| dc.description.abstract | Radio broadcasting is an effective means of communication for educational, informative and
entertainment programs. It involves audio or sound programs that are generated in the studios
and then transmitted to the listeners via various means. The radio broadcasts cannot be
complete without a variety of music programs which are interlaced with adverts.
commercials, jingles, voice inserts, sweepers, news etc to keep a station going every hour,
every day, every month, every year. Music involves volumes and volumes of songs by
various artists that are played either on demand by the listeners or as part of the play lists
compiled by various announcers/producers to go with their programs.
For music to be available in the studios it has to be acquired through the Audio library by
procurement, borrowing or donations. This is in various formats such as tapes, CDs, records
(gramophone) and audiocassettes. The studios can then be equipped with Audio cassette
decks, tape players, turntables, Cartridge players, Magneto Optica (MO) players and CD
players which are used to replay the material in any of these forms.
At the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation this has traditionally been the case. The audio
material is borrowed from the Audio Library by the announcers/producers as need arises for
playback in the studios and returned after use. A card catalogue is in place for searching and
borrowing of the tapes, CDs, cassettes and records.
There are 18 radio studios at Broadcasting House with several announcers, producers and
technical operators for over 6 services (English, Kiswahili, Metro FM. Coro FM to name but
a few). Thus the Audio library has a large number of users. There are also very many
volumes of music albums stored in the library. Searching through the records is not an easy
job for the librarians who have to deal with the day to day job of searching, issuing,
receiving, cataloguing, classifying and arranging the albums to cope with the demands of the
users.
To manage this overwhelming task the Corporation requires an Information system to be put
in place at its Audio Library so as to meet the demands of the modern day Radio studio. In
the long term, the system will involve a Centralized Database of music and other audios that
can be accessed by users from any studio at the click of a button. The audios will first have to
be digitized and then stored on an Audio server, which is accessible via the Local Area
Network to enable sharing of the audio program files. Several softwares for digitization of the
music are already in place at the various studios.
In future when material is acquired at the Audio Library, details of titles, contents, dates of
release etc will be fed into the system by the librarians. At the same time, it will be converted
into digital formats and stored-in any of formats MP3, WAV, Real Audio etc. that are fed as
digital files on the server. Once the material has been stored any 0f the users (librarians,
announcers, producers and technical staff) will be able to access it when they log into the
system. The different categories of users will be assigned various user rights and privileges.
To start with, digitization will not be in the scope of this project. The project will only
involve organizing details of audios currently in the library into a form, which allows the
librarians to quickly peruse through audio records without having to use the card catalogue.
Later on a pointer to the audios in the audio server will be put in place so as to give a
connection (interface) for live playback of the audios. | en |
