"Due to the culturally sensitive material of the content on these cylinders, and out of respect for the contemporary descendants of many of the performers on the recordings, access to the majority of the audio being digitized is currently restricted."<p>I'd like to learn more about the cultures of the peoples in this country who came before me - but I am apparently not 'enlightened' enough to experience their words.
It is sad that so much indigenous knowledge was lost.<p>One of the most infamous events in the Americas was when Roman Catholic Bishop Diego de Landa (1524 - 1579) burned thousands of Mayan codices, an event comparable to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. The motivation was the extermination of Mayan culture.<p>To put things in perspective, how would you feel if all works written in the English language were piled up and burned? One thing is to disagree with the content of whatever document, another thing is to permanently suppress it.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Landa" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Landa</a><p>Likewise, a lot of artifacts from the first civilizations like Sumer were lost over the last couple of decades because of wars in the middle east resulting in museum sackings. The artifacts that were not destroyed, are probably now contaminated and proving their authenticity will be very hard.<p>Some people do not support the presence of ancient artifacts museums in foreign museums, but in retrospective, the more distributed and safer those artifacts are, the better.
I was disappointed not to hear any audio from their proto-example, the 148 cylinders of Ishi's speech (in the Yahi language).<p>OTOH, the article did expand Ishi's story for me, if sadly, by pointing out that he was of mixed Indian blood - and so was not the last <i>Yahi</i>.<p>Maybe the most famous indian recordist was Frances Densmore, who made 2500 recordings of 'Chippewa' music. Today I searched in vain for 15 minutes to find a collection (more than a handful) of some of those recordings.<p>Once again, a glaring lack of appreciation for our own history. Which will probably be rewarded karmicly when our own, 'who cares' history is forgotten.
Is any package available to do optical scanning of vinyl disk records? I've heard of it but never seen it done.<p>My parents have a bunch of rare 78s which I would like to be able to listen to, but am afraid to poke a needle into.