About the Award (FAQ)
Who can receive the award?
Any individual who is materially and avocationally contributing to the preservation, availability, and appreciation of sound recordings can be considered for the award. Individuals who are employed in a profession dealing with sound recordings can be considered on the merits of personal initiatives uncompensated by their employers.
What do recipients receive?
- An award between $2,000 and $10,000 with no strings attached. This award is not a payment for work done or expenses incurred. It requires no bookkeeping or reporting back to ARSC.
- Invitations to speak at ARSC’s annual conference and to report their work in its journal. Presentations and articles are not required. However, ARSC’s guarantee that their submissions will be favored should encourage recipients to disseminate their work via ARSC’s channels.
- ARSC’s imprimatur on the value of their initiatives. Such validation raises the visibility of their work.
What does ARSC expect in return?
The award imposes no requirements on the recipients. However, recipients are chosen for their manifest potential to continue significant initiatives, and ARSC trusts that its awards will help engender their work.
What is the selection process?
Individuals must be nominated to be considered. Anyone can nominate one or more persons for the award. Nominations should introduce the committee to the individual and their accomplishments, enumerate their potential contributions to the field, and suggest how the award might support their ongoing initiatives.
Individuals may not nominate themselves for the award. However, ARSC welcomes correspondence from individuals who believe their personal initiatives may have value to the field. The selection committee actively seeks information about initiatives throughout the year and works to generate nominations where appropriate.
When are the awards announced?
Recipients are selected and notified early in the calendar year. Awards are formally announced and presented at ARSC's annual conference in the spring.
Why does the award recognize only independent initiatives?
The award focuses on independent initiatives because, unlike institutional initiatives, they are typically unrecognized by the field at large.
The award is based on the tenets of venture research—self-directed, frequently iconoclastic inquiries pursued outside of organizational frameworks. ARSC believes that venture research deserves venture capital. It offers this award to encourage venture researchers to further develop promising initiatives. It buoys them financially and leaves them alone to pursue their initiatives at their own pace without the burdens of grant management, financial accounting, or project reporting. The scale of this award (the largest offered by the organization) signals the value ARSC and its members place on independent initiatives and their outcomes.
How does the award further ARSC’s mission?
The award furthers ARSC’s mission by introducing independent initiatives of consequence to the field at large. ARSC recognizes the importance of individual contributions to the field of audio preservation as no other organization does. Since 1966 ARSC has encouraged persons who avocationally engage with sound recordings to share their knowledge with those who work with sound recordings for a living. And vice versa. Acknowledgement that each has something to teach the other is written into ARSC's charter and sets it apart from the professional organizations that populate the field.
How does ARSC finance the award?
Funds for the award are contributed by ARSC's members specifically for its purpose.