There are over 50k uploaded recordings from 78’s from users, and there are now 10’s of thousands of high-bitrate unrestored transfers of 78’s that are part of the Great 78 Project.

With this many, it gets hard to find things you want to explore.  Here are some techniques I do:

• Twitter feed of newly digitized 78’s is fun and addictive: one every 10 minutes. Addictive.
• Find a collection or Search on Archive.org and the hit the “play items” link in the upper right and it plays and plays.  I use this for dinner music all the time.
• Find a 78 I like on archive.org and then go to bottom and hit “play items” above the related items gallery and this also plays and plays.
• To list the high bitrate transfers, most recently uploaded first
• Find those that say “Blues” in the metadata, “ragtime”, “yodel or yodelling”
• Find those that have been reviewed recently
• Find those on the Paramount label.
• Find those that are in very good or near mint condition
• Find Victor recordings 1903-13 (but beware because ½ of our recordings have no dates)

Again, I recommend the “play items” link as it plays along like youtube does.

To download for research and preservation purposes:

• Download right hand side of a “details” page, and you can click to see the whole list of files.
• There is the “best” stylus version (according to an audio engineer at George Blood Co) that is renamed to be itune-ish compatible, but all the stylii recordings are there in flat and equalized formats, and each of those in FLAC and MP3 formats.

To download many records for research and preservation purposes (requires linux or mac and command line skills):

• Install the Internet Archive command line interface
• To download metadata in json from our 78 transfers, in bash:
  • for item in `./ia search “collection:georgeblood” –itemlist`; do curl -Ls https://archive.org/metadata/$item/metadata ; echo “”; done
  • I installed gnu parallel to speed things up (I use “brew install parallel” on a mac)
  • ./ia search “collection:georgeblood” –itemlist | parallel -j10 ‘curl -Ls https://archive.org/metadata/{}/metadata’ > 78s.json
• To download all of files of the high bitrate transfers (and is repeatable to update based on failures or new additions):
  • ./ia download –search=”collection:georgeblood”      (14TB at this point)
• To download only the metadata and Flac’s:
  • ./ia download 78_–and-mimi_frankie-carle-and-his-orchestra-gregg-lawrence-kennedy-simon_gbia0006176a –format=”24bit Flac” –format=”Metadata”
• To download only the metadata and mp3’’s of all ragtime recordings:
  • ./ia download –search=”collection:georgeblood AND ragtime” –format=”VBR MP3″ –format=”Metadata”

If you want to do more on downloading specific sets, I suggest the documentation or joining the slack channel.

How You can Help: Please help find dates for these 78’s

We are doing some by automatically matching against 78discography.com and discogs.com, but many are done by hand, finding entries in billboard magazine and on DAHR the like.  But many still need dates.

If you would like to help, then please do research and post your findings in the review of a 78rpm record, citing your sources.  Then someone with privileges will change the metadata in the item.

The complete collection has date facets on the left reflecting the dates we have found.  But we only have dates for about half, and there are thousands of 78rpm sides posted each month so we need help!

To find what others have done, you can list them in the order of the most recent reviews.

The most recent ones that do not have a date nor a review are here.  This is a good starting place.

But again, these need dates.  If you tried and could not find anything online, then please post a review to that effect so others do not spend time on the same one.   

If you find other information, or know other information about the performer, performance, or piece, please put it in.  Also links to youtube, wikipedia, and old magazines like cashbox and billboard.  

For those that get into it, we invite you to join the slack channel (a great tool if you have not used it already), then that is where there is some discussion.   Caitlin@archive.org can set you up.

Oh, and I have gotten a bit obsessed, and this is a twitter feed of a digital transfer every 10 minutes which I visit more times than I should probably.

