Letter from Sarah Ziebell to the Carter Family Fold Board

----- Original Message -----
From: sarah ziebell
To: howiebear1@embarqmail.com ; josephsmd@aol.com ; rita_j_forrester@wellmont.org ; vicki.virts@vdot.virginia.gov ; info@bryantlabel.com ; localfleur@comcast.net ; mclain@mail.etsu.edu
Cc: friends.fold@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 10:36 AM
Subject: Carter Family Fold Music Collection

March 21, 2008

Esteemed Carter Family Fold Board members,

I adore the Carter Family and the Fold. I want to thank each of you for your efforts to ensure the legacy of the Carters so that new generations of listeners can be inspired to create and appreciate their wholly unique style of American music.

I made my first trip to the Fold last summer and was struck when visiting the Carter Family Museum by all of the audiotape boxes I saw scattered throughout. I surmised that these must contain (or at one time did contain) music recorded at the Fold, and it made me wonder what measures had been taken to safeguard these irreplaceable recordings.

I was much reassured after learning that there were plans to preserve the music made at the Fold in conjunction with one of the foremost institutions for the study of recorded Southern folk heritage, the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina. As an audiovisual archivist who has supervised several high-profile sound restoration endeavors (most recently, recordings from the collection of Irish musician and folklorist Mick Moloney), I am only too aware of the extreme fragility of aging reel-to-reel, cassette, and DAT tapes, the level of expertise required to supervise their effective migration to a more stable medium, and the related costs. For small organizations like the Carter Family Fold, the burden of in-house preservation is too much to shoulder, as this work requires professional sound restoration equipment, a robust computing environment, proper climate-controlled storage, and staff to administer the entire preservation operation. In my opinion, the Fold made a very wise choice in partnering with an established collection with a proven track record of responsibly preserving and making publicly accessible regional recorded sound heritage materials, housed within a university that had the infrastructure to support this work in all its complexities.

Thus, I was very concerned to learn that, recently, the Fold’s Board decided to rescind its agreement with the Southern Folklife Collection and request that the recordings that had been transferred to the institution be returned. I understand that part of the motivation in so doing was a desire to manage the restoration of the music at the Fold itself. I would strongly ask you to reconsider this decision. The costs of building and staffing an appropriate facility would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and personally, I think that these precious funds could be spent much more wisely in doing what the Carter Family Fold does best: showcasing talented old-time country and folk artists in one of the most beautiful venues around.

I respectfully urge you not to change the mission of the Carter Family Fold to encompass sound restoration, as this (critical but) costly and highly specialized work does not directly “promote old-time music and pay tribute to the Original Carter Family.” You have a respected partner in the Southern Folklife Collection that is willing not only to take on but to prioritize the migration, cataloging, provision of researcher access, and long-term storage of the music of the Fold at no cost to you, provide you with stable copies of the recordings, and even manage any negotiations related to the reuse of the recordings in a commercial context. This partnership is the best way to assure the long-term stability of the Fold’s musical legacy.

Thank you for your time and for all of your work on behalf of the Carter Family Fold. I truly hope that you will re-evaluate your relationship with the Southern Folklife Collection and reach some sort of compromise that will allow the preservation of these recordings to advance in a responsible and cost-effective manner with the help of this trusted partner institution.

Sincerely,

Sarah Ziebell, Certified Archivist
Brooklyn, NY
sarahjziebell@hotmail.com

Sarah Ziebell is a Certified Archivist and holds an MLIS in Archival Enterprise with a Postgraduate Endorsement of Specialization in Media Asset Management from The University of Texas at Austin. She currently teaches in New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program and works as consultant and lecturer in the area of collection management for such institutions as Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, NYU Libraries, NYU Film Study Center, and The University of Texas at Austin School of Information. Between 2006 and 2008, Ms. Ziebell was NYU Libraries’ Moving Image Preservation Specialist. She also has served as Project Coordinator for the Robert Wilson Audio/Visual Collection within the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Director of the Collection for the Museum of the Moving Image and has worked with the archival collections of the Pacific Film Archive of the University of California at Berkeley, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of The University of Texas at Austin, and Industrial Light + Magic. Ms. Ziebell is Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Association of Moving Image Archivists and was formerly Treasurer of the Independent Media Arts Preservation Board and a member of the Steering Committee of Moving Image Collections (MIC), an AMIA-Library of Congress initiative.