Interview: The NYPL archivists on the Lou Reed papers
Ostap Kin
The Lou Reed papers were processed by the Archives Unit on behalf of the Music Division in the Library for the Performing Arts of the New York Public Library. In 2019, the Lou Reed papers became a recipient of the C.F.W. Coker Award from the Society of American Archivists.
On the website of The Society of American Archivists it was stated: “The Lou Reed papers serves as a model for finding aids by rigorously applying archival principles and standards in this large, multiformatted collection that included audiovisual and born-digital materials. (…) The New York Public Library was innovative in its approach to efficiently and expediently describe the contents given the size of the collection, which totaled more than 90 linear feet and 2.5 terabytes. In particular, New York Public Library’s use of data migration to combine minimal processing with item-level description maximizes the use of this collection without expending an exorbitant amount of labor on the project. In addition, the finding aid’s embedded digital content contributes to setting standards of preserving a collection’s context in the digital realm.”
The Metropolitan Archivist reached out to Lea Osborne, Heather Lember, Alexander Duryee, and Alison Rhonemus from the Archives Unit at the New York Public Library and asked to share their experience of working on the Lou Reed papers.
Ostap Kin (OK): If circumstances permit, would you tell how the New York Public Library ended up acquiring the papers of Lou Reed?
Lea Osborne: Jonathan Hiam, the curator of Music & Recorded Sound acquired the collection from Laurie Anderson in 2017.
OK: How was the collection divided between the processors?
Lea Osborne: The collection was processed by one archivist, Heather Lember. Alison Rhonemus imaged the electronic media.
Heather Lember: The processing and description were done by me over the course of ten months. I began by inventorying and processing the analog audio and video items, while Alison imaged the born digital media and multiple hard drives. I processed the born digital materials over the course of three months, generally spending three or four hours a day on that, and the rest on the paper materials.
OK: What were the most challenging aspects of working on this collection?
Heather Lember: The collection arrived with an intellectual arrangement that had been imposed by Reed’s staff. I found it a bit challenging to think outside of that at first, but I ultimately determined an arrangement that I felt more accurately reflected the manner in which Reed created and worked with the materials during his lifetime. There was also just such a vast amount of audio and video recordings, which were generally very clearly labeled, but typically not in any kind of discernable order. Since this was such a high-profile collection, I knew that the expectations and research interest would be high. I had a document where I kept notes on materials that would be important to highlight in the finding aid. Given the size and prominence of the collection, it would have been easy to be overly detailed or to overlook something that I came across early on. Staying focused on the end goal of access and clarity made it so I never felt overwhelmed or under pressure.
Alexander Duryee: In addition, we developed a workflow for describing and publishing digitized audio and video material parallel to the processing of this collection. As such, this collection was the first one in which we arranged, described, and published digitized audiovisual items within a newly-processed finding aid. While we encountered a number of technical and descriptive challenges when describing and publishing the digitized items, it gave us opportunities to test and improve our processing workflows.
OK: Did you have favorite materials you encountered while processing the collection? Were there materials that surprised you?
Heather Lember: My favorite part of the collection was the audio and moving image materials, which comprised approximately 3,000 audio and moving image items, as well as over 30,000 computer files of Reed’s music. Reed’s staff digitized about 500 of the analog audio recordings, so I was able to listen to these while I was processing the collection. The digitized audio was accompanied by a spreadsheet that included information about each recording’s content. We were able to repurpose these into tracklists, which Alex imported as ordered lists in ArchivesSpace.
The most exciting moment was the first time I heard the 1965 Lou Reed and John Cale demo recording. This recording contained early acoustic versions of songs that would eventually be recorded by the Velvet Underground. Reed mailed the audio reel to himself in 1965, and kept it sealed in order to establish copyright. The reel remained sealed during Reed’s lifetime, so I was one of the first people to hear it once NYPL received the collection.
Another favorite item is a recording from a press conference Reed did in Australia in 1975. The interview itself is pretty infamous, and has been available on YouTube for a while. In the video Reed can be seen holding a tape recorder, which it turns out he was using to record himself being interviewed by the press. After the interview, Reed forgets to turn the recorder off, gets in a cab, and proceeds to complain about the press conference. At some point he realizes he left the recorder on, but keeps talking and does not turn it off. It was pretty thrilling when I realized that I had the cassette from that tape recorder in the video on my desk.
Reed’s reputation was that he could be a difficult person to work with. The collection includes a number of rehearsal recordings of him collaborating with various musicians. It was interesting to hear Reed’s songwriting process, and the ways in which he was very positive and supportive with his collaborators. There is a great series of rehearsals Reed did with Victoria Williams and Jimmy Scott in the 1990s. They are working on a cover of “tracks of my tears,” and Williams is struggling with hitting a particular note. Throughout the rehearsal Reed was really encouraging until they got to a place where everyone is happy with the song. As a musician myself, I found it inspiring to hear professional musicians working out songs and making a lot of mistakes along the way.
OK: The finding aid points out that the collection comprises 2.5 terabytes (or 40,920 computer files) worth of information. How does one access this kind of information?
Alison Rhonemus: The Lou Reed papers contain both digitized audio and moving image material and born-digital material. Some digitized material can be accessed by clicking a link in the finding aid that directs the browser to that material in the digital collections website. This material can only be accessed on site.
The 2.5 terabytes (or 40,920 computer files) refers to born-digital material in the Lou Reed papers. Files can be viewed by researchers on an electronic records workstation at the Library of Performing Arts. Software such as Quick View Plus on the workstation allows for viewing files of many formats. Licensing for audio editing software would need to be negotiated by the library for public access of some files in the collection.
In order for Heather to process the collection, I imaged removable media and transferred files from hard drives. Then, I loaded the images and files into Forensic Toolkit where Heather used FTK’s bookmarking interface to arrange the files. Amiga formatted floppy disks required an additional step. First, I loaded Amiga disk images into Win-UAE Amiga emulation software. Then, I copied files from the Amiga disk images to a disk image format that could be read in FTK. Finally, those disk images were loaded into FTK with the rest, where Heather arranged them.
OK: Considering the current situation, what are your suggestions for (processing) archivists working remotely?
Heather Lember: I have spent some time improving my audio, video, and photo editing knowledge with various online resources. Given the nature of the collections I have worked on lately, having an understanding of this type of thing has been helpful. I also find it important to make sure I get outside, so instead of my usual fifteen mile round trip bike commute to work, I have just been going for a ride each morning. It helps me wake up and start my day, and adds a level of structure that helps me focus on projects during the rest of the day.
Lea Osborne: Some of my staff have been watching webinars provided by SAA. A couple of them were able to add or enhance the description of the collection they are currently working on. We use ArchivesSpace at NYPL and most have remote access. This was set-up right before the Library closed down. One is processing her family’s photograph collection!
OK: Finally, what are you working on right now or have been working on recently?
Heather Lember: Right before the library closed I was working on the Michael Shamberg papers. Shamberg was a video producer best known for his work with New Order. Prior to that I processed the papers of Sal Mercuri, who was a collector of Velvet Underground related materials.
