The centerpiece of the Music Time in Africa project is a robust access and delivery system designed to provide selective access to Sarkisian’s radio programs. Investigation and possible construction of a viable access system is slated to begin in Fall, 2016.
The Music Time in Africa online access system will support search and discovery of radio programs by full text of the script as well as faceted search and browse by a number of criteria, including broadcast date, geographic origin, musical genre, instrumentation, artist name, and song title, where available. Much of the information for searching will be extracted from the scripts, the main source of information pertaining to the radio programs. The underlying tools for search, sound file streaming, and image/text display will support a dynamic web interface. In addition to incorporating tools from the University of Michigan Library and Information Services, plans call for an ongoing evaluation and testing of the usability and accessibility of the access and delivery implementation.
The access and delivery system for the Music Time in Africa project is expected to be completely populated with content by the end of the Fall, 2017 semester. Additional testing of the access system will continue into 2018.