My Job at the Library: Audio Engineer Helps to Preserve the Nation’s Sounds

by

Bryan Hoffa discusses his work at the Library’s Audio-Visual Conservation Center. This post was first published in LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. “My Job” is a regular feature in the magazine, issues of which are available in their entirety online.

Bryan Hoffa. Photo by Robert Friedrich.

How would you describe your work at the Library?
My job at the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia, is to digitally preserve and archive the incredible recorded sound collections held by the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division and the American Folklife Center. For the vast majority of physical audio formats such as wax cylinders, grooved discs, magnetic tape and so on, this process is preservation reformatting—transferring audio from fragile or obsolete formats to more stable ones. In a real-time transfer process, I create high-resolution wave files at archival specifications. Getting the most audio information out of each format during transfer is crucial. I also collect descriptive metadata about the content of the recording as well as technical information carrying over from the original recording and information about the transfer process and equipment. I’m fortunate to be able to work with top-notch gear!

How did you prepare for your current position?
I first became interested in recording as a musician. I secured an internship at a very well-regarded studio and was mentored by some of the best in the business. I spent the next 10 years learning on the job as a full-time recording and mixing engineer. In early 2007, a fire in a connected building caused smoke and water damage that necessitated closing the business immediately. What happened next foreshadowed my current position.

First, I led a disaster-recovery effort at the studio to save analog master tapes from water damage. Then I landed a part-time position at the Library of Virginia. This was a grant-funded project to complete the ongoing digitization of a large radio collection, documenting the history and operations of historic WRVA radio. In 2008, I heard about an opening at the Library’s brand new state-of-the-art facility in Culpeper, Virginia. The rest is history!

How has technology changed the field of audio preservation?
Technology has always pushed the evolution of audio preservation from the earliest days, when Thomas Edison’s inventions enabled the preservation of the human voice. New technologies have brought improvements that were not thought possible. The biggest shift in audio preservation in my lifetime is file-based digital audio. Up to this point, you would take one object that has a known, limited lifespan and copy it to another object with other inherent problems. Files give us the ability to transcend physical limitations and make unlimited, “bit perfect” copies. This is a game-changer, especially for access. However, it’s not without its own challenges. So much more born-digital content is being created than ever before. Guaranteeing long-term preservation requires massive information technology architectures. Data must be verified and migrated to ensure its longevity and security. Metadata, which used to be handwritten on labels, now lives in databases. At the Library’s state-of-the art facility, we are addressing these issues on a large scale.

What are some of the most memorable audio collections you have worked on?
One collection that really stands out to me is the Universal Music Group’s 2011 donation of more than 200,000 historic recordings. They include master recordings on the Decca label of Bill Monroe, Ella Fitzgerald and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, to name just a few. They sound fantastic, as if they had just been cut yesterday.

I’ve also had the chance to work on the Les Paul Collection, preserving some of the master guitarist’s earliest multitrack recording experiments on disc. Some of these became his first singles for Capitol Records.

Inquiring Minds: Director Casts Girls as “Newsies,” Citing Library’s Historical Photos

by

Benny Seda-Galarza, a public affairs specialist in the Communications Office, is co-author of this post. For two long weeks in summer 1899, readers of the New York World and the New York Journal had to do without their daily papers. The reason: thousands of ragtag child newspaper sellers went on strike against the two largest […]

Calling All Photo Fans and History Detectives: Flickr Commons, 10th Anniversary

by

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, chief of the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. It was first published on “Picture This,” the division’s blog. It’s a remarkable achievement for any social media program to still be going strong after 10 years. But the most important part of the Flickr Commons is the […]

Building Black History: Find Your Roots

by

This is a guest post by Bryonna Head, a public affairs assistant in the Communications Office. It is reprinted from the January–February issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The issue is available in its entirety online. The Library’s local history and genealogy resources make it easier for African-Americans to explore their family histories. […]

Technology at the Library: Long-Hidden Text Is Uncovered in Alexander Hamilton Letter

by

This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division. It is published today to coincide with the anniversary of Alexander Hamilton’s birth: He was born on January 11, 1757. In the mid-19th century John Church Hamilton, a son of Alexander and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, published an edition of his father’s […]

Inquiring Minds: Performing the History of Musical Theater

by

Teachers and filmmakers have long relied on primary sources to make history come alive. Ben West, director, performer and musical theater historian, is also drawn to them—but with a novel purpose. He is using unpublished manuscripts, papers of Broadway authors, copyright records and more to tell the story of the American musical—through a musical. His […]

Veterans on the Homefront: War Creates an Artist

by

This is a guest post by Megan Harris, a librarian with the Veterans History Project. It is one of four profiles that make up “Veterans on the Homefront,” published in the November–December 2017 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. This profile recounts the way in which Tracy Sugarman was affected by his time […]

This Day in History: Celebrating Dizzy Gillespie Through Photographs and More

by

“Be-bop is a way of phrasing and accenting. The accent is on the up beat. Instead of OO-bah, it’s oo-BAH. Different chords, too. And lots of flatted 5ths and 9ths. There’s lots more to it. But just now I can’t think of what.” —Dizzy Gillespie, Sept. 10, 1947, Down Beat Dizzy Gillespie—trumpeter, composer, bandleader—made an […]

EverydayLOC: New Year’s Resolutions

by

Happy New Year! There is something sort of refreshing to me about saying those words. I have always fully embraced the notion that a new calendar year, psychologically speaking, offers a particular moment to reset, recommit and reprioritize. Whether you call them New Year’s Resolutions or, as one of my dear friends refers to them, […]