Lydinventar

Lydinventar is a concept used in sound studies and digital archiving to describe a systematic catalog of sound assets within a collection. It supports the organization, discovery, and provenance tracking of audio materials, from field recordings to speech, music, and sound effects.

The term derives from lyd meaning sound in several Germanic languages and inventar meaning inventory, reflecting its roots in library and archival practices. While not universally standardized, lydinventar frameworks are discussed in musicology, linguistics, and digital humanities as a way to manage large audio corpora.

A lydinventar typically assigns a unique identifier to each item and records metadata such as title, creator, date, duration, format, sampling rate, channels, rights information, provenance, and descriptive keywords. Entries may link to related objects, transcriptions, translations, and usage histories. Technical metadata may cover file integrity, compression, and storage location.

Implementation often aligns with established metadata standards used in libraries and archives, including Dublin Core, PREMIS for preservation metadata, and PBCore for audiovisual assets. Controlled vocabularies and authority files improve searchability, while access controls and rights management govern use.

Use cases include academic research, linguistic fieldwork, musicology, ethnography, and digital restorations. Institutions may maintain lydinventar-like catalogs to support access, rights tracking, and long-term preservation of sound collections.

Related topics include sound archive, audio metadata, and digital asset management.