Library of Congress announces National Recording Preservation Plan

The USA's Library of Congress today unveiled "The Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Plan," a blueprint for saving America’s recorded sound heritage for future generations. The congressionally mandated plan spells out 32 short- and long-term recommendations involving both the public and private sectors and covering infrastructure, preservation, access, education and policy strategies.

The plan released today is the cumulative result of more than a decade of work by the Library and its National Recording Preservation Board (www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/), which comprises representatives from professional organizations of composers, musicians, musicologists, librarians, archivists and the recording industry.

Among the recommendations:

• Create a publicly accessible national directory of institutional, corporate and private recorded-sound collections and an authoritative national discography that details the production of recordings and the location of preservation copies in public institutions;
• Develop a coordinated national collections policy for sound recordings, including a strategy to collect, catalog and preserve locally produced recordings, radio broadcast content and neglected and emerging audio formats and genres;
• Establish university-based degree programs in audio archiving and preservation and continuing education programs for practicing audio engineers, archivists, curators and librarians;
• Construct environmentally controlled storage facilities to provide optimal conditions for long-term preservation;
• Establish an Audio-Preservation Resource Directory website to house a basic audio-preservation handbook, collections appraisal guidelines, metadata standards and other resources and best practices;
• Establish best practices for creating and preserving born-digital audio files;
• Apply federal copyright law to sound recordings created before February 15, 1972;
• Develop a basic licensing agreement to enable on-demand secure streaming by libraries and archives of out-of-print recordings;
• Organize an advisory committee of industry executives and heads of archives to address recorded sound preservation and access issues that require public-private cooperation for resolution.

The plan can be downloaded from the link at the top of this page:
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2013/13-014.html