Dear readers interested in the archive database of the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig.

after a little over three months you are now receiving our second newsletter with updates about the project of developing an archive database for the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig.

But first, we want to thank you for your replies on our last newsletter. We are happy that we were able to fill you with interest about our project again.

In the last few months a lot has happened and there are some positive changes that we want to tell you about.

Current state of completion

Since hiring a project employee, the data input and enrichment is proceeding continuously and at a good pace.

By now every teacher that was working at the Conservatory between 1843 and 1915 has a record in the German Authority File (GND).

4160 of the 13.000 student records (32%) are currently fully processed, which means that they were enriched with biographical information from the study documents, linked to visited classes and corresponding teachers, as well as recorded in the German Authority File (GND). Additionally, meta data was recorded for the students’ reports.

We are currently working on records for students who were matriculated in 1885.

The transfer of our digital copies of the study documents in a digital long-term archive is also progressing.

The files, which up until now were located on a local web archive, were transferred to the Saxon State and University Library Dresden, where they are now prepared for their entry to the long-term archive and their presentation on the web application sachsen.digital by colleagues. This includes e.g. recording the materials in regional library catalogues, the German digital library and Europeana.

Additionally, the study brochures of the Conservatory that we hold in our archive collection are currently digitized by the State Program for Digitization. Some of the brochure can already be used via sachsen.digital. There you can also find other historical materials from our archive and library collections.

First “public” introduction and use of the database

Even though we have yet to develop a user interface we were already able to use the database and “publicly” introduce it.

Our archivist was able to answer an archive request about the students of Carl Ferdinand David with the help of data that was already recorded in the database’s backend by simply exporting it.

On the November 23 2022 two of our colleagues were invited by Mrs. Dr. Dorothea Hilzinger to introduce our project and database during her seminar “Digital Musicology” at the Berlin University of the Arts.

During the lecture, where two colleagues from the “Brahms-Portal” also presented their project, we were able to introduce the students to the idea, concept and work on our project and database.

We like to thank Mrs. Dr. Hilzinger again for inviting us to her seminar.

Hello, my name is …

Since “archive database for people who studied and worked at the Leipzig Conservatory between 1843 and 1918” is quite a clucky title for our database and project we have been looking for a more appealing and shorter one for a while now.

For the longest time we weren’t able to find a name that represented our intentions and ideas for the database.

Recently a colleague had an idea. We should try to figure out which first name is the most common in our database. Maybe that might help us find a name for our project.

So, we analyzed the first names of every person recorded in our database. Admittedly, our methodology was a bit explorative, but it still brought us closer to the name of our database.

Here are the top 5 most common first names in our database:

5. Anna / Anne / Annie

4. Friedrich / Frederick

3. Wilhelm / Willy / William

2. Marie / Maria / Mary

and our number one:

1. Carl / Karl / Charles

To shine more light on less represented female narratives and to preserve the grammatical gender of the German word for database Carl turned into Carla, which stand for „Conservatory Archive Records Leipzig with Additions“.

So, we would like to proudly and officially introduce: our archive database is called CARLA!

Prospects

2022 was a very successful year for our project.

Apart from securing a stable funding, hiring a full-time employee and finding an appealing name we were also able to process thousands of records, develop new features for our backend and introduce a small public to our project.

And there are also more exciting subprojects planned for 2023. First of all, the development of the user interface.

This process is to be undertaken by an external company. At the beginning of the new year we will start working on a public tender for this commission.

To close this newsletter, we want to thank you again for your interest in our project and database CARLA.

If you have further questions or comments about our database CARLA or topics mentioned in this newsletter you can contact our project employee Elisa Klar (elisa.klar@hmt-leipzig.de).

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2023.

PS:

As a little anecdote from our everyday work life we would like to add this creative “assessment” of the student Miecryslaw Jaroński (Inskriptionsnr.: 3970) by violin professor and former student of the Conservatory Friedrich Valentin Hermann (1828-1907).

(Hermann writes: "Bezüglich des Stundenbesuchs J.s mag Beethoven für mich sprechen / Siehe dessen Streichquartett op. 135 mit dem Worte 'Muß es sein?['] 'Es muß sein!'",

which roughly translates to: „Regarding the lesson attendance of J. Beethoven might speak for me / See his string quartet op. 135 with the words ‘Does it have to be?’ ‘It has to be!’”

This is followed by notated music of the mentioned themes from the string quartet, captioned with "Kam er nie?" and "Er kam nie!", which translate to “Did he never come?” and “He never came!”)

Copyright

University of Music and Theatre „Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy“ Leipzig

University library

Grassistraße 8

04107 Leipzig

Tel.: 0341/2144-632

Fax: 0341/2144-634

www.hmt-leipzig.de

author of the contents of the newsletter:

Elisa Klar

elisa.klar@hmt-leipzig.de

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