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(L-R) Patricia
Fulton, archivist; Pauline Cox, archival assistant; Paul Gruchy,
archival assistant, CBC Project; and John Drover, archival
assistant, CBC Project.
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By Deborah
Inkpen
Memorial’s Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA), which
contains the largest audio archive in Atlantic Canada, is undertaking
several projects to digitize a number of its collections.
Founded in 1968 by Dr. Herbert Halpert, then head of the Department
of Folklore, the archive is comprised of extensive collections
of Newfoundland and Labrador folksongs and music, folk narratives,
oral history, folk customs, beliefs and practices, childlore
and descriptions of material culture. It has special collections
of Newfoundland vocabulary, proverbs and riddles, and houses
material for a projected linguistic atlas of the province.
It is also home to the Q67 questionnaire that was taken by roughly
1,000 MUN students over Christmas 1967 and used as a resource
for the Dictionary of Newfoundland English and Family Names
of the Island of Newfoundland.
“Newfoundland and Labrador popular culture is an increasing
element in MUNFLA's holdings, including commercial recordings,
radio broadcasts, and recordings of local theatrical performances,”
said Patricia Fulton, archivist at MUNFLA. “The archive
is in the process of reformatting many of its collections digitally
and one of the projects it is undertaking is to digitize its
CBC holdings.”
Ms. Fulton began work at MUNFLA 22 years ago, as a graduate
student assistant, and continued on in various positions after
finishing her master’s degree at Memorial. She said the
CBC broadcast materials have grown so significantly over the
years that they “really are a sub-archives” of MUNFLA.
“Most of the materials were originally gathered from the
CBC station on Duckworth Street in St. John’s but some
were also sent from the national archives of Canada which were
dubbed from CBC transcription tapes. We have about 13,000 audio
tapes that we will be reformatting digitally.”
Ms. Fulton said the project was undertaken to preserve the materials
and to make them more widely available to researchers. Funded
by the CBC, two employees, Paul Gruchy and John Drover are both
working on the project that originally began in the fall of
1999 for two years and then was resumed in October 2003. The
CBC is funding similar projects across Canada.
Another of the archive’s major projects is the digitizing
of a collection deposited in 1970 by the estate of MacEdward
Leach, who founded the Department of Folklore at the University
of Pennsylvania. As early as 1949, and throughout his career,
Mr. Leach collected folksongs, ballads and instrumental folk
music in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Jamaica, and the Southern
Mountains of the United States. In fact, he made several trips
to Newfoundland during which he collected more than 600 songs
and other folklore. The collection consists primarily of audio
recordings and field notes made in Newfoundland, Labrador and
Nova Scotia during Leach's field trips.
The project to digitize the music collection also includes the
development of a Web site, co-produced by MUNFLA and Research
Centre for the Study of Music, Media, and Place (MMaP). Dr.
Beverley Diamond, Canada Research Chair in traditional music/ethnomusicology,
is the director of the project and the team includes Ian Brodie,
Stacey MacLean, Rhiannon McKechnie, Joy Ricketts, and Ayako
Yoshimura.
“It’s really quite an opportunity for us, on two
levels,” said Ian Brodie, project manager on the MacEdward
Leach project. “First of all, we are immersing ourselves
in a collection that is pivotal to the history of Newfoundland
and Cape Breton folksong collecting, but from which little has
been published. Many people have worked on it over the years,
but more for the purposes of cross-comparison with their own
collections.
“We are attempting to study the collection in its own
right, trying to capture Leach’s experience. On the other
hand, the creation of a Web site is a new form of publication,
and we have to contend with creating a site that is accessible
to the broadest number of people.” The work involves struggling
with technical parameters (levels of resolution for both pictures
and sound files that give as clear a sound or image as possible
with as low a bit rate as possible) and pedagogical parameters
(providing context and explanatory detail for the collection
that is accessible to an upper-elementary level student but
relevant for university students and professional researchers.)
“It’s a balancing act, and we have four months to
do it.”
Ms. Fulton said archives are an invaluable resource for researchers,
often yielding unexpected treasures. “The digital projects
underway at MUNFLA will facilitate access to this wealth of
material and that is a very satisfying prospect.” |
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issue: February 5, 2003
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