The advantage of enhancing collections of published sound recordings in a context of media dematerialisation

Now more than ever, libraries have a duty to preserve and broadcast the published sound recordings in their collections; in the absence of a large-scale programme of digitisation, they risk rapidly becoming inaccessible. Despite a largely unfavourable legislative context and the difficulties encountered by those in favour of including music recordings in heritage collections, major inventories and digitisation projects are beginning to be undertaken in France and elsewhere. Such projects are largely the work of major libraries in a position to implement concerted digitisation programmes and shared conservation schemes drawing on the expertise of their employees, as these are the basic conditions for creating high-quality digital collections which meet the public’s needs.
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