Restoration techniques:

• Jessica Thompson worked with this collection and wrote a paper and presented at ARSC on it.
• A recommendation for restoring a 78 from raw formats, like what we have on archive.org, by George Brock-Nannestad <pattac@IMAGE.DK>  said he liked “ClickRepair suite of software from Australia” in a post to ARSC
• Another approach for restoring a 78: posted to ARSC by Mickey Clark <mclark@SHAWBIZ.CA> of http://mcproductions.shawbiz.ca/ :

I have been using Dartpro MT – I like it because it has a “Filter builder” –
the program doesn’t like 24 bit but I transfer at 24/96,000 , resample to
16/96000 then decrackle starting with a setting of 50 repeating the process
with an increase each time by another 10 i.e. 50, 60, 70, 80 (maximum) if
more noise is still there, I run repeatedly at 80 until the reported
interventions get to a number of 4000 or so. I can then manually remove any
clicks that are left.

I don’t use the denoise or dehiss, preferring to use declick  at very low
settings (78’s don’t have hiss – what you hear as hiss is the combination of
many little clicks.

I start with a setting of 2 then 4 then 6 . I leave the settings the same
then just find whether 1 or 2 or 3 passes will polish the higher noise away.
Decrackle doesn’t affect the high frequencies but declick does. This process
takes a little time but I almost never find that any distortion is
introduced to the sound.  I hate getting to the end of the record where the
really growly trumpet sound is a distorted mess, and this workflow prevents
that. – Mickey Clark

• Corey Bailey Audio Engineering www.baileyzone.net in the context of these 78s:

My “go to” software for restoration work is Izotope. However, I also have Adobe Audition, Diamond Cut, Pro Tools, Samplitude, and Sound Forge available for specific situations. As Ted Kendall points out: Hearing and Judgment play the major roles in both transfer and restoration. To that I would add Experience. And, as always, start with the best possible source.

Get Involved

Please write to the Internet Archive’s music curator  bgeorge@archive.org or more generally to info@archive.org .

Please join this project to:

• Share knowledge. Help improve the metadata, curate the collection, contact collectors, do research on the corpus, etc.
• Include your digitized collection. If you have already digitized 78s or related books or media, we’d like to include your work in the collection.
• Digitize your collection.  We’ve worked hard to make digitization safe, fast and affordable, so if you’d like to digitize your collection we can help.
• Donate 78s.  We have 200,000 78s, but we are always looking for more.  We will digitize your collection and preserve the physical discs for the long term.

If you are in the bay area of California, we can also use help in packing 78’s for digitization and please come over for a lunch on a Friday.

by B. George, Music Curator and Director of the ARChive of Contemporary Music

It’s the 4th of July and we’re celebrating in Richmond, California where we just finished repacking and sorting the legendary KUSF archive – 22 pallets full, maybe 60,000 (whose counting?) discs. This collection was transferred in 2012, and it is now ready for its next stage.  We are finding the recordings are in good condition considering the heavy radio play. The normal surprise are the prominent call letters markings on most of the cover art.

The pop 78s are being prepped to be digitized as part of the Great 78 Project and the remaining 45s, classical 78s and LP’s physically preserved to be ready for the next stages of digitization and access.

KUSF was a non-commercial radio station owned by the University of San Francisco. From 1963 until 2011, the station broadcast at 90.3 FM MHz. KUSF currently broadcasts online and is still a student driven organization at the University of San Francisco. Hip and popular, the station was student run, freeform and eclectic. Many now-famous acts first gained exposure on KUSF, including The B-52’s and Metallica. We’re doing our best to keep these gone but important cultural icons alive.

by Sylvie Rollason-Cass, Web Archivist, Archive-It

This year marked the 9th season of the K-12 web archiving program. Students from 11 schools around the country worked together to think critically about information on the web and to select websites to archive for the future. Their collections are centered around topics that reflect their interests, their day-to-day lives, current events, and topics they studied in class. Each school incorporates web archiving into its curriculum differently. This year 3 teachers generously shared their experiences participating in the K-12 Web Archiving program. Find out more about their year below, and be sure to check out all of the 2016-2017 Student Collections.

Web Archiving in the Civics Classroom at Williams Middle Magnet School 

Elizabeth Smith – Civics Teacher

My name is Elizabeth Smith and I teach Grade 7 Civics at Willaims Middle Magnet School in Tampa, Florida. I was so excited when I read about this project and could not wait to apply. I am technologically challenged but always look for ways to integrate technology into my classroom. Our civics curriculum is spiraled with analysis of primary and secondary sources and this project was a great way to enrich what we were already doing. We chose Florida as our focus as many of my students wanted to learn more about the state in which they live. Students chose to research websites of their own personal and academic interest. Several said this project would help them identify areas of research for their upcoming 8th grade community project. We are looking forward to being a part of the project again during the next archiving season!

