The Voices and Music of World War I

The Voices and Music of World War I is an audio digitization initiative undertaken by the University of Missouri at Kansas City in conjunction with the National World War I Museum, which opened in Kansas City on December 2, 2006. In addition to original sound recordings of the music of the period and spoken word recording of leaders and personalities of the period from UMKC’s extensive Marr Sound Archives, the exhibition includes images of sheet music and photographs. The site contain around 60 full-length music sound files. At this point it seems to contains only one spoken word clip, but the site is quite new.

Collection Principles

The obvious collection principles are thematic and institutional: the recordings are all form the WWI era and are all housed in the Marr Sound Archives. While five individuals are identified as being responsible for content selection, the principles are not made explicit. The information on the site suggests that the selection of objects reflects a desire to present a diversity of material, and that special attention was given to works of social commentary, including ones providing “a harsher glimpse into the cultural climate of the country,” including racism. I assume that issues of quality and preservation were also important in selection, and I would have liked to find some information about those issues. (There is some information about preservation on the Marr Sound Archives site.) The songs are in the public domain, and the properties for each audio file state that there are “no rights or restrictions associated with this clip.”

Object Characteristics

The sound files are in the RealAudio format. The quality is 256Kbps. The “properties” also state that there are two audio channels, though the original recordings must be mono. A scan of the record label and the sheet music for each song accompanies each sound file. The image files are JPEGs with good resolution. The images of the labels are approximately 850 pixels square and file sizes are in the range of 60-70 KB. The images of the sheet music are TIFF files and can be viewed in various sizes; the largest are quite big and the resolution is excellent, giving the viewer a good sense of the condition of the object. The file size of the largest images is not provided (it is for other sizes), but it is clear that they are well over 1MB.

Metadata

Each sound recording is linked to a full bibliographic (MARC) record. The original music publication number is included. Library of Congress authorities seem to have been used for the subject and author headings. These records enable the recordings to be located through the library catalog, but it is probably more likely that, in a collection of this size, individual songs will be located by browsing. The images also have some associated metadata, largely having to do with publication and the composer of the songs. You can search through the library catalog, within the institution's digital collections as a whole, and within the individual collection.

Audience

As I mentioned above, this project is closely associated with the National World War I Museum, and I imagine that museum goers are a primary audience. The project also has an educational aim and will serve as a resource for students and faculty at UMKC. Grade school and high school students are also a likely audience. The site will certainly attract the attention of academic and avocational historians, as well as members of the general public with an interest in history.