Institutions

This section will introduce the partner institutions involved in our project, who together form the backbone of the New Phonograph. The project is coordinated by the National Museum’s research team, who are also responsible for meeting the main outcomes of the project. These include, in particular, the development, testing and implementation of appropriate methodologies to protect and make available part of their collections. Co-researchers within the project – the National Library of the Czech Republic, the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and Masaryk University, the Department of Information Studies and Librarianship – are within their specific competencies guarantors of various fields.

The Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic is a manager of cultural heritage in both material and non-material form. It fulfills this role through a grant program to support applied research and experimental development of national and cultural identity. It has pledged its support to the project for the years 2016 to 2022 (NAKI II).

This program’s vision is to achieve both the conservation and sustainable development of a specific cultural identity and heritage in the context of European and world culture in the 21st century, through applied research and development.

Focusing on applied research and development, the program supports theoretical and experimental work aimed at acquiring new knowledge and skills that can be used to develop new or significantly improved products, processes or services. Applied research encompasses the practical use of knowledge and skills in shaping human cultural awareness, as well as preserving and utilizing cultural heritage, with a goal of acceptance, creation and preservation of cultural values and a state of cultural coexistence.

The specific objectives under which the New Phonograph project is funded, are the creation of Technology and Procedures for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.

Principal Investigator (Recipient – Coordinator)
The team consists of 20 people
The budget is about CZK 18.5 million
Duration: 2018-2022
Contact: Filip Šír

The National Museum is a research organization that conducts basic research, applied research and experimental development, and disseminates its results through expositions, exhibitions, teaching and other educational activities, publishing in all fields in which it operates, including the field of museology and collections protection. The National Museum is one of the oldest scientific institutions in the country whose traditions extend to Czech science personalities such as František Palacký, Jan Krejčí or Karel Bořivoj Presl. It is also the publisher of the oldest and ever-growing scientific journal, the National Museum Magazine. Through this project, the National Museum is also responsible for the processing of audio documents stored on historical media. It provides a comprehensive solution for the whole process of digitisation of audio documents, phonograph cylinders and standard gramophone records, across protection, cataloguing, digitisation and access. Alongside digitisation, analysis of international professional literature, standards, experience and the practices of foreign institutions and comparisons with the National Museum will be carried out. Based on these findings, appropriate methodologies will be proposed to be tested and integrated into other procedures. Due to the scope of the National Museum’s funding and the research focus of the project, it does not cover all existing collections, but rather focuses on phonograph cylinders and standard gramophone records, where many of the most at-risk sound recordings are to be found.