On Friday Dec. 4 from 2-4pm in the Mills Music Library Meeting Room we are pleased to present a session on Sound Archives, featuring a discussion about the sound archives we have on campus/the community and the issues facing sound archivists in the digital age. The session will feature brief presentations by Ellen Brooks, (Oral Historian, Wisconsin Veterans Museum), Paul Hedges (Emerging Technologies Archivist and Audio Archivist, Wisconsin Historical Society), Troy Reeves Head of Oral History Program, UW-Madison Archives) and Tom Caw (Music Public Services Librarian, Mills Library).

Tom is graciously hosting us in the Mills Music Library (B162 Memorial Library, downstairs from the main entrance lobby). As always, after the session, we’ll head to a nearby spot for some informal socializing.

Here are the full bios of the participants:

Troy Reeves, Head, Oral History Program, UW-Madison Archives

Troy Reeves heads the oral history program at the UW-Madison Archives. In this role he oversees an collection of around 4,500 hours of audio. When added to his work as Idaho’s Oral Historian, Troy has work in audio archives since 1999. He too is the managing editor of the Oral History Review, and in that job he has worked with authors to add audio excerpts to the online version of their articles.

Ellen Brooks, Oral Historian, Wisconsin Veterans Museum

Ellen Brooks graduated from Columbia University with a MA in Oral History in 2013. Since November 2013 she has held the position of Oral Historian at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum (WVM). Ellen is responsible for managing the Oral History Program by actively gathering oral histories from veterans across Wisconsin, and, on the archival side, overseeing the preservation and accessibility of the oral history collection. To date WVM has over 2,000 oral history interviews in the collection.

Paul Hedges, Emerging Technologies Archivist and Audio Archivist, Wisconsin Historical Society

Paul Hedges plays dual roles at the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives as Emerging Technologies Archivist and Audio Archivist. In his audio role, he oversees the Society’s collection of 45,000 audio items that document a wide-range of Wisconsin and National topics.  Paul has worked in a variety of archives, technology and special media positions since 1993, but began his formal Audio Archivist career just two years ago.

Tom Caw, Music Public Services Librarian, Mills Library

Tom Caw has been the Music Public Services Librarian at Mills Music Library since 2008. He is primarily devoted to helping patrons satisfy their musical information needs, but he is also responsible for collection development of audiovisual materials. He entertained the notion of becoming an audio engineer in the mid-1990s, and took the full slate of courses offered at The Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio. He gets to use a few of those skills now and then in the sound studio at Mills, digitizing analog formats for patrons doing research and for instructors needing streaming audio for course reserves.