A new sound in the academic library – supporting unusual digital initiatives

Abstract

In recent years, the opportunities for academic libraries to engage as a partner in digital initiatives in academia have expanded significantly. The traditional focus on digitization, preservation, and dissemination of collections has developed and shifted considerably, bringing new strategies for adequately serving the changed academic needs, as well as building and utilizing different types of collections. The goal of this article is to elaborate on these strategic shifts by presenting one of Panitza Library’s newest digital collections projects – the Sound Library of the American University in Bulgaria, thus sharing insights into the practical process.

Keywords:

• Digital initiatives
• digital sound library
• academic library
• collaboration
• library advocacy
• digital humanities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Academic librarians are nowadays involved in bibliometrics, ranking, accreditation, Open-access publishing practices, and many other aspects of assisting the faculty research process.

2 For example, starting from prospective students’ school visits to the academic library to their graduation and later on as alumni users of the library.

3 AUBG Sound Library (2020). American University in Bulgaria Repository. http://dspace.aubg.edu/xmlui/handle/nls/32465

4 Examples of websites with paid downloads - Splice (n.d.). https://sounds.splice.com/. Epidemic Sound (n.d.). https://www.epidemicsound.com/. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (n.d.). https://www.nfsa.gov.au/.

5 BBC Sound Effects (n.d.). https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/.

6 British Library Sounds (n.d.). http://sounds.bl.uk/.

7 The Europeana Sounds project (February 2014 - January 2017) is based at the British Library. It continues to be an aggregator for audio materials for Europeana. https://www.europeana.eu/en

8 Internet Archive Audio Archive (n.d.). https://www.nts.live/shows/british-library-sound-archive.

9 FreeSound (n.d.). https://freesound.org/.

10 Argirova, D. (2020). AUBG Sound Library: Capstone project [Unpublished senior thesis, American University in Bulgaria]. American University in Bulgaria Senior Theses Repository [visible only onsite]. http://dspace.aubg.edu/xmlui/handle/nls/33905

11 National Academic Library and Information System Foundation (n.d.). http://www.nalis.bg/.

12 Panitza Library has several digital collections, some for university network usage only, others - for broader access. The restrictions are based on internal policies and collections scope.

13 Damyanova, R. (2020). Image Copyright LibGuide. https://aubg.libguides.com/c.php?g=673714&p=4791482

14 Sonic Dictionary (n.d.). https://sonicdictionary.duke.edu/index.html.

15 National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts “Kr. Sarafov” (NATFA), Bulgaria (n.d.). https://natfiz.bg/en/.