Voices of Visitors is a collaborative project between Swarthmore College’s WSRN radio station and libraries.
The WSRN student club, a staple of the media culture at Swarthmore College, has its roots tracing back over 100 years. The WSRN radio station has been run and managed by Swarthmore students and faculty, even surviving a silent period during Covid-19. A treasure trove of music and culture survives in the attic of Parrish Hall, preserved for us and for future sound seekers. But among the thousands of playable and recordable CDs, records, and cassettes in the WSRN radio station, lie an unassuming stack of familiar vinyl and yellow paper.
A collection of about 200 records had remained untouched in the station for nearly 90 years. The reason for their isolation? Their size. A 16-inch diameter means that these monster disks could not be played on traditional vinyl players. And after decades of shifting around the space and the dampness of an attic, cracks, flaking, and mold were not an uncommon occurrence.
What makes this situation heartbreaking is that their labels provided evidence that many were recorded at Swarthmore College. It isn’t just retro music that is being lost, it is important documentation and history of our community.
Luckily, a method was developed to be able to record these large disks: Attaching a tall metal cylinder to a record player creates a gap between the disk and the rotating plate. If a 16-inch disk is placed on this gap, it is possible to play the disk upside-down by flipping the needle and playing in reverse!
Now with a method to save their contents, Computer Science Professor Michael Wehar and Engineering Student Aidan Corpus were able to search through these records and rediscover the voices of many interesting and important people. Both select audio files recorded from these records as well as transcripts provided by 3rd parties are now available.
The Voices of Visitors digitization project is meant to revive the voices of these figures and bring attention to the historical information that is slowly being lost to time. This is a great first step in archiving the collection and cataloging important visitors in Swarthmore College’s history. The following people in this article are influential figures across time who have, at some point, found themselves speaking at Swarthmore College.
Below are pictures of the records in their protective sleeves:
