Armando Suarez

Sarah Bankston
INLS520 – Organization System Problem Scenario and Content Sample

Project background:

This past spring Donald Hart, the well-known business tycoon and amateur musicolo-
gist, donated his entire jazz collection to our institute, the Suaban Music Museum. We’re
thrilled to receive this rich and varied collection. Hart’s jazz interests are far-reaching, and his
wish is to open up his collection to researchers and enthusiasts alike, in order to bring about a
greater understanding of and appreciation for jazz, both as musical genre and cultural move-
ment.

The Collection:

 Collection is physical in nature, with a major undertaking in process to digitize it in its

entirety.
 Collection consists of a variety of mixed media:
I. Audio Recordings (vinyl, cassettes, and CD)
II. Video Recordings (reel-to-reel, VHS, laserdisc, DVD)
III. Photographs
IV. Literature (letters, interviews, journal articles, newspaper clippings, books, etc.)
V. Sheet music
VI. Souvenirs
VII. Instruments
VIII. Paraphernalia (guitar picks, reeds, drum sticks, etc.)
IX. Posters

 While the entire collection pertains to jazz in the 20th century, there are some special
relationships within the collection. Some of the items are related in that they were
owned by a particular musician or come from a particular region. There are also larger
relationships created by the items belonging to a particular subgenre of jazz.

The Users:

 Possible users interested in the collection include:

I. Musicologists
II. Faculty and students in music departments
III. Scholars
IV. Jazz aficionados
V. Musicians

 Users needs will vary depending on their particular interests, including research and
educational purposes, historical background, or just merely personal interest.
 The organizational system would be maintained by staff members of the jazz depart-
ment within the museum, including curators, cataloguers/registrars, and a digital special-
ist.
  Collection will be used for cultural initiatives by organizing exhibits around the collec-
tion, and cultural events will be created to generate interest in this American art. These
exhibitions will be recorded and eventually placed online for users who could not attend
in person.
 Scholars, professors and students will be encouraged to use the online collection for re-
search purposes.
 Aim of the collection is not only to attract experts and enthusiasts, but also to expose it
to users who might not otherwise be aware of such a unique American cultural phe-
nomenon.

The Ideal System:

 Since we realize not everyone interested in this collection will have the means to visit
our institution and see the exhibitions, we want all potential users to be able to connect
with it as intimately as possible through an online environment.
 Our vision is to create a robust website that includes a catalog of the materials, a visual
database, and an interactive timeline to place the items in perspective of the develop-
ment of the various jazz movements.
 We plan to develop a faceted search within the catalog so that users may limit for artist,
album, subgenre, era, and beyond.

The Challenges:

 Digitization of the entire collection will pose various challenges, such as appropriating
funding to hire new staff to aid our current digital specialist.
 While digitizing some of the items, such as the literature, photographs, audio recordings,
letters, and sheet music will be time consuming, the process is relatively easy. On the
other hand, three dimensional objects will pose new challenges for our institution. Is-
sues include generating funding for new technology, careful handling of the instruments,
and discovering and creating standards to digitize the items.
 Issues with categorizations and descriptions might develop due to the size and variety of
the collection.
 Preservation of sound and image quality on some of the older audio and video re-
cordings may pose a challenge depending on the physical state of the materials.
 Since the aim of the institution is to create an interactive digital system, devising it will
take a lot of creativity in order to enhance user-experience.
 These challenges will be addressed in various ways:
I. Incoming technology grant to purchase equipment and hire new staff.
II. Use of digital consultants.
III. Professional development of current staff.
Armando Suarez
Sarah Bankston
INLS520—Content Sample
Due: Sept. 15, 2010

Sound Recordings: Around 1,000 recordings were

donated in a variety of formats including vinyl LP’s
(75 rpm, 33 1/3 rpm, and 45 rpm), audio cassettes,
and CD’s, including some rare and out-of-print ma-
terials. The various genres represented in the col-
lection range from early Dixieland recordings from
the turn of the 20th century to jazz fusion from the
1970’s.

Our organization system will have to identify the

more damaged recordings in order to restore them,
with the goal of eventually digitizing them. For
categorizing purposes, each recording will have to
be identified and categorized by band leader, par-
ticipating musicians, style, and where and when it
was recorded.

Video recordings: The video recordings are com-

posed of 500 items, and come in various formats,
including reel-to-reel, VHS, laserdisc, and DVD.
Included are rare live recordings, documentaries,
films, and educational videos. The condition re-
garding some of these recordings is quite precari-
ous; therefore, restoration and preservation initia-
tives will have to be undertaken.

Our organization system will ideally create digital

samples for users to listen to. The various items
will have to be arranged and categorized by format
type, participating musicians, as well as by place in
context to the specific jazz era. Moreover, for the
live recordings, the various musicians involved in
the recording will have to be identified, as well as
the locale and year.
 Photographs: The 750 photographs donated to the
collection are an important contribution to the
documentation of American Jazz culture. They
capture images representing a wide spectrum of
jazz musicians and personalities, and the various
locales in which they performed. The bulk of the
photos are from the jazz scenes in New Orleans,
New York, and Chicago, and include negatives and
color transparencies, as well as framed and un-
framed originals and prints.

Our organizational system will have to provide

online access to the digital images of the various
negatives and color transparencies. Additionally,
the photographs might be better arranged by pho-
tographer, type format, and finally chronologically.

