VocalEssence 50th Anniversary Digital Archiving

Short Term:
Expected Impact: By December 2016, VocalEssence and a contract archivist will have found and created an inventory of all VocalEssence historic audio-visual materials.

Progress Indicator: Physical materials gathered to one location, inventory created.

Status: Complete - all materials have been located and moved to the VocalEssence offices except for a small number of items owned by and housed at Minnesota Public Radio, which will be addressed in the next phase of the project. An inventory catalog was created based on the format of UMedia, where the files will eventually be stored.

Intermediate:
VocalEssence will gain knowledge of the scope of work required to implement Phase 2 of the project, which includes procuring rights, digitization of materials, and developing a web content delivery system.

Progress Indicator: Information gathered to create an estimate of cost and revised work plan for Phase 2 in advance of 2017 Minnesota Historic and Cultural Heritage Large Grant application due date.

Status: Complete - VocalEssence has the knowledge to work on applying for funding and implementing Phase 2 of the project. It was determined based on the results of this project that procuring streaming rights to the files will be more complicated and time-consuming than originally thought, so that portion of the project will be moved to a third phase, along with the web content delivery system.

Long-Term:
The long-term goal of this project is to develop a process for past and future complete digitization of all VocalEssence audio-visual materials, ensuring the historic preservation and making those materials available for public use.

Progress Indicator: All materials delivered to the University of Minnesota Performing Arts Archive, digitally converted, and searchable and accessible to the public via the VocalEssence online repertoire database.

Status: In progress - VocalEssence staff were trained by the project archivist to begin the process of cataloging and digitization of future VocalEssence recordings in order to develop a procedure for processing all incoming recordings. Digitization and public access will happen in future phases of this project.