Southern Illinois Music Archive
Donation protected
My name is Alex Kirt. I am a recent graduate of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where I earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Mass Communication and Media Arts. I am a musician, recording engineer, music producer, and music archivist. During my time as a graduate student, I established the Southern Illinois Music Archive in order to collect and preserve the historic sound recordings of the musical culture of Southern Illinois.
I have spent the past several years conducting research and experimentation into the methods of sound recording preservation that have been published by many of the leaders in the field including the Library of Congress, the Audio Engineering Society (AES), and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC). I am a member of both the AES and the ARSC. The Southern Illinois Music Archive is now listed in the ARSC's official directory of regional music archive collections.
Since 2013, I have worked as the sole curator and audio engineer for the Southern Illinois Music Archive. During the last three years I have collected and preserved hundreds of historic sound recordings documenting the music of the Southern Illinois region. I have used my own equipment and have kept the costs down to a bare minimum by utilizing modern digital audio recording equipment in order to digitize vintage sound recordings for preservation.
In 2015, I was able to establish an agreement with the Special Collections Resource Center in Morris Library at SIUC. The SCRC has agreed to house the physical artifacts associated with the SIMA collection to be preserved in their state of the art, climate-controlled media preservation vaults. The SCRC will also house a digital backup copy of every item in the SIMA collection that was stable enough to survive being played back for digitization.
Thus far the SIMA collection has been a one person operation. I have done all of the work and covered all of the costs out of my own pocket. Now I have come to the point that I need to ask for your help. I have collected so many various formats of sound recordings that I cannot possibly afford to purchase the necessary playback equipment in order to preserve the recordings. Vintage audio playback equipment is very costly, as you can probably imagine. However, I feel that it is crucial that we preserve these historic sound recordings before they deteriorate to the point that they are no longer salvagable.
I established the Southern Illinois Music Archive in order to preserve the history of our regional culture through the sound recordings of our resident musicians. Southern Illinois is truly a unique and beautiful region. Our musical culture is one of a kind. I have travelled throughout the United States, performing music in many of the major cities, college towns, and rural areas all across our great nation, yet, there are very few regions in this country with a comparably sized population that posesses such a rich and diverse community of highly talented musicians as Southern Illinois. We have a very special and uncommon musical culture here that has spanned many generations, and we need to document it and preserve it in an organized manner before our history is lost forever.
Any funds that are donated to the Southern Illinois Music Archive will be used in order to develop a state of the art sound preservation facility that is outfitted with properly maintained and functional analog and digital audio playback and recording equipment.
I have big plans for this historical preservation organization. I hope to eventually establish an archival website that will grant the public access to all of the archive's holdings for research and enjoyment. I plan to eventually form a board of directors and become an official non-profit organization. I would like to grow the organization to the point that we can not only collect and perserve existing sound recordings, but also create new recordings of regional music much in the same manner that the great cultural archivist Alan Lomax worked to document folk music and culture. I would like to work in partnership with other musical and historical organizations within the Southern Illinois region to promote local music and culture through live events, televised events, radio broadcasts, internet media, and by distributing collections of recordings featuring the music of our region's performers.
I believe that all of these things are possible, and I have already taken the steps necessary to establish the foundation. Now I must ask for the help of the community to establish a historic sound recording preservation facility so that we can make this archive grow indefinitely. Every little bit helps, and I deeply appreciate your consideration.
If you cannot afford to donate money, perhaps you can donate a functioning piece of sound equipment? We need reel to reel tape players, ADAT players, DAT players, and turntables. It will be rather expensive to establish the preservation facility, but I believe that the benefits that this archive will offer to our community will far outweigh the costs, in fact, I believe that it already has. Please help me to make it even better.
Many Thanks and Best Wishes!
Alex Kirt, MFA
I have spent the past several years conducting research and experimentation into the methods of sound recording preservation that have been published by many of the leaders in the field including the Library of Congress, the Audio Engineering Society (AES), and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC). I am a member of both the AES and the ARSC. The Southern Illinois Music Archive is now listed in the ARSC's official directory of regional music archive collections.
Since 2013, I have worked as the sole curator and audio engineer for the Southern Illinois Music Archive. During the last three years I have collected and preserved hundreds of historic sound recordings documenting the music of the Southern Illinois region. I have used my own equipment and have kept the costs down to a bare minimum by utilizing modern digital audio recording equipment in order to digitize vintage sound recordings for preservation.
In 2015, I was able to establish an agreement with the Special Collections Resource Center in Morris Library at SIUC. The SCRC has agreed to house the physical artifacts associated with the SIMA collection to be preserved in their state of the art, climate-controlled media preservation vaults. The SCRC will also house a digital backup copy of every item in the SIMA collection that was stable enough to survive being played back for digitization.
Thus far the SIMA collection has been a one person operation. I have done all of the work and covered all of the costs out of my own pocket. Now I have come to the point that I need to ask for your help. I have collected so many various formats of sound recordings that I cannot possibly afford to purchase the necessary playback equipment in order to preserve the recordings. Vintage audio playback equipment is very costly, as you can probably imagine. However, I feel that it is crucial that we preserve these historic sound recordings before they deteriorate to the point that they are no longer salvagable.
I established the Southern Illinois Music Archive in order to preserve the history of our regional culture through the sound recordings of our resident musicians. Southern Illinois is truly a unique and beautiful region. Our musical culture is one of a kind. I have travelled throughout the United States, performing music in many of the major cities, college towns, and rural areas all across our great nation, yet, there are very few regions in this country with a comparably sized population that posesses such a rich and diverse community of highly talented musicians as Southern Illinois. We have a very special and uncommon musical culture here that has spanned many generations, and we need to document it and preserve it in an organized manner before our history is lost forever.
Any funds that are donated to the Southern Illinois Music Archive will be used in order to develop a state of the art sound preservation facility that is outfitted with properly maintained and functional analog and digital audio playback and recording equipment.
I have big plans for this historical preservation organization. I hope to eventually establish an archival website that will grant the public access to all of the archive's holdings for research and enjoyment. I plan to eventually form a board of directors and become an official non-profit organization. I would like to grow the organization to the point that we can not only collect and perserve existing sound recordings, but also create new recordings of regional music much in the same manner that the great cultural archivist Alan Lomax worked to document folk music and culture. I would like to work in partnership with other musical and historical organizations within the Southern Illinois region to promote local music and culture through live events, televised events, radio broadcasts, internet media, and by distributing collections of recordings featuring the music of our region's performers.
I believe that all of these things are possible, and I have already taken the steps necessary to establish the foundation. Now I must ask for the help of the community to establish a historic sound recording preservation facility so that we can make this archive grow indefinitely. Every little bit helps, and I deeply appreciate your consideration.
If you cannot afford to donate money, perhaps you can donate a functioning piece of sound equipment? We need reel to reel tape players, ADAT players, DAT players, and turntables. It will be rather expensive to establish the preservation facility, but I believe that the benefits that this archive will offer to our community will far outweigh the costs, in fact, I believe that it already has. Please help me to make it even better.
Many Thanks and Best Wishes!
Alex Kirt, MFA
Organizer
Alex Kirt
Organizer
Makanda, IL