Literature: An impressive and varied collection of

jazz related literature. totaling 825 items, was do-
nated, including rare books, reference works
(discographies, guides, catalogs, etc…), biogra-
phies, histories, fiction, and magazines.

The literature will essentially be organized using

MARC standards of cataloguing, with an effort to
link many of the images to the record for online ac-
cess.
 Posters: The posters in the collection, numbering
around 400, are a mix of originals and prints, and
they depict individual artists, promote specific
shows by an artist/group, festivals, well-known jazz
hotspots, etc. The artwork ranges from photographs
to paintings to graphic layout and encompasses
many different styles, from abstract to art deco to
realism. Several of the posters were created by art-
ists famous in their own right.

Among the details our organizational system will

need to account for is the era, artist, venue, type of
print, art style, size (tabloid, broadsheet), materials
used, and creator of the poster. There will be an-
other level of organizational need as we begin to
parse the connections between the posters. We will
want to be able to draw out those posters that depict
a certain subgenre of jazz or a particular geographic
locale and group them together in a meaningful
way.

Paraphernalia: The paraphernalia in our collec-

tion mostly relates to instruments—reeds, picks,
mutes, drumsticks, etc. These items belonged to
specific jazz musicians though provenance is
mostly anecdotal.

Our organizational system would need a way to

cross-reference these items to the artists they be-
longed to—in this case context is extremely impor-
tant since otherwise these look like things you
could buy at any music store. Since most of the
paraphernalia is instrument-related, we may need to
consider merging this category with the larger In-
struments category and then be sure to tag these
items appropriately, identifying former owners.
Instruments: The 75 instruments in the collection
all belonged to jazz musicians. They are from all
areas: woodwind, string, brass, percussion. It is
known that some of the instruments were played
during landmark recordings, such as John Col-
trane’s recording of “A Love Supreme”. More re-
search will need to be done to verify when the in-
struments were used by the artists, and if such in-
formation is even of use or value to our patrons.

At the very least, our organizational system will

need to identify the instrument, place it within a
family of instruments, identify owner, and cross-
reference with the owner’s era, subgenre, locale,
etc.

Souvenirs: Most of the souvenirs (around 250 in

all) in the collection come from popular jazz clubs,
such as the Apollo Theater, the Cotton Club, and
the Lafayette. Though these may seem very close
in nature to the Posters in our collection, they are
distinct in that they belong to a certain locale and
usually are in the form of a program or playbill. We
feel it’s important to keep this category distinct be-
cause of this emphasis on locale.

Our organizational system will need to identify the

type of souvenir, the geographic locale, and, if
available, identify the associated musician. We
would like to be able to pull together all the souve-
nirs from a particular region, specific club, or that
featured a certain musician. We may need to inves-
tigate our use of the term “souvenirs” since the
overwhelming majority of items in this category are
programs.
Reflecting upon our collection:

The exercise of creating a content sample has given us an opportunity to move our con-
sideration away from the purely abstract to focus on something a little more tangible. The proc-
ess of peer-review, the instructor feedback, and our own ruminations have revealed several
challenges and opportunities as we approach the organization of our jazz collection.
The first challenge we face with this collection will be reining it in. That is, our collec-
tion is something we’ve imagined entirely, so the sky has been the limit until now. We need to
consider some time parameters, that perhaps our wealthy collector was only interested in jazz
from a certain time period or was no longer interested in collecting past the early 1980s. In this
content sample we’ve attempted to account for the number of items in order to give ourselves
some sense of scale.
After exploring the collection in a little more depth, it is becoming apparent that some
categories we created in our scenario are perhaps not so clear-cut. For example, we have listed
separate categories for instruments and paraphernalia, but as we examined the bulk of the para-
phernalia we realized that they are mostly instrument accessories and perhaps may be subsumed
by that category.
As a result of peer-review, we realized that our ambition to digitize everything will be
complicated by the reality of copyright laws. Since we’re not experts in this field, we’ll need to
consult with the museum’s lawyers to make sure we do not violate any existing copyrights. Al-
though, some of the items have entered the public domain, other items are protected by privacy
and publicity copyrights. Regarding the latter, notification of these rights will have to be stated
in each of the applicable items for the user’s information. Furthermore, limitations on listening
and viewing time will have to be enforced by the use of small samples.
One of the technical challenges of the collection is due to the evident deterioration
found in numerous audio and video recordings. The conversion to digital form will have to be
undertaken by a recording engineer specializing in restoration. Although a large percentage
will definitely be salvageable, there’s the understanding that a small percentage are in such bad
condition—and since the restoration requires numerous steps—that after just one play they will
begin to deteriorate even further.
The last major challenge we’ve uncovered so far (which really is an opportunity to inno-
vate) is that our collection is so varied and the different items necessitate different classifica-
tions, tags, etc. It’s a little overwhelming to think of creating one coherent system that will
deftly organize all the materials we are bringing to it. In addition to this, the recent class read-
ings, along with instructor feedback, has us considering user needs in a different light. While
it’s easy to say that the collection will be used for research purposes, we haven’t identified yet
what sort of research musicologists would do with such a collection. Perhaps some outreach
between the museum and local and national music departments will need to be considered so
we can understand the scope of work being done within the field in order to better design our
system.