Okay, Matt and Jeff:

Some interesting views. And now there is the lawsuit, but I imagine UMG would restrict access as part of any legal agreement which forces them to hand over previously unseen itemizations. Unless, of course ARSC decided to join in the action as an interested party? Why not? It seems after reading all the posts involved with the UMG/Universal 2008 fire, the articles, the twitter account; a reasonable conclusion to reach is that UMG has a significantly greater amount of information on the UMG inventory than is being released to the public, or known by any of us. Don’t forget, whatever insurance claim UMG filed for the loss (and they did file a big one) documents must have been generated that detailed the loss at great length. Pretty sure no one has seen that claim.

The reason to spend time, energy, and effort to obtain the most completely detailed inventory existing is a singular one: By knowing the artists involved, the ones who actually lost unrecoverable material, or material that exists now only in inferior format backups (MP3, etc). WE CAN FRAME A POWERFUL ARGUMENT TO THE PUBLIC, and we should be able to do this better than anyone. 

IT’S ALL UPSIDE: We will draw attention to ARSC’s primary mission, ARSC will benefit from the appreciation of the general public for finally getting to the truth of what was lost. The public is more inclined to want action taken and ARSC has all the brainpower needed to put forward a plan for exactly what that action(s) should be. This means raising the profile of ARSC. A good thing to do. Maybe we’d see a few more new members. It means raising public, legislative consciousness on what still needs to be done to see that something like this never happens again.

Sorry for the CAPS, a bad habit I seem to be picking up from reading too many White House tweets(:

Warm regards,
Alex McGehee

> On Jun 19, 2019, at 3:28 PM, Jeff Willens <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Matt!
> 
> Yes, a database DID exist for the holdings at UMG-West. More than one, in fact, as there were scores of different labels. But yes, there was an overarching database because they spent a great deal of effort trying to make it compatible with the east coast PolyGram labels' database. Did it include every single reel that was there? I have no idea.
> 
> Catalog reissues are what largely power the major labels these days, so labels and their producers want to know as much as they can about what they have. 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 19 Jun 2019 11:24:26 -0400, Matthew Snyder <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> Alex, behind your very good question is an assumption that UMG had a
>> complete and detailed inventory of the contents of the building in the
>> first place. There is no reason to believe that they did. They didn't care
>> enough about their holdings to invest money in protecting them, so why
>> would they have spent money to catalog what they had and where it was?
>> Sure, one guy had a pretty good knowledge of what was there, but that's not
>> the same as a paper or database trail.
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Matt Snyder | The New York Public Library
>> 
>> Archivist
>> 
>> 
>> Special Collections
>> 
>> Library Services Center
>> 
>> 31-11 Thomson Avenue, Rm. 202, Long Island City, NY 11101
>> 
>> T: 917.229.9582 | matthewsnyder <http://goog_214053846>@nypl.org
>> <[log in to unmask]>