Check out William’s Middle Magnet School’s 2016-2017 Collections >>> 

Using the Wayback Machine at the Rooftop School, Samuel discovers that YouTube was originally a dating website.

“Archive/Opera” – The Studio at Mayeda at Rooftop School

Andi Wong – Teaching Artist

At Rooftop Alternative PreK-8 School in San Francisco, 40 seventh and eighth graders worked with teaching artist Andi Wong to establish The Rooftop ARTchives. The “Archive/Opera” class at the school’s Mayeda Campus gave these students the opportunity to create both the “archives” (“public records” from the Greek ta arkheia,) and the opera (new “work”).

In this tumultuous political climate, the importance of community, civic responsibility and cultural memory became clear to our students. History will record how tribes of water-protectors gathered together at Standing Rock; millions of women marched around the world in pink knitted caps; scientists worked with archivists to save climate data and disappearing government websites; and the National Parks Service went rogue on Twitter. The act of archiving requires careful consideration of the past, present and future. As our students ventured beyond the walls of their classrooms to experience the stairways, slides and expansive vistas of Twin Peaks, their open conversations led to many questions. How can we know what is missing, if something has not yet been found? How many students have graduated from Rooftop? How far does the raven fly? Will San Francisco still experience fog in one hundred years? When today’s youth are sixty-four, will they still remember the lyrics to all of the songs from Hamilton?

The Archive/Opera class culminated with a community gathering — an Open House celebration of the Mayeda Campus’ 20th Anniversary, featuring artwork, musical performances, student speeches about the archiving experience. A tea serving ceremony honored principal Nancy Mayeda and the teachers who first opened the doors to the Mayeda Campus in 1997. The evening’s program closed with the presentation of a City proclamation and the dedication of the Rooftop ARTchives. When our students were asked to reflect on what they valued most about this year’s experience, they spoke of freedom, friendship and community pride in accomplishing something important together. Many thanks to the Internet Archive, the Library of Congress and Archive-It’s K12 Web Archiving Program for helping Rooftop’s students to capture history in the making. The act of archiving gave our students a very real sense of their collective power and responsibility as the keepers of their own stories and memories.

Check out Rooftop School’s 2016-2017 Collections >>>

Reflections on the 2016-17 K12 Web Archiving Project at Mount Dora High School

Patricia Carlton, PhD – Media Specialist

Challenging adult authority may be the bailiwick of teenagers, yet when questioning the authority of the Internet, teens are not as skilled or tenacious. Web archiving presents a fun and empowering way for my high school students to critically examine the authorship and credibility of the Internet, as well as identify what is historically and culturally significant. When this year’s web-archiving students began selecting and creating collections for the archive, I suggested they peer more closely under the hood of each site and object. What did they discover from their crawls that wasn’t immediately apparent from their first “reading” of the website? The following quotes excerpted from a sampling of the students’ final review and evaluation of the project reveal the type of discoveries made regarding their collections and the Internet in general.

The web is an extremely important factor in preserving things in order to view them in later years. The web, in my opinion is also much easier and more accessible to a wider range of people. While on the web, you have to be extremely careful on what you consider a reliable source. – Felicia

I have learned that the web is very contradictory and is filled with differing opinions, facts, and beliefs, and you normally can find an answer you like if you search long enough, despite general public beliefs. – Kacee

Most students assumed greater responsibility for controlling their crawls than my previous web-archivers, evidenced by their attention to their crawl scopes and carefully crafted descriptions at both collection and seed level metadata. The 2016-17 cohort “authored” their respective collections and even added corresponding MLA citations! They believed not only in the significance of their collections (conspiracy theories, political memes, and chick flicks to mention a few), but they also believed they were contributing new knowledge – real, meaningful content to the Internet that someone, someday might discover. And, their teen voices would be the authority behind their interpretation and curation!

Check out Mount Dora’s 2016-2017 Collections >>>