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Trove music, sound, and oral histories

Trove API access restrictions

With the cancellation of my Trove API keys by the National Library of Australia, I've made the difficult decision to stop work on Trove and archive all related code repositories.

The Trove sections of the GLAM Workbench will remain online, but they won't be updated. Everything here is openly-licensed, so feel free to take what’s useful and develop it further yourself.

Given the fact that the NLA is willing to change the API terms of use to restrict access without any consultation, provides no transparency around acceptable use of full text content, and is willing to cancel API keys without warning, I can no longer recommend Trove as a reliable source for digital research.

Current version: v2.0.0

Trove's 'music' category includes music, oral history interviews, and radio programs. You can access metadata from the music category through the Trove API.

See below for information on running these notebooks in a live computing environment. Or just take them for a spin using Binder.

ARDC Binder Binder

Tips, tools, and examples

Harvest oral histories metadata

Harvests metadata describing the NLA's oral history collection from Trove and saves the results as a CSV file.

Save a list of oral history collections and projects

Extracts a list of series from metadata describing oral histories held by the NLA and described in Trove.

Download summaries and transcripts from oral histories

Downloads all the available transcripts and summaries from digitised oral histories available in Trove.

Harvest ABC Radio National records from Trove

Trove harvests details of programs and segments broadcast on ABC Radio National. You can find them by searching for nuc:"ABC:RN" in the Music & Audio category. The records include basic metadata such as titles, dates, and contributors, but not full transcripts or audio. This notebook harvests, cleans, and saves all the available Radio National data from Trove.

Exploring ABC Radio National metadata

This notebook shows a few ways you can start to explore the ABC Radio National metadata harvested by the notebook above.

Data

NLA oral histories metadata

Harvested: December 2023

List of NLA oral history collections and projects

Harvested: December 2023

ABC Radio National programs

Harvested: December 2023

See also

Oral histories in the Trove Data Guide

Run these notebooks

There are a number of different ways to use these notebooks. Binder is quickest and easiest, but it doesn't save your data. I've listed the options below from easiest to most complicated (requiring more technical knowledge).

Using ARDC Binder

Launch on ARDC Binder

Click on the button above to launch the notebooks in this repository using the ARDC Binder service. This is a free service available to researchers in Australian universities. You'll be asked to log in with your university credentials. Note that sessions will close if you stop using the notebooks, and no data will be preserved. Make sure you download any changed notebooks or harvested data that you want to save.

See Using ARDC Binder for more details.

Using Binder

Launch on Binder

Click on the button above to launch the notebooks in this repository using the Binder service (it might take a little while to load). This is a free service, but note that sessions will close if you stop using the notebooks, and no data will be saved. Make sure you download any changed notebooks or harvested data that you want to save.

See Using Binder for more details.

Using Reclaim Cloud

Launch on Reclaim Cloud

Reclaim Cloud is a paid hosting service, aimed particularly at supported digital scholarship in hte humanities. Unlike Binder, the environments you create on Reclaim Cloud will save your data – even if you switch them off! To run this repository on Reclaim Cloud for the first time:

  • Create a Reclaim Cloud account and log in.
  • Click on the button above to start the installation process.
  • A dialogue box will ask you to set a password, this is used to limit access to your Jupyter installation.
  • Sit back and wait for the installation to complete!
  • Once the installation is finished click on the 'Open in Browser' button of your newly created environment (note that you might need to wait a few minutes before everything is ready).

See Using Reclaim Cloud for more details.

Running in a container on your own computer

GLAM Workbench repositories are stored as pre-built container images on quay.io. You can run these containers on your own computer to set up a virtual machine with everything you need to use the notebooks. This is free, but requires more technical knowledge – you'll have to install Podman on your computer, and be able to use the command line.

  • Install Podman.
  • In a terminal, run the following command:
    podman run --rm -p 8888:8888 quay.io/glamworkbench/trove-music jupyter lab --ip=0.0.0.0 --port=8888 --ServerApp.token="" --LabApp.default_url="/lab/tree/index.ipynb"
  • It will take a while to download and configure the container image. Once it's ready you'll see a message saying that Jupyter Notebook is running.
  • Point your web browser to http://127.0.0.1:8888
  • When you've finished, download any files or data you want to keep from Jupyter Lab, and enter Ctrl+C int the terminal.

See Running in a container on your own computer for more details.

Setting up on your own computer

If you know your way around the command line and are comfortable installing software, you might want to set up your own computer to run these notebooks. You'll need to have recent versions of Python and Git installed. I use pyenv, pyenv-virtualenv, and pip-tools to create and manage Python versions and environments.

In a terminal:

  • Create a Python virtual environment (Python >= 3.10 should be ok): pyenv virtualenv 3.10.12 trove-music
  • Activate the virtual environment: pyenv local trove-music
  • Use git clone to create a local version of the GLAM Workbench repository: git clone https://github.com/GLAM-Workbench/trove-music.git
  • Use cd to move into the newly-cloned folder: cd trove-music
  • Run pip install pip-tools to install pip-tools.
  • Run pip-sync requirements.txt dev-requirements.txt to install the required Python packages.
  • Start Jupyter with jupyter lab – a browser window should open automatically. If not, copy and paste the url from the command line to your web browser.
  • To shut down your Jupyter Lab session enter Ctrl+C in the terminal.

See Using Python on your own computer for more details.

Contributors

Cite as

Sherratt, Tim. (2023). GLAM-Workbench/trove-music (version v2.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10399140