Thursday 30 July 2015

"Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-yourself, Do-it-together" reviewed for Sonograma Magazine

A short write-up about the edited collection "Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-yourself, Do-it-together", published in May 2015 by Routledge, has been reviewed in Sonograma Magazine.

In his review of the book Neil Manel Frau-Cortes writes:
One of the merits of this article compilation is its reflection on the ethos of DIY, particularly with regard to practices often politicized. The work of independent heritage practitioners contains a certain degree of enthusiastic activism that may be questionable to a casual observer, but is proven to be key in a time when budget cuts are affecting archives and museums everywhere.
 He continues:

The success of these do-it-together institutions resides in the formation of ad-hoc communities of practice, groups of people that learn the necessary archival skills by interacting with their peers and by participating in groups focused around common points of interest. While there is an obvious gap between institutional preservation standards and the community-based practices analyzed in the second part of the book, the authors examine a trend towards the progressive professionalization of these DIY projects and initiatives that come to fill a void in academic and scholarly archives.
The full review can be accessed here: http://sonograma.org/suplement-de-llibres/preserving-popular-music-heritage-do-it-yourself-do-it-together/