I have selected the following 10 tracks from the Voyager’s Golden Record with the help of my children as if we were aliens listening to the record for the first time. Our criteria of selection were being pleasant enough to finish listening to the complete selection of the tracks and being inclusive of diverse cultures of humans. We tried to avoid including the tracks that have loud and high pitch sound because we did not want to scare the aliens away with unpleasant hearing experience, assuming that they would have similar range of audio spectrum or hearing abilities as human. For young children it was very prompt and easy to identify pleasant sounds to their ears. Also, we wanted to better represent the cultural diversity of humans by selecting songs from different parts of Earth.
After completing this week’s required reading and viewing, I contemplated the rationale of this Golden Record assignment. I think this curating activity was to experience the preparation and process of digitization: deciding which one to keep and which one to lose and justifying the selection. As Dr. Smith states in her article, “In order to digitize them, curators familiar with the materials sift through collections and make selections from them. The amount of physical preparation and intellectual control work that is needed for every digital project is very large indeed. Scanning is a very expensive process, and most of the cost occurs before the item is laid on the scanner. Part of that cost is the physical preparation of, research into, and description of an item” (Smith, 1999).
| Track Number | Name |
| 5. | Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26 |
| 6. | Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14 |
| 7. | “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38 |
| 9. | Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51 |
| 10. | Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux. 2:55 |
| 14. | “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05 |
| 15. | Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30 |
| 17. | Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48 |
| 21. | Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round,” performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17 |
| 24. | China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37 |
Smith, A. (1999). Why digitize? Retrieved June 15, 2019, from Council on Library and Information Resources