SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
EXPLORE +
  • About infoDOCKET
  • Academic Libraries on LJ
  • Research on LJ
  • News on LJ
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Libraries
    • Academic Libraries
    • Government Libraries
    • National Libraries
    • Public Libraries
  • Companies (Publishers/Vendors)
    • EBSCO
    • Elsevier
    • Ex Libris
    • Frontiers
    • Gale
    • PLOS
    • Scholastic
  • New Resources
    • Dashboards
    • Data Files
    • Digital Collections
    • Digital Preservation
    • Interactive Tools
    • Maps
    • Other
    • Podcasts
    • Productivity
  • New Research
    • Conference Presentations
    • Journal Articles
    • Lecture
    • New Issue
    • Reports
  • Topics
    • Archives & Special Collections
    • Associations & Organizations
    • Awards
    • Funding
    • Interviews
    • Jobs
    • Management & Leadership
    • News
    • Patrons & Users
    • Preservation
    • Profiles
    • Publishing
    • Roundup
    • Scholarly Communications
      • Open Access

January 10, 2020 by Gary Price

Listen to Interviews with Over 700 Authors: Ohio University Libraries Digitizes and Preserves Nationally Syndicated CBS Radio Program ‘Book Beat’

January 10, 2020 by Gary Price

From Ohio University:

The Ohio University Libraries’ Don Swaim Collection, featuring over 700 audio interviews of well-known authors from “Book Beat,” the nationally produced CBS Radio News program, is now digitally available online — including digital transcripts of the syndicated news program.

From 1982 through 1993, “Book Beat,” hosted by OHIO alumnus Don Swaim (1959), ran daily snippets of the candid taped interviews of famous authors such as Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, John Irving, Ray Bradbury and many others.

“‘Book Beat’ was two- or three-minute broadcasts that would come on five days a week that included interviews with authors, as well as comments from Swaim’s perspective,” Stacey Lavender, special collections librarian and curator of the Swaim Collection, said. “Swaim would take a couple of little snippets from the interview and intersperse those with his thoughts and commentary about the book. They were really polished and radio-quality professionally produced.”

The full-length interviews, from which “Book Beat” broadcasts were created, are longer in length and much more free flowing in nature. Swaim’s journalistic interviewing technique of casual conversation brought out a broad range of topics from his celebrity authors, editors and people in the publishing world.

Their conversations ranged from current-day world politics, music and the arts, which rippled across the United States during the 1980s and 1990s, to the author’s writing style, specifics about characters or themes in their books, to even as far as what they ate for breakfast that morning. His discerning questioning brought out the unique personalities of each of his featured guests.

With the support of Swaim, the Ohio University Libraries began a two-part preservation and accessibility project in order to make this collection playable online, since the original magnetic tapes degrade and will not play forever. The two phases included professionally reformatting and transcribing the “Book Beat” tapes to meet audio preservation standards (Phase One, completed in 2018), and to digitize the full-length interviews to join the Don Swaim Digital Collection (Phase Two, completed in 2019).

According to Erin Wilson, digital imaging specialist and lab manager within digital initiatives, the digital collection should draw the interest of people interested in podcasts, a medium that has become increasingly popular.

Wilson also reasons that the collection has a broad interdisciplinary appeal to students and other scholars interested not only in literature, but also in journalism.

“Many people who are interested in journalism can also benefit from looking at Swaim’s process,” Wilson explains. “It was a craft for him to distill those, sometimes hour-long, interviews into succinct segments, but what makes me happy is just knowing that it is accessible online now.”

Listen Online: Direct to Don Swaim Digital Collection

See Also: Interviews with Authors: Nashville Public Television (NPT) Digitizes 901 Episodes of John Seigenthaler’s ‘A Word on Words’ Series

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Interviews, Libraries, News, Podcasts, Preservation, Profiles, Publishing

SHARE:

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Job Zone

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Infodocket Posts

NY Times: "Turning Nairobi’s Public Libraries Into 'Palaces for the People'"

From The NY Times: In 1931, the first library in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, opened its doors — to white patrons only. Nearly a century later, Kenyans dressed in the slinky ...

