National Recording Preservation Plan
This section calls for increased infrastructure to support audio preservation, including more and better storage facilities, education programs, a directory of resources, and a formal agenda for further research.
In this section, the plan challenges readers to devise innovative strategies to create and share repositories, and to continue to improve digital storage through research.
Audio engineers, archivists and librarians, computer scientists, and subject specialists in music, history and folklore (to name a few) have all made important contributions to the practice and literature.
This part of the plan calls for the development of professional educational programs in audio preservation that balance the knowledge of the fields above and would prepare individuals to perform, or at least understand, the many skills required to accomplish this work.
This research will require collaboration between government, academia and industry in order to leverage existing competencies and avoid duplication of effort.
Recommendation 2.4 encourages successful institutions to share the tools and strategies that allowed them to create useful digital audio objects.
These files are often considered to be at equal risk to those on deteriorating analog media because of the lack of standardization, and obsolescence of proprietary software used to produce the recordings.
Widespread public access to recordings is an admirable goal for archives, but is unrealistic in most cases considering current copyright policy.
Although many decades of research have produced satisfactory discographies of individual record labels and musical forms, consolidation could improve usefulness through standardization, community annotation, and interoperability with existing collection catalogs and finding aids.
Recommendation 3.2 requests a directory of existing collections of all types, contact information for representatives, and descriptions of subject or format strengths.
The federal copyright code does not address sound recordings made before 15 Feb. 1972, which means that the legal status of their use and reproduction is in "limbo" - decided by a complex network of state laws and court decisions.
If the copyright owner of a recording cannot be identified or located, recommendation 3.5 suggests that it be considered an 'orphan work', reducing the liability of institutions who choose to distribute it in good faith after a reasonable search.
The study group appointed by the Library of Congress and US Copyright Office to evaluate the section concluded that these conditions are outdated and overly restrictive, and recommendation 3.6 of this plan suggests ways to modernize the code to allow for better preservation and access in the academic realm.
These recommendations include: This section addresses the ways in which innovative licensing agreements can expand scholarly access to copyrighted recordings.
This would allow archives to share their holdings without risking a lawsuit, and record labels to monetize their properties without the cost and effort of producing a formal reissue.
One proposed solution involves building additional research centers to allow for in-person listening without sometimes prohibitive travel to the Library of Congress.
The final recommendation of this section challenges institutions interested in sharing audio holdings to work with representatives of rights holders to build a consensus on the application of the fair use doctrine, and to publish a guide of best practices based on their findings.
These activities include aiding preservation work by other institutions, promoting public understanding of the board and foundation's goals, developing fundraising campaigns, and forming committees to report on the more specialized tasks.
The next recommendation charges the board with the creation of an advisory committee composed of heads of archives and recording industry executives to work together to accomplish the goals of the plan and resolve conflicts between affected parties.
