Intersections between institutional and non-institutional sound archives

GARCÍA, MIGUEL ANGEL

Aveiro

Congreso; 3rd Conference of the Portuguese ICTM National Committee. Open Science, Digital Archives and Institutional Repositories Contemporary Challenges in Ethnomusicology; 2023

University of Aveiro: INET-md (Liber|Sound) and SBIDM

The advent of the audio file format -a byte storage unit for use on computers and other devices-, which can easily be created, modified, deleted, and distributed without expert knowledge, has significantly enhanced the ability to disaggregate, aggregate, and distribute sound. This technological breakthrough has had profound implications in the storage, distribution, and accessibility of sound recordings. On the one hand, it has greatly empowered users to handle recordings and easily navigate among different kinds of digital archives. On the other hand, along with other innovations such as platformization and playlistification, the omnipresence of audio files is causing institutional and non-institutional archives to blend together. This convergence is driven by two factors: the ability to locate the same sound file on various websites and the graphical user interface offered by devices, which allows users to manage multiple digital archives on the same screen simultaneously. This scenario places the responsibility on the “end user” to navigate through different curations, classifications, audio compression, and access policies, and poses a challenge for us to redefine the meaning of the term “archive”. My presentation will focus on different aspects of this matter, mainly from the user´s perspective, who conducts his or her research in the Web in accordance with academic purposes as well as personal tastes and wishes.