This research award (2018-2020) is from CONUL’s Training & Development Group.
In this project I investigated how in libraries ‘noise’ and not ‘sound’ is perceived. Many libraries only study the negative aspects of noise including the impact of noise on users and subsequent noise management interventions without studying how libraries can use sound in non-negative contexts whether in exhibitions or as sound installations across the library environment. The project will also investigate mapping sound, a key part of ethnographic research.
This project has stemmed from my work on the Sonic Histories of Cork City Project. On this project, with John Hough of the Dept. of Music, we created two library soundscapes but no 19th or early-mid 20th century sound recordings exist of UCC. I needed to infer from textual and visual evidence what sounds might have been present in order to create a historical soundscape for the library in 1882. What is collected or not collected shapes the library of the future. I will identify possible collaborative international soundscape opportunities for CONUL libraries and the possibilities for preserving the mapped sounds as a collection for future research.