UC Santa Barbara Library’s Historical Recordings Database Adds Linked Data; Over 30,000 Sound Recordings Available to Stream Free-of Charge

Note: Corrected Title

From UCSB Library:

A team of researchers at the UCSB Library recently finished an exciting enhancement project to the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR), an online database of over 314,000 master recordings made by American record companies during the 78rpm era.

DAHR is the preeminent searchable database documenting historical commercial sound recordings in the US, with audio streaming of more than 30,000 recordings, available free-of-charge. It boasts an impressive 200,000 users each year and continues to grow in popularity, particularly as more digitized recordings are added.

With funding from the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board, a team of editors at the UCSB Library Special Research Collections spent a year integrating “Linked Data” into DAHR’s features. At its core, Linked Data is a mechanism for identifying relationships between different online entities, making the data more meaningful and useful. It’s a way of saying the Duke Ellington in our database is the same as the Duke Ellington in any number of other databases and is becoming a standard across the web.

By harvesting data from around the web using the Library of Congress identity, records in DAHR now have enhanced features like Wikipedia biographies, photographs, and links to many other databases. For example, Duke Ellington’s DAHR listing has links to information in other online sources including Discogs, where you might research LP reissues, Allmusic, where you could read record reviews, or Spotify, where you could access streaming audio of Ellington.

Learn More, Read the Complete Announcement

Direct to Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR)

Filed under: Data Files, Funding, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Preservation