Posts by Russell Brown
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Just a word for whoever’s doing the good work at Christchurch City Libraries.
The online collection of 1980s music posters is simply fabulous.
And the same libraries’ Advert Music is a really good idea – providing information, some of it crowdsourced, on what the music in well-known TV ads is.
OTOH, Te Ara’s page on New Zealand music is little more than a placeholder; it’s cursory and dated. Okay, there are other priorities, but no one’s going to click the “contribute your story” button on that page. People will, however, queue up to tell their stories, and give their discographies and histories to Simon. Because he’s Simon, and he has the mana.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to nzlemming,
I believe the reason most libraries (and NatLib especially) are not working in this space to the level you would like is that no-one paying the bills regards it as core business and therefore worth funding.
Which is fair enough, so far as it goes. There's never enough funding. But I think I'm right in saying it's not that Simon wants NatLib et al to take on the job, as for there to be a little support for the momentum that he and the likes of Andrew Schmidt are already generating. Can you see the difference there?
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Sacha,
Perhaps better to think of it as certain relationships rather than skills. People don’t trust others with their taonga only because of skills.
That's exactly what I've been trying to say.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to paynter,
To be, fair, what I’m saying is also informed by my own experiences.
When I was doing the Great New Zealand Argument project, I met and got on very well with Philip Rainer at the Turnbull. Seeing the thousands of pamphlets held as part of the original Turnbull bequest was a real thrill. Pamphlets and polemics were very interesting to me.
But I never did anything with any of that. I could never get a price for digitising a work for republication, and not for want of trying. I had no problem with the idea that it had to be done properly, but I couldn’t find a way of doing it at all.
It was much easier to find stuff in second-hand bookshops and take it from there. Bob Gormack was delighted that someone found ‘A Maori Lament’ amusing after all these years, more so to accept a bottle of single malt so I could transcribe and republish it.
And the Lange speech … Jesus wept. The audio recording and my transcript (I was staggered that no one had previously done one) are still hosted here. They’re linked to from Lange’s Wikipedia article, and literally not a day passes that someone accesses them. That only happened because people broke the rules, because I persisted (dutifully calling the Oxford Union was an odd and pointless exercise) and, in the end, because Ian Fraser said: just do it.
It’s a similar story with the Mazengarb Report. The copies linked from the Wikipedia article are only there because Jonathan Ah Kit sourced and scanned the report and uploaded it to ibiblio and Project Gutenberg. Those copies are now basically the country’s teaching copies.
The point I made in the Information Entrepreneurs paper is that there is a role for independent enterprise in curating and disseminating heritage content, and that there should be some support for individuals who do that. I’d love to see a modest contestable fund for the purpose. Sometimes, it’s useful to work from the bottom up.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to paynter,
Agreed, but I think you brought it on yourself. You’ve made the argument that libraries / archives can’t do this work (or a large part of it) because they lack certain skills; but these skills are actually part and parcel of the profession. I venture that many who work in libraries found this rather condescending and are trying politely to correct you.
It was more what was possible in a particular institutional setting.
David actually raised the issue by suggesting that Simon’s idea might be “a further waste of resources” when the Turnbull already had its own music archive. It really seems evident to me than an independent archive, within in a structure that facilitates best practice, will do things the Turnbull couldn’t. And more the point, isn't.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Tamsin6,
It sounds fantastic – but don’t underestimate the uses and talents of a good archivist – you may be surprised to find that they are already dying to do something like this, but haven’t had the opportunity.
I guess the difference is that Simon is going out and working hard to create that opportunity. Not only through the music archive project, but in the likes of his excellent discography for his own label, Propeller Records.
In that context, allowing that he and others in the industry could “extend” something done by proper librarians is patronising. The fact is, most of the moves on documenting and preserving recent popular music culture are being made outside the institutional sector.
That doesn't mean there isn't a key role for professionals, but I get Simon's view that this will function best as an independent archive with close ties to its own industry and culture.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Tamsin6,
With all due respect Russell, I don’t think that you understand completely what library and archive professionals do, and also what they would like to be able to do. You say that libraries don’t tend to go to commercial services like You Tube etc – but actually, we do.
Arrgh -- how did this get to be librarians vs others? It's not a very productive way to go.
We were talking about the differences between the Turnbull's NZ music archive and what Simon wants to achieve -- and I do think an independent archive will manifestly be a better fit than one inside a library.
I suspect its public face would look more like NZ On Screen's than that of the Turnbull Archive of New Zealand Music.
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Hard News: Bishop Brian: It's worse than…, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
It probably has more to do with Goff going a polling cycle without opening his mouth and using it as a pop up shoe store.
To quote Homer Simpson: It's funny because it's true.
Indeed. There's a certain irony about the good polling news arriving while Goff is out of the country and cannot possibly ruin it.
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Hard News: Bishop Brian: It's worse than…, in reply to Dave Waugh,
Yes 0.5% plus of course the "wages" they mentioned which of course get a nice big wet bite taken out of them by Destiny..... Unless you think that Destiny won't be hiring Destiny members to do the work?
That's a really good point. Destiny gets funding for church members' wages, then tithes the wages. Hmmmm.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to paynter,
But having said that, Russell has a point: the Turnbull music people have different priorities (and limited resources). So if they haven’t been in touch with Simon since the last time this we discussed this project, it seems reasonable to assume that they are not likely to undertake anything like it themselves.
And in a very practical sense, they can’t. There’s a big role for crowdsourcing in this kind of project, which means being plugged in to commercial services like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, where people and resources are. There are places libraries don't to tend go.
Probably the most striking change since the launch of NZOS has been the rise of Facebook. Google used to be, as you’d expect, the major referrer of traffic. Not any more. It’s Facebook.
I really must emphasise that I have only the highest respect for what library and archive professionals do – I’m close to announcing a sweet little get-together with Digital NZ, in fact. But music has always been a business as well as an art, and there’s a case for have people from the business on board.
These things cross over of course. Sound Archives has a long history of employing musicians – Blair Parkes, Bruce Russell and John Kelcher immediately come to mind. I think all those three would have a lot to contribute to a music archive.