Content and Context: challenges of an ethnomusicology archive

The Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology is one of the largest archives of Indian music and performance traditions in India. The archives mainly constitutes voluntarily deposited collections, and amounts to approximately 25000 hours.
The aim of establishing ARCE was to create an archive where collections created by scholars could be deposited for preservation and access. The focus was on foreign collections which would otherwise not be available in India. Though this has remained the focus in the last 30 years, there are increasing numbers of collections made by collectors and not only scholars being deposited in the archives.
As an ethnomusicology archive, the challenge was to be able to present collections reflecting the discipline. The attempt has been thus to use “context” as the pivotal point through which access can be provided. This presentation will present the various ways in which this has been attempted, the challenges involved, and an assessment of how successful this attempt has been.