3. Newsletter Datenbank CARLA der HMT Leipzig
Dear readers interested in the CARLA database of the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig,
a little over six months ago you received our last newsletter with updates about the project of developing an archive database for the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig. Now we want to update you about the development of the database during this time.
Current state of completion
But first, we want to give you a quick summary of where we stand in terms of the recorded data.
Currently 7421 of the 13.000 student records (57%) are fully processed. We are currently working on records for students who were matriculated in 1898.
Additionally, all the members of the school board and other employees, for whom we were able to find references in internal and external sources, are now recorded in the database and the German Authority File (GND). You can e.g. have a look at the data set of our board member Dr. Ludwig Lippert-Dähne in the GND.
Our first year
At the beginning of May we had a reason to celebrate!
For one year our project has now been financed with funds from the State Program for Digitization
for Science and Culture of the Free State of Saxony coordinated by the Saxon State and University Library Dresden. This financial support enables us to hire a full-time project employee as well as develop a web-based user interface for the database.
This last year our project team as accomplished a lot.
One of the most important developments was the transfer of our digitized study records to the Saxon State and University Library Dresden for the long-term preservation and presentation on sachsen.digital. The digital copies, which where transmitted in autumn 2022, were processed by our colleagues in Dresden and are now (almost) fully available on the platform. You can now access the inscription registers, inscription books, report drafts, directorial reports and brochures from our archive collection anywhere and at any time.
There are some errors regarding the content and visual presentation of the records, which are known and being fixed.
Last year we were also able to find an appealing name for the project and database. Our database can now make a name for itself in public as “CARLA – Conservatory Archive Records Leipzig with Additions”.
At the same time a lot of progress has been made on the amount of processed data sets and recorded data.
On May 2nd 2022 our project employee started to process and enrich the student records from inscription number 1095 forward. The previous data sets had already been processed as part of an internship and a student assistant position.
In this first year 5269 student records were finished by her, which, broken down on her work days, are 24 data sets per day on average. In addition to this our employee processed and created 6533 authority data sets for people and 327 new authority data sets for geographical places. Therefore, she worked on 31 authority data sets per day on average.
We can look back on our first year in a positive way. In addition to the processing of huge amounts of data and the transfer of the digital copies of our records we were able to make the database and project publicly know, not just thanks to its new name.
Inscriptions and Ephemera
In the 53. issue of the university’s MT-Journal we reported about our project to the members of the university and other readers of the journal for the first time. Apart from our database another library and archive project concerning the cataloguing of the concert programs of the Leipzig Conservatory also introduced itself.
The article as well as some information about our project employee can be found on page 27 and 105 of the journal.
City-Country-Geodata
Some of the topics that always present us with challenges and unsolved question were and are the standardization, cataloguing and visualization of geographical data in our records.
To clear up some of our questions and get new ideas regarding the topics of geographical standardization and visualization we met with researchers and employees from the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig at the end of April.
Together we discussed our current policies for cataloguing geodata, the usage of different authority data pools and possible visualizations of our data. With the insights gained, we now proceed to further conceptual and practical work on our geographical data as well as the presentation of this data on our user interface.
On our way to the user interface
We are happy to report that the development of our user interface and an API for the communication of our backend with it has officially started.
For the design and development of the API we were able to win our present backend developer Jan Grasnick. Due to his previous work on the project, the independent IT specialist has a deep understanding of the database, especially its structure.
He will be joined by frontend developer Johannes Löffler. The web developer and programmer has already worked on several projects with Jan Grasnick and is happy to contribute to our project.
Based on wireframes created by the project team, the two are now working closely with us to develop the search interface and API for our CARLA.
Thank you!
At the end of this newsletter we, once again, want to say thank you. Thank you for this first year of CARLA! Thank you for your interest in this ambitious project of ours!
We hope that the second year will also be a successful one for CARLA and that we will be able to tell you some good news again soon.
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 good start into the summer!
PS:
As a little anecdote from our everyday work life we would like to add a link to a recording of the “Spinn-Ouartett” from the opera “Martha” by Friedrich von Flotow which features our former student with the inscription number 6436, Susanne Pickelmann. According to her teacher Gustav Ewald she was one of his best students. The voice of the soprano, who was born in Leipzig in 1879 and died in Berlin in 1953, was captured on a shellac record by Zonophone Records before 1925.
You can find the recording here: http://mediathek.slub-dresden.de/ton70913482.html
The following study records of Susanne Pickelmann are available on sachen.digital:
Copyright
University of Music and Theatre „Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy“ Leipzig
University library
Grassistraße 8
04107 Leipzig
Tel.: 0341/2144-632
Fax: 0341/2144-634
author of the contents of the newsletter:
Elisa Klar
This newsletter is a free service by the archive and library of the University of Music and Theatre „Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy“ Leipzig. It is only sent to interested readers who subscribed to it.
If you want to unsubscribe, please click here.