It's great to hear of other people interested in AV in the Michigan and Ohio area. I'm originally from Michigan and have done most of my AV archiving experience there as an undergrad and graduate student (2012-2015). I was in the similar boat 5 years ago and ended up going to Alaska Film Archives at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks for my initial AV internship before I was able to find projects in Michigan. Disclaimer, most of my knowledge of the area is related to moving images and not audio.

Michigan has its own archival organization, Michigan Archival Association (MAA), and last week was their yearly conference. While it was up in Traverse City, there were panels focused on AV. https://miarchivists.wordpress.com/ I don't know when it will be in the Ann Arbor/Metro Detroit area again but it's something to look out for if you're interested.

A little far for you but Central Michigan University has been working on a film preservation project for many years and about to wrap up. They hope to focus on more of their magnetic media soon. The person to contact about AV materials at CMU is Marian Matyn ([log in to unmask]).

The person who focused on AV materials at the Michigan State University Archives & Historical Collections is Matthew Wilcox ([log in to unmask]). The university archive there has a lot of film and video and Matthew is a whiz on video.

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor has an AV collection and an AV Archivist, Elizabeth Druga ([log in to unmask]).

Some other places to check out besides UoM are the Historical Society of Michigan (Lansing) and Wayne State University (Detroit). There may also be something in Toledo. WYSO in the Dayton area has a large digital and analog collection of their materials (http://wyso.org/archives). Here at Ohio State, we're starting a two year project to assess AV materials in the various library units. Not directly related to an institution, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting has their transcription game, Fix It, and gives you the ability focus on materials from WIAA (Interlochen) and WKAR (Lansing). http://www.wgbh.org/press/press_release.cfm?pid=7488CEAB-5056-0403-6735-70208B5BADED.


Let me know how your search goes!
Tressa


Tressa Graves, MLIS | AV Assessment & Process Assistant
The Ohio State University Libraries | Libraries Tech Center
1165 Kinnear Road, Columbus, OH 43212
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-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Jackson
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2017 8:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Presentation in Ann Arbor / Detroit

Nice the hear from someone in A2.

Back in the 50s, I worked at WUOM-FM cataloging the Diamond collection of 78's we only got through 1100 items before I was done with my masters in Library Science. Due to my work on a bibliography of recorded sound, organizing the meetings leading up to the first 1965 steering meeting at the Ford Museum (resulting in 1966 founding of ARSC) as well as working under Kurtz Myers at the Detroit Public Library (DPL) as pre-pro, while in school, I was tapped to help open the Lincoln Center, Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, NY as my first job. Quite a bit later I opened the Oakland University Performing Arts Library (PAL) -- unfortunately it was returned to the main library years later after the School of Performing Arts was disbanded. In the early 70s I also worked with Berry Gordy's sister on saving materials for their Motown archive/museum when they were dumping things for moving to LA.

My thoughts are, that if you are looking for or interested in doing work in recorded sound, you might want to look and inquire at WUOM-FM or the UM School of Music. Michigan State also has/had a large collection of recordings; mostly tapes [I believe the Vincent oral history WWII broadcast tapes are part of this now.] Motown has their archive. It wouldn't hurt to check in with any of these to learn what's going on in the area. Ask for their thoughts and suggestions. There were several major collections in Grand Rapids; friends/colleagues of mine (both men died--I don't know what happened to their collections.) Ohio and Indiana have major sound archives (see ARSC directory). I'm not up on what's going on now with DPL collections; major collection of LPs (Kurtz was author/compiler of /Record Ratings/ for years with the Music Library
Association.) DPL also has a large collection on Black performers; the Hackley archive.
http://www.detroitpubliclibrary.org/featuredcollection/e-azalia-hackley-collection


Anyway--if you want to work in the field, you should just start by contacting the major players in the areas; there are at least 7 major archives in the 3 state area (MI, OH, IN,) including Film; both at Dearborn Public, and Ford Museum (has films, recordings, and other
media.) Jim Limbacker was the film guru at Dearborn--long deceased, but I suspect the film archive/program still exists somewhere in Michigan, if not at the library. Get yourself known to them, so when they hear of something they can either contact you or recommend those looking to talk with you. Start your own regional directory of newer collectors/collection (people who are not in the ARSC directory) to pass around--this will get your name out there rather quickly.

The Michigan Arts Festivals are places to meet up with archivists as well.
Paul

On 6/21/2017 1:34 PM, matt love wrote:
> I've been on this list for many many years, lurking except for a post
> or two, but am finally motivated to post.
>
> There's a couple or three components to this, I'll try to organize it
> in a way that makes sense.
>
> First: Joyce Jenje Makwenda will be presenting on her work in the Ann
> Arbor area on Thursday
> (http://stamps.umich.edu/stamps/detail/joyce_jenje_makwenda
> ).
> She is an archivist, historian, ethnomusicologist, and writer who
> lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe where she founded and runs the
> Joyce Jenje Makwenda Collection Archive
> <http://www.joycejenjearchives.co.zw/author/joyce/>. It is one of the
> largest privately-owned archives in Zimbabwe, housing documented
> interviews, newspapers, vinyl records, photography, musical
> instruments, and other objects.
>
> She will repeat the presentation in Detroit at the Zimbabwe Cultural
> Center of Detroit on July 13. I thought this might be of interest to
> ARSC members in this area.
>
> Which leads me to then next part; are there ARSC members in this area
> (I'm just outside Ann Arbor but Detroit is just a 25 minutes away)? I
> have never really been "in the field" and abandoned efforts to work my
> way in a number of years ago, but maybe it's time to rethink.
>
> Some background: I was in the MLIS program at the University of
> Washington a few years ago. I was interested in reference
> librarianship, but when Google search came in, and I realized that my
> particular knack for research was obsolete! I could either dig in
> deeper, or shift my focus. I didn't have the mental discipline or
> attention span to dig deeper, so I looked around for other areas of
> interest. I was fascinated with archiving audio materials, but there
> was no coursework available for that there. The more I read about this
> on this list, the more intimidated I became about trying to figure
> this out or do it on my own. I was concerned that I would probably ruin rather than preserve what I could get my hands on.
>
> My degree work was interrupted; now that I am in a new situation, I'm
> thinking perhaps I should rethink this. I haven't looked into what's
> available locally. I'm retired, and don't need to make money, but
> rust, moisture, sticky shed etc never sleeps, so maybe there's
> something I could contribute as a volunteer?
>
> Thanks to all who stayed with me to the end!
>
> ---
> This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
> http://www.avg.com
>