and a single mediafire folder could initially serve as an archive. All that is required is a certain level of consistency in presentation within whatever format is chosen.

All this is certainly achievable - and once things are up and running new additions can routinely be approved and added into both the catalogue and archive. There is no obligation for any volunteering 'curator' to undertake file conversion or file-splitting/ merging unless they are happy to do so and feel that it would benefit the presentation of a particular item.

It could well be necessary for there to be a moratorium on download posts whilst the board is reorganised and that moratorium might well last weeks. How would members feel about that?

That would be absolutely fine as far as I'm concerned.

[TerraEpon]

A great idea, though I will admit my own laziness and willingness to do it means I'm not volunteering. I especially think it'd be a big help for nationalities, such as Eatern Europe and Russian/Soviet countries, where the spelling might be slightly different the the search engine may not help as well as a nicely ordered collection one could browse through and/or look up dates.

[albion]

A great idea, though I will admit my own laziness and willingness to do it means I'm not volunteering.

Well, if this is the general feeling, the status quo will prevail.

[Dundonnell]

With my particular interest in Scandinavian music I would be prepared to "curate" the uploads/downloads for Norwegian, Swedish Finnish and Danish music

Given that I am now retired from gainful employment I should have/can make the time to do this. My only concern is the technical aspect. I am slow to learn how to manage such matters-although I hope reasonally ok once I have mastered them I would therefore need to be given patient guidance on how exactly to do this.
Albion has already outlined the procedures and once I can get my brain round this I think that I could manage it. I am resonably efficient at cataloguing-as I hope my attempts at the complete orchestral output of composers like Alun Hoddinott and Henk Badings will show

The idea of a moratorium of weeks on new uploads while the site is 'reconstructed' fills me with some alarm however What will I do without my "daily fix" of new downloads   But if that is what it takes..............

Anyway....my offer is on the table

[Ser Amantio di Nicolao]

A great idea, though I will admit my own laziness and willingness to do it means I'm not volunteering.

Well, if this is the general feeling, the status quo will prevail.

I'm afraid the same goes for me as well.  I would love to do something like this for American music - I think it's a crime the extent to which prewar American classical music is ignored in this country.  And I would love, someday, to be in a position to change that.  Unfortunately, I simply haven't the time for it now.  Best I can hope for is to convince a couple of choral directors to look at some stuff, and encourage an interest there.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks for the offer, Colin. I'm going to take a few days, maybe weeks, to mull over the logistical implications of doing this. Technically it presents no problems at all. Although replicating BMB across all nations is clearly a desirable thing to do, I'm very conscious that John had some sort of organisation from the word go which developed organically under his control, whereas we now have a mountain of disorganised recordings which in the case of some countries rivals almost BMB in scope.

[Ilja]

Count me in for the Low Countries.

[Latvian]

In theory, I'd be delighted to curate a Baltic Countries collection. Unfortunately, my schedule is very hectic and often much time goes by before I can fulfill promised uploads, respond to questions, etc. I could not promise to keep up with timely updates just now.

[Amphissa]

I think this is a laudable task and a great resource for posterity. If I were retired, I would jump in as a volunteer.

Thinking on the larger scale, as an academic, it would be best (IMO) if there were one file copy of each work put into a private account, thus protecting it from corruption or misuse, and with a comprehensive catalog of that private collection. As we've discovered, members come and go, and with them, their accounts. Then, in order to assure the long term retention of those recordings, duplicate the entire private collection on multiple locations (not just Mediafire). As we've discovered with Google and MegaUpload, services can be shut down by a company or a government.

That's just my off-the-top thoughts.

[Mark Thomas]

I'm afraid that I'm still mulling this over. It's a big job however it's organised...

[Dundonnell]

My offer to 'look after' the Scandinavians is still on the table

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks. I just have way too much non UC stuff going on at present to think too much about the curating issue. So much for being retired!

[MikeW]

A great idea, though I will admit my own laziness and willingness to do it means I'm not volunteering. I especially think it'd be a big help for nationalities, such as Eatern Europe and Russian/Soviet countries, where the spelling might be slightly different the the search engine may not help as well as a nicely ordered collection one could browse through and/or look up dates.

Given that the search facility for the site doesn't handle variations in accented characters, and because the Downloads section is closed to Google search (which does handle such variations), might I ask that those submitting downloads add a line at the end with an unaccented version of the name which might be picked up in a site search.

I'm finding that as I discover old composers and go hunting for recordings, that I miss quite a few as there isn't a single agreed canonical version of the name - or because accepted orthographical transliterations of Cyrillic and other alphabets changes over the years. (The problem doesn't just exist on this site).