2) The collection and preservation of digital audio and video recordings.

The heart of the P4 project is the establishment of an institutionally-supported digital repository for the preservation of contemporary audio and video recordings of poetry in performance.

Most preservation efforts concentrate on digitizing historical recordings. This project goes instead directly to the source by capturing and preserving recordings made of today’s emerging poets, and by preserving those at-risk recordings which already exist. The Project’s primary focus is on recordings made at small and medium sized venues that host poetry reading series, open microphone events, and especially slam poetry competitions.

The P4 repository will be housed at an established academic library, which will provide the operational and physical infrastructure needed to serve as the project’s digital home. The selected academic library will provide tools for ingesting, cataloging, preserving, managing, migrating and delivering contemporary poetry recordings to the public and researchers through digital means. It will also set up (in consultation with the slam poetry community) the proper cataloging, indexing and metadata creation processes and standards to ensure that the recordings remain accessible. Since a community of non-professionals will be used to collect field recordings, these standards and methods will be straightforward and able to be used effectively by non-technical personnel.