Hi, Brewster,
Alan Kelly published the data from HMV through about 1931 by matrix no and later, by catalog number, on CD-Roms. These are available from someone representing his estate in England at a relatively nominal cost- I think it's about $ 100 for the set. It takes some massaging to retitle his files to conform with your rather than his way of thinking, but, once done, the data is easily searchable.
In my own catalog, all Grampohone Company products are listed by matrix number but by label and catalog number. They can thus be searched both ways. It makes sense to treat HMV and the other multi-country record companies under one matrix no heading and allow access by label as well. This goes for the Odeon family which includes European Odeon, some US Odeon, some OKEH, Parlophone and Parlophon and Fonotipia. Similarly, once the German branch of the Gramophone Company is separated from the international company, I treat Polydor and Schallplatte Gramophon as one company the same way. There are matrix number clues that indicate which matrices are of Gramophone Co origin and which DGG. A searchable CD-R of the Fonotipia legers is sold by Kurt Nauck.
The German Odeon catalog was published but seems to have been typed. Check with Rainer Lotz for access to the computer files he created for his various discographic publications. In addition to classical music, he cvers german popular and dance bands , marching bands (I think) and lots of ethnic stuff.
It wouldn't be a surprise to find the Michael Kaneer, who has published regularly on Indian labels, may have his data computerized.
I betcha someone(s) in japan have covered their own 78 labels discographically.
I'm assuming you have or will have the Ruppli label discographies as well as those published by Alan Sutton.
Steve Smolian
-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brewster Kahle
Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2018 4:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ARSCLIST] 78rpm labels: how date matched are they? (in the Great 78 Project)
tldr: check out
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-h_z6NM5RnL_pwzMMsgt6-3NgKINHu6HelQryihwq04/edit#gid=109348870
David Seubert, of UCSB, said that the key metadata (beyond what is on
the label) to help people navigate 78s are: date, place, genre. So we
have been trying to get dates (much more to go on genre and place).
It has been a combo of volunteers (thank you!) and then automating the
sources and techniques they used as much as possible.
We get the data from 78discography.com, discogs, 45worlds, dahr, and
most recently we keyed the data in from:
The American 45 and 78 RPM record dating guide, 1940-1959, and
The Almost Complete 78 RPM Record Dating Guide (II)
(let me know if you want the data and we can discuss)
With it we have now gotten 80% coverage, which is the highest yet.
To find what we still need, I made a spreadsheet, sorted by the number
of records we don't have a date for yet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-h_z6NM5RnL_pwzMMsgt6-3NgKINHu6HelQryihwq04/edit#gid=109348870
but it also has a sheet with the current collection, but just label,
catno, date (if any) and web address.
If you have leads on how to find the missing dates, or want to help hunt
for them, most welcome. Maybe this can help you date your collections...
anyway, having fun.
-brewster
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