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Songs in |
Collection Notes
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Provenance Of The Collection
About E.L. Simons
Digital Transfer - The Songs
Digital Transfer - The Photographs
Rights To The Collection
About The Site
Contact Information
| Provenance
The tapes in the collection were recorded by E.L. Simons in November 1951 and he has retained ownership of them since then. The tape collection remains with him. Similarly, the photographs are owned and held by Simons, the ones dating to the 1890s originally held by his grandparents.
Dr. Elwyn Laverne Simons is James B. Duke Professor of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy at Duke University, as well as Head of the Division of Fossil Primates, Duke University Primate Center. A leading authority on primate evolution, Dr. Simons has studied the fossil record since the 1950s, resulting in a distinguished career that has yielded over 300 publications as well as significant advances in the discipline. A member of the National Academy of Science, Dr. Simons continues to lead annual expeditions to both Egypt and Madagascar. Dr. Simons has also had a second informal career, as an exacting genealogist whose methods reflect his academic training. Simons has developed tremendous skill at tracking ancestries internationally. According to Simons, his interest in genealogy goes back to his teenage years, and was influenced by his Grandmother Myrtle, whose voice you hear on the songs contained in this collection. It was this interest in his personal family history, as well as an abiding love for folksongs, that led him to record his grandparents singing the folksongs they grew up with.
The digital transfer process was lengthy, first involving identification of the correct source tapes. Several songs that E.L. Simons recalls recording, or ones that he has on LP (to which many of the songs were transferred in the early 50s following the taped sessions), could not be located. Of course, the tapes were initially identified only by their labels -- we had no idea what was on them until playback, which couldn't happen until the location of an open-reel tape player. Since the start of this project other tapes have been located, and are still being identified, although so far none have yielded additional songs. Finding a satisfactory method for tape playback was a challenge because functioning reel-to-reel tape players are hard to find outside of professional studios. The one we found was a used Sony that dates to the late 1960s/early 1970s, and it required some maintenance before consistent playback could happen. The results were worth the effort, as transferring from the LPs, which will be necessary in future to collect the remaining songs, would not have provided nearly the sonic clarity of the original source tapes. The next step, digitization, was several-tiered, involving the initial transfer and the subsequent "rips" from the master digital file. The digital masters reside on CD, one copy of which is held by Elwyn L. Simons, the other by Craig Breaden. The following is the complete transfer log. Also, see individual song metadata for details. Simons Songs Recording, Transferring and Processing Log Tape: 2 - 1/4" open reel tapes, ca. 1951. Transfer occurred January 31, 2004, Durham, North Carolina, by Craig Breaden and Elwyn Simons Hardware for digital transfer: OUT IN Sample rate: 96 kHz Software for digital transfer: Processing Flow:
3) Compact discs containing all files were burned for the collection owner (E.L. Simons) and for the collection archivist (Craig Breaden).
Digital Transfer - Photographs The photographs were digitally transferred using a UMAX Astra 2200 Scanner, into an iMac G3 using OS9 software. They were edited/rendered using Photoshop 6.0 on a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion ze5300 laptop, Pentium 4, running Windows XP. All the photographs were scanned at 100%, using 24-bit RGB color (this included the black and white photos, which had colored with age). No filters or descreening were used, and the resolution was set at 600 dpi. Once scanned, the photos were cropped to cut away any extraneous areas around the item border that the scan might have captured. They were saved at this point, the resulting image being the digital master. The images were then saved to a 200 dpi version, from which the thumbnail and enlarged .jpeg's were rendered. The digital masters reside on CD, one copy of which is held by Elwyn L. Simons, the other by Craig Breaden. Information regarding the photographic content is found in the photo tile; other metadata is in each photo's "Image Metadata" section.
All rights to the songs, photographs, and quoted material attributed to E.L. Simons collected on this site are retained by E.L. Simons. Use and enjoyment of the collection is encouraged; however, commercial or other uses outside those covered by Fair Use of the U.S. Copyright Act must be approved (see contact information below). Please cite the collection using established Chicago, AP, or MLA standards.
The E.L. Simons Folk Song Collection is a virtual manuscript collection constructed by Craig Breaden in March 2004, using Dreamweaver MX. The site was created in partial completion of INLS244, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But that isn't to say it would not have been done anyway. The extraordinary potential of small collections such as this one is that, once digitized and linked with other similar collections, they can create a greater whole, adding immeasurably to the historical record. We hope this site will evolve to be part of future collaborative collections.
Contact Craig Breaden regarding questions and use of this collection. email: breaden@email.unc.edu
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