National Library Week 2023: Charles, metadata

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The Internet Archive has 1,600 examples of quality human restorations of 78rpm records where the best tools were used to ‘lightly restore’ the audio files. This takes away scratchy surface noise while trying not to impair the music or speech. In the items are files in those items are the unrestored originals that were used.

But then the Internet Archive has over 400,000 unrestored files that are quite scratchy and difficult to listen to.

The goal is, or rather the hope is, that a program that can take all or many of the 400,000 unrestored records and make them much better. How hard this is is unknown, but hopefully it is a fun project phone number database to work on.

Many of the recordings are great and worth the effort. Please comment on this post if you are interested in diving in.

Posted in News | Tagged AI & Research | 12 Replies
To celebrate National Library Week 2023, we are introducing readers to four staff members who work behind the scenes at the Internet Archive, helping connect patrons with our collections, services and programs.

Working from his home office in Wellington, New Zealand, Charles Horn is a metadata wrangler for the Internet Archive. He feels lucky to live near the Pacific Ocean, where he can kayak through the local marine reserve in his spare time — while also working with others internationally to improve access to information.