Re: [ARSCLIST] discography's future?

["Farrington, Jim" <jfarrington@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It may or may not be immediately germane to your inquiry about online
resources (to which you should probably add Tom Lord's discographic
project (http://www.lordisco.com)--no flames please, as I'm just passing
the information along), but there have several articles in recent years
(probably over the last 10) in the ARSC Journal about discographic
standards that you might read. Related, here's a pdf of the Journal's
current discographic guidelines:
http://www.arsc-audio.org/pdf/DiscographicalGuidelines.pdf. 

Jim


-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Daniel Shiman
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 12:03 AM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ARSCLIST] discography's future?

Hi folks -- I'm an audio-focused UT-Austin MSIS student writing my final
paper for an audio preservation class.  The paper's subject is something
of a survey of discography, from the early years of Delaunay and
Gramophone magazine listings up to, and including, the present.  

While I've been able to track down some history on earlier
discographical compilation, there's not much (that I've found, at least)
on the current state of discography - especially in the age of
digitization and databases.

I am keenly aware of the UCSB Victor project, along with dozen or so
online databases that I've referred to over the years for my own
research (Rockin' Country Style, the amazing jazzdisco.org, the
specialized Red Saunders Research Foundation, the ASCAP/BMI databases,
and even the much-maligned allmusic.com all spring immediately to mind).


Two questions, then:

1.  Are there any major database-based discographical projects afoot
(especially institution-specific and/or in-house projects that aren't
available to the Internet) that I should be aware of?

2.  Have there been any discussions or forums in the "literature"
(ARSC-related or otherwise) about the affordances of databases and their
possible implications for discography (audio/visual/multi-media content,
XML and Wiki-style collaborative projects, faceted searching, etc.) ?
(Again, I've looked, but haven't found much.)

Thanks so much in advance for any wisdom on the subject!

-Dan Shiman
UT-Austin School of Information

p.s.  Feel free to email me offline.