IASA 2017 Annual Conference

The archives recorded in the field and widely the sounds of scientific research are quite rare online. They raise multiple issues: ethical and legal issues, contextualization, links between archives and datas, various formats… Even their legitimacy is not always clear to everyone. Through the Europena Sounds project, four research teams from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) have worked together around sound archives to build a new network of resources and skills for a better workflow : the Research Center for Ethnomusicology (CREM) ; the “Phonothèque” of the Mediterranean Social Science Center (MMSH) ; the Phonobase of the Historical Researches Laboratory of Rhône-Alpes Region (LARHRA) ; the Center for Researches on Sound Spaces and Urban Environments (CRESSON).

This heritage represents 38 000 recordings, from 1900 until today, aggregated with the European Data Model for Sound on Europeana. An important work has been undertaken collectively on common metadata and access rights, which led to interesting discussions on ethical issues too. The CNRS teams focused on providing a free access to their collections. They choose to prioritize on tapes recorded before 1963, on cylinders and 78 rpm and to commit themselves into a better clarification of the rights agreements of the witnesses recorded. A lot of positive answers helped them to add value to these collections.

This digital humanities network built in Europe, led to encouraging results. This paper introduces the strategy set up thanks to this new sharing space for the dissemination of sound archives and the exciting prospects that are currently emerging.