Multimodal music information processing and retrieval: survey and future challenges

Towards improving the performance in various music information processing tasks, recent studies exploit different modalities able to capture diverse aspects of music. Such modalities include audio recordings, symbolic music scores, mid-level representations, motion, and gestural data, video recordings, editorial or cultural tags, lyrics and album cover arts. This paper critically reviews the various approaches adopted in Music Information Processing and Retrieval and highlights how multimodal algorithms can help Music Computing applications. First, we categorize the related literature based on the application they address. Subsequently, we analyze existing information fusion approaches, and we conclude with the set of challenges that Music Information Retrieval and Sound and Music Computing research communities should focus in the next years

Rhetoric in standard setting : the case of the going-concern audit

This paper seeks to explore in depth the ways in which the rhetoric of the standard setter responds to comments received during development of a standard. Previous research has explored the use of rhetorical strategies in accounting standards to construct and persuade as to what is 'good' and to silence potential criticisms and alternative proposals. The exploration is extended to the development of an auditing standard and is strengthened by relating the opinions of lobbyists to the rhetoric used in the response. The analysis shows that, in a situation where the standard setter's position changed significantly during the exposure of proposals to comment, rhetorical strategies in the exposure draft or standard were adapted to match the changing direction of persuasion, with silencing of potential counter-argument evidenced in the surrounding explanatory material. Research implications/limitations - The research demonstrates that those using standards should be aware of the normative nature of these documents and the subjectivity inherent in the nature of the text. The paper builds on Young's 2003 paper by exploring the dynamics of the ways in which the rhetoric of the standard setter responds to comment during the consultation process

Piecing Together the Past

Nearly fifty years ago, some Bedouin shepherds stumbled upon a cache of ancient texts in caves near the Dead Sea, thirteen miles east of Jerusalem. It soon became clear that this was the largest and most significant collection of manuscripts ever discovered in Palestine. Finds Included the oldest witnesses to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of Jewish scripture-the Christian Old Testament-along with nonbiblical manuscripts certain to illuminate the tumultuous period of the destruction of the Second Temple and the time of Christ. The singularity of these texts has brought about one of the most protracted and painstaking endeavors of contemporary scholarship on religious history and Scripture. One afternoon 1947, three Bedouin shepherds were herding their flocks in the vicinity of Wadi Qumran above the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. They casually tossed a rock in acave opening and heard something break. Returning later, they discovered ten large pottery jars, one of which contained three scrolls wrapped in protective linen coverings. Four additional scrolls were soon discovered in the cave. Neither the Bedouin nor the antiquities dealer whom they contacted had any idea what the documents contained. Thinking the script to be some form of Syriac, the antiquities dealer solf four of the scrolls to the Syrian Orthodox metropolitan at St. Mark\u27s Monastery in Jerusalem. For approximately one hundred dollars, the metropolitan unwittingly purchased the oldest extant Hebrew text of the Book of Isaiah, an ancient Hebrew commentary on Habakkuk, and two unknown texts. The antiquities dealer sold the other three manuscripts to Eleazar Sukenik, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The scrolls were in such fine condition that they were all published almost immediately. The magnitude and antiquity of these finds soon became apparent, and the caves around Wadi Qumran were aggressively explored for additional scrolls. Of the many caves quarried, eleven near the Wadi yielded written material. Cave 11, the last to be discovered (1956), supplied several extensively preserved scrolls of Leviticus, Psalms, and other works whose state of preservation rivaled that of the original Cave 1 finds. Unfortunately, there were only about a dozen of these beautifully preserved scrolls. Most of the approximately eight hundred texts discovered in the Qumran caves were not scrolls but scraps from disintegrated scrolls. Cave 4 yielded its rich cache of more than 575 manuscripts in tens of thousands of pieces. The condition of the written material in the other caves was no better: Caves 2 and 3 and Caves 5 through 10 yielded only fragments of more than one hundred other texts. Lacking the protection of pottery jars and linen shrouds, these manuscripts had fallen prey to a host of aggressors over the centuries, from the moisture in the caves to the appetite of worms to the swords and sandals of the caves\u27 human visitors. The scrolls simply disintegrated over the centuries, with the result that rarely 5 percent of any individual manuscript survived. The few surviving pieces of discrete scrolls were separated from one another and jumbled indiscriminately in layers of dirt on the cave floors. The muddle of fragments was made all the more incomprehensible by the manner of their retrieval. The Bedouin had gathered and sold most of the initial fragments without any record of where they came from. Fortunately, subsequent scientific excavations of Cave 4 unearthed fragments that were manifestly part of the same scrolls represented by the Bedouin finds. This established that the Bedouin scraps had been removed from the floor of Cave 4 and thereby guaranteed the authenticity of the initial fragments

The Ohio State University Libraries Audiovisual Assessment Interim Report

The 26-month audiovisual (AV) assessment took place from June 2017 to August 2019 with a focus on rare or unique audiovisual items. Curators and archivists within each unit identified collections or collecting areas for significance or research value. Approximately 65% of AV materials in seven library units has not been assessed. Upon completion, 18,389 audiovisual items in 32 distinct formats were individually assessed