IASA 2018 Annual Conference

In the United States, National Public Radio’s (NPR) Research, Archives & Data Strategy (RAD) team was recently awarded grant funding from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to preserve and make accessible All Things Considered open reel recordings from 1971–1983. Now that RAD has digitized and secured this audio for future use, the project’s focus has shifted to making the collection more accessible and discoverable. Through this paper, I will explore how RAD is reimagining workflows and collaborations for enriching metadata, description, and points of access in order to reach new user groups, including historians and researchers.

Since 1976, NPR has entered into partnerships with cultural heritage institutions to open its archives to the public; today, the University of Maryland at College Park administers public access for the majority of the NPR collection. However, RAD’s policies and priorities for metadata, description, and access to its archives have historically focused on the newsroom as the primary user. NPR also faces a legal barrier to publishing the content online because NPR does not hold the copyright to various elements of program episodes, for example, musical recordings or third-party content produced by freelancers. All Things Considered is public radio’s first national program and NPR’s oldest and longest-running show. RAD recognizes this collection as a valuable historic resource and looks forward to overcoming these barriers to reach wider and more diverse user communities.