UC Berkeley School of Law Library Reclassifies Indigenous Materials, Giving Them Their Own Place on the Shelves

From Berkeley Law: As part of its broader commitment to considering and fostering diversity and inclusion within its storied stacks, the Berkeley Law Library staff have taken on one prominent example of ...

Not Real News: An Associated Press Roundup of Untrue Stories Shared Widely on Social Media This Week

From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...

A Selection of New or Recently Updated Reports From the Congressional Research Service

An Introduction to Trade Secrets Law in the United States Oil and Gas Technology and Geothermal Energy Development Regulating Big Tech: CRS Legal Products for the 118th Congress Rules and ...

Deepfakes are Becoming a Cottage Industry; STM US Annual Conference 2023 to Take Place in DC (April 26-27);...

Columbia: A Judge Just Used ChatGPT to Make a Court Decision (via VICE) Coming Soon: STM US Annual Conference 2023 to Take Place in DC (April 26-27) FCC Announces Over ...

New Journal Article: "Sustainability 3.0 in Libraries: A Challenge for Management"

The article linked below was published today (February 3, 2023). Title Sustainability 3.0 in Libraries: A Challenge for Management Author Alice Keller University Library Basel, University of Basel,  Switzerland Source ...

U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Nobel Foundation to Hold Nobel Prize Summit on Countering Misinformation and Building...

From a National Academies Announcement: The Nobel Prize Summit Truth, Trust and Hope will bring together Nobel Prize laureates and other world-renowned experts and leaders for a global dialogue on how to stop ...

With Support From the Arcadia Fund, MIT Press Announces New Initiative to Flip Existing Subscription-Based Journals to a...

From a MIT Press Announcement:  In keeping with its mission and longstanding commitment to increase access to scholarship, the MIT Press is pleased to announce shift+OPEN. This new initiative is designed ...

A New EPUB Reader For E-Books From the Library of Congress Open Access Books Collection 

From a Library of Congress Blog Post: The Open Access Books Collection on loc.gov includes approximately 6,000 contemporary open access e-books covering a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works ...

Panel Discussion Video Recording: "Internet Freedom: Information Communication, Accessibility and Archiving"

The panel discussion video recording embedded below from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) was recorded on February 1, 2023.  Description This is a discussion on censorship-resistance, web archiving and ensuring ...

RLUK Releases Community-Driven Toolkit for the Development and Delivery of Virtual Reading Rooms (VRRs)

From RLUK (Research Libraries UK): The Virtual Reading Rooms (VRRs) Toolkit is a resource for all collection-holding institutions, including libraries, archives, and museums, which are interested in setting up a VRR consultation ...

Microsoft Bing to Rely on GPT-4, ChatGPT Mobile App Planned, Rumours Say; Senator Calls on Apple and Google...

Microsoft Bing to Rely on GPT-4, ChatGPT Mobile App Planned, Rumours Say (via The Decoder) & Microsoft Teams gets an AI upgrade with OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 (via The Decoder) Resources ...

ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Tweets by infoDOCKET

ADVERTISEMENT

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • Programs+
  • Design
  • Leadership
  • People
  • COVID-19
  • Advocacy
  • Opinion
  • INFOdocket
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Booklists
  • Prepub Alert
  • Book Pulse
  • Media
  • Readers' Advisory
  • Self-Published Books
  • Review Submissions
  • Review for LJ

Awards

  • Library of the Year
  • Librarian of the Year
  • Movers & Shakers 2022
  • Paralibrarian of the Year
  • Best Small Library
  • Marketer of the Year
  • All Awards Guidelines
  • Community Impact Prize

Resources

  • LJ Index/Star Libraries
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies

Events & PD

  • Online Courses
  • In-Person Events
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Submit Features/News
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Careers at MSI


© 2023 Library Journal. All rights reserved.


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.