Rock and Roll

                    Retrieved from http://library.rockhall.com/home on 3/29/13

                    The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library and Archives is located on the campus of Cuyahoga Community College in a brand new, four-story, $12 million dollar facility that houses print resources as well as over 200 archival collections. Although, the library aims to be a comprehensive repository chronicling the history of rock and roll, its holdings are particularly strong in business records related to the industry. The archives also contain original sound recordings, handwritten lyrics, posters, film, and photographs documenting artists and their tours.

                    The website is clearly laid out with tabs across the header for easy navigation to information for potential visitors, donors, and researchers. The search bar is prominently located in the center of the screen with a familiar drop down menu to limit searches by field. A link to helpful slides explaining how to use the catalog is just under the search bar. Unfortunately searching by format was not an option, so I did a search for photographs across all fields. This brought up 1,101 results with the first 10 being finding aids to archival collections of photographs.

Retrieved from http://catalog.rockhall.com/catalog/ARC-0387 on 3/29/13

                   The first entry was the Guide to the David Jacobs Photographs (ARC.0387). I assume the call number is also the acquisition number and reflects when the collection was obtained. The finding aid is broken down into seven sections. General Information contains descriptive as well as administrative metadata with fields for title, dates, extent, language, processing information, and preferred citation. The Collection Overview gives further description and topical information. This collection consists of one item, a CD-R that contains two digital images of photographs of Muddy Waters and Bonnie Raitt taken in 1977. The Biographical Note contains a very brief synopsis of the careers of these two artists and a bibliography of source material. Custodial History has information on the provenance and acquisition of the collection.  The Restrictions section outlines the use access policies related to the collection. The Subjects section contains linked Library of Congress Subject headings for name, subject, and genre. Finally the Collection Inventory is an item level list of everything in the collection. In this collection each image has it’s own component.

                    Overall, I found this to be a very useful and detailed finding aid for such a small collection. Many larger repositories (i.e. Beinecke) do not create finding aids for small collections. Collections consisting of only a few items usually have a fairly detailed catalog record taking the place of a finding aid. I assume the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s relatively small collection and ample financial resources allow them a level of description and processing that cannot be afforded by many peer institutions. By looking at the source code I was able to determine that the finding aid was valid EAD produced with the Archivist’s Toolkit.

                    One glaring omission was the actual digital images themselves. With such a small collection of images that have already been digitized, putting them up in a digital library or linking small thumbnails with the finding aid would be quite easy. I imagine that copyright restrictions do not permit these images to be transmitted freely via the web. In the access notes under Restriction, it says that digital images are available only upon request and access copies are 50 cents an image. The music industry in particular seems to be hypersensitive to issues of copyright infringement. I also found the description of the digital images to be lacking. Important bits of metadata such as file size, format, and date of creation are not included in the finding aid.

Retrieved from http://catalog.rockhall.com/catalog/ARC-0052 on 3/29/13

                    The next entry I looked at was the Guide to Elaine Mayes Photographs (ARC.0052). This collection is slightly larger with 1.92 linear feet of material in one shared oversize box. In this finding aid the Collection Overview is a bit more fleshed out describing the context of the images (Monterey Pop Festival) as well as the images themselves and their arrangement. The Biographical Note also contains a brief biography of the photographer. This is inconsistent with the previous collection’s Biographical Note that provided information on the subjects of the photographs. The Collection Inventory contains an item level record and description of each photograph in the collection.

                    The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library and Archives is an example of a small to medium sized repository with very substantial financial backing. They can provide a level of access and description that are the envy of larger, ill-funded institutions that may be struggling to provide even they most basic access to their collections. 

Reference:
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library and Archives. Retrieved from http://www.rockhall.com/library/