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By: Trevor Owens
The following is a guest post from Julia Fernandez, this year’s NDIIPP Junior Fellow. Julia has a background in American studies and working with folklife institutions and is working on a range of projects leading up to CurateCamp Digital Culture in July. This is part of an ongoing series of interviews Julia is conducting to …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Trevor Owens
The following is a guest post from Julia Fernandez, this year’s NDIIPP Junior Fellow. Julia has a background in American studies and working with folklife institutions and is working on a range of projects leading up to CurateCamp Digital Culture in July. This is the first of a series of interviews Julia is conducting to …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Allen
The story of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” for many decades, seemed as murky as the smoky haze over Fort McHenry on the morning two centuries ago when Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics that still inspire a nation. No one knew for sure who wrote the music. No one fully understood the circumstances of the tune’s creation (but, no, it wasn’t a …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post from Gavin Frome, an intern for the Web Archiving Team at the Library of Congress. Performing artists are by necessity a traveling people. They journey far and wide in the pursuit of their respective crafts, working, learning and weaving a fabric of loose cultural connections that help bind people …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Allen
Pianist Alex Hassan’s passion is music, but not just any music – he lives to recreate the Tin Pan Alley melodies of the 1920 and 1930s. The classically trained musician, who says he is a pupil of pupil of a pupil of Franz Lizst, has, in his own words, “tunnel vision” for the popular musical …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Susan Manus
We are continuing the previous interview with Marla Misunas of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, this time including two of her colleagues: Layna White, Head of Collections Information and Access at SFMOMA, and Mark Hellar, consultant and owner of Hellar Studios LLC. Mark is currently working on new media conservation initiatives at SFMOMA, including …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Kristi Finefield
The following is a guest post by Martha H. Kennedy, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. The vibrant colors and massive watermelon in this hand-colored lithograph first caught my eye. Tucked around, beside, and below the melon are rosy apples, golden pears, peaches, plums, blackberries, a cantaloupe, and dark and …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Bryan Cornell
As the perfect June weather makes it increasingly difficult to suppress thoughts of beautiful beaches, gentle breezes, and swaying palm trees, a Hawaiian getaway might seem the perfect solution. Let us offer this brief appreciation of the wide influence of Hawaiian music with links to audio from the Recorded Sound Section’s National Jukebox as background research. One of Hawai’i’s most beloved composers was …
Posted in: Now See Hear!
By: Kate Murray
In response to a suggestion from our active membership, the NDSA Standards and Practices Working Group recently hosted a discussion about preserving digital and software-based artworks. Interestingly, the suggestion for this topic came not from a museum staffer but by Winston Atkins, Preservation Officer at Duke University Libraries. Complex materials like digital art works and …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Amanda Smith
Recently, on May 4, 2014, musician Happy Traum was inducted into the New York Blues Hall of Fame. Here at the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, we are quite familiar with Happy because of his work in establishing the audio music company, Homespun Tapes. As a local New Yorker and musician during …
Posted in: NLS Music Notes