Thousands of hours of Navajo oral histories recorded onto film reels were miraculously discovered in a jail cell in the late 1960s. These oral histories were eventually transferred onto VHS tapes to be used as a historical tool for Navajo preservation. Their backups had already been destroyed in a fire, so all that was left were the originals. The Navajo Nation Library “is asking the Navajo Nation Council for $230,520 to digitize the five dusty filing cabinets of tapes so the collection can be protected, distributed to schools, and made available to others.”[1]

The Navajo Nation once saw funding for this sort of preservation. In 1968, funding from the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity “was used by the Navajo Office of Economic Opportunity to begin recording oral histories.”[2] Funding for the project ran out and the tapes were left idle until 1978, when the Navajo Nation Library acquired them. Nobody knows for sure what the plans initially were for the recordings, but their historical significance can be respected today and the need to preserve these oral histories that highlight daily life among the Navajo can easily be appreciated.

“The content of these recordings are very culturally sensitive. There are some legends we only tell at certain times of the year and the nine-night ceremony is very sacred, very private,”[3] stated Irving Nelson, Navajo Nation Library Program Supervisor. Indeed, because of this sensitivity, the library plans on coordinating with Navajo religious authorities to determine when and where certain recording should be played. The library also plans on coordinating with local educators to help promote Navajo history as well as develop curricula on the subject.

Nelson stated that “the benefit of restoring these tapes extends beyond the reservation, since the tapes share a lot of the local history that’s of significance to the area. The state histories of Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona will all become richer when these personal histories are known.”[4] This is a new chapter for the Navajo Nation and could be the start of something very special.

References

[1] Claire Caulfield, “Navajos hope to digitally preserve thousands of hours of oral history,” Cronkite News (Arizona PBS), December 21, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Irving Nelson, ibid.

[4] Ibid.

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A preconference workshop regarding preservation and digitization of recorded sound was a highlight and while not part of the conference, there were presentations about the program within the conference program. The university’s Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative was shut down for two days for conferees to see and learn what and how things were being done. Presentations were based on the ARSC Guide to Audio Preservation created in collaboration with the Council on Library and Information Resources published in May 2015. Conferees were shown the process of the massive digitization collaboration project between Indiana University and the Memnon Corporation of Brussels, which required a whole new building with three power sources for the building, the equipment, and the recording playback equipment.

This fiftieth Conference returned to the place of the first annual conference of the group in 1967. This first conference occurred after several 1965 steering meetings initiated by Kurtz Myer, director of the Detroit Public Library Music Department, Frank Davis, curator for the Communications Section at the Ford Museum, and me. An exploratory meeting was held with audio experts and archivists at the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan after the Detroit ALA 1965 conference. The group met again in early 1966 at Syracuse University at the invitation of Walter Welch, director for the SU Audio Archives and author of From Tinfoil to Stereo, and the group was founded.[1]  Now with a name, ARSC met again in 1966 at the Library of Congress to decide on bylaws for incorporation.

Originally one of the questions to solve was, “Record, Record, Who’s got the Record?” Many libraries were struggling with that question from patrons. Solutions to finding recordings came slowly, but a bulletin and journal were started, and a directory of collectors and collections was produced early, offering some help as finding aids. Since, ARSC has given out grants for more research and publications, including the production of several membership directories.

While the focus seems now to be on preserving much of what was actually going on before 1965 and now, what happened in the ’60s fifty years ago, the questions still remains. Can we document enough to set up databases common to all collections which could then be searched to find what is needed, whether for more research, more writing, transcribing music lost in paper shuffles or just for a particular celebration of life for an individual library patron?

For now, ARSC, the American contingent of the International Association for Sound Archives are in collaborative efforts to build the largest searchable international collection of bibliographies of discographies of recorded sound. More information can be found here.

References

[1] Paul T. Jackson, “Record, Record, Who’s got the Record?” American Record Guide, April (1966): 676–678.

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