Transferring Soundings from storage to the Internet is a project too large for just one institution to take on.
The ongoing collaborative nature of this project was the subject of a panel discussion at the Special Libraries Association’s annual conference in June 2009, and the technological challenges of the project — digitizing, archiving, indexing, and streaming the audio; embedding the digital files with the appropriate keyword metadata; generating computer-assisted transcripts of each of the 862 episodes; and developing the editing tool (try it here) that helps us ensure the accuracy of the transcripts — demand a depth and breadth of specialized skills that, when harnessed, result in no less than magic.
The documentary echoSoundings (below) discusses both the importance of preserving the Soundings archive as well as the institutional partnerships and expertise required to bring vinyl to megabyte.
echoSoundings 17:15