Uppsala Institute for Dylan
Studies
(Rev. 2002-10-25)
1.1. To assemble comprehensive documentation of Bob Dylan’s performances, recording sessions, and related events from his first recordings in 1958 until the time of his ‘electric debut’ at the Newport Folk Festival in July, 1965.
1.2. To provide collectors and scholars access to this material. The entire collection, currently available only at the Institute, will be digitized, databased, and made assessable through our website.
1.3. To preserve the documentation. Best practices for preservation, digitization, data migration, and metadata capture will be followed to ensure that the collection will be available to future patrons.
2.1. While in the past, Institute users have traveled to Uppsala, one of Sweden’s intellectual centers, our target users today are scattered around the globe. Improvements in internet technology over the past decade have lead to rising expectations; users want information to be easily accessible in digital form. As such, we are dedicated to transforming the Institute from one that primarily serves walk-in patrons to a digital library.
2.2. Although the mode of information transmission will change, our core constituents will not. We serve two groups, with some overlap between them. First, is the network of Dylan enthusiasts who trade sound recordings and related materials. They have long interacted in person and by mail, and now through the internet, focusing on the large number of unpublished Dylan recordings. Second, Dylan’s prominence as a 1960s folk revivalist makes his work crucial to scholars of that movement.
3.1. The Institute houses a collection of unpublished materials documenting Bob Dylan’s activities from 1958 to 1965, as well as a library of the published scholarship covering this period. The collection contains multiple formats and currently consists of manuscript materials, sound recordings, graphic images, moving images, and electronic media.
4.1. We will collect materials outlined in section 1.1. The Institute possesses most of the known sound recordings from the study period, but new materials, especially graphic images, are being discovered all the time. A collection of posters and related ephemera from Dylan’s 1964 tour, for example, has recently come to light.
4.2. Scholarship. Two collectors were allowed access to the Sony archives in the 1990s and their resulting sessionographies have created a flood of new scholarship. Set lists from concerts and biographical information relating to Dylan’s concertizing are additional areas of significant new work.
The internet has created new opportunities for sharing information, and new ways of conveying scholarship in the form of databases and online journals. We will add these to our collection. It is also our intent to undertake an internet archiving project that will document the hundreds of websites devoted to Dylan’s work.
4.3. The Institute must make a significant investment in technology (digitization equipment, etc.) and personnel in order to launch the digital library. An IT specialist must be hired, and existing staff will need training in metadata capture.
4.4. Permissions and rights have been persistent issues for the Institute. A tacit agreement with Sony/Columbia allows us to give access to researchers under the Fair Use clause of the U.S. Copyright law. While making this collection available in digital form is admirable from our patrons’ point of view, it is not yet legally viable. Sony/Columbia intends to release some of its sound recordings, and generally discourages ‘bootlegs.’ They have no plan to create a public-access archives and library, yet they do recognize the desirability of such a facility. The Institute already possess the premier collection of its kind, a fact that Sony officials privately acknowledge. A major hurdle, thus, must be overcome before the digital library can be realized. We are in the early stages of discussions with Sony/Columbia and with Bob Dylan. It is reasonable to believe that an agreement containing the following outcomes can be negotiated:
a. Sony/Columbia will allow the Institute to digitize most unreleased sound recordings, excepting those that Sony/Columbia itself plans to release.
b. Bob Dylan’s management will authorize collection and digitization of other sound recordings, those not belonging to Sony/Columbia.
c. As a result of these two endorsements, private collectors of other materials will be willing to grant permissions.
d. Finally, such a digital repository will be a likely place for Bob Dylan to entrust his personal papers.
5. Conclusions
As a result of new technologies, the Institute finds itself in a precarious position. We need to meet user expectations, or become obsolete. Those expectations, however, pose challenges in terms of resources and permissions issues. While these issues are being sorted out, we will move ahead with our digital library, but we will focus on delivering information about the collection rather than the collection itself.