Designing a Spatial Hypermedia Musical "Lab Notebook" to Support Ethnomusicology Research

Digital technology most commonly used in ethnomusicology research consists of: audio/video files, as typically the only available representations of the music; audio players of varying levels of sophistication to explore nuances in the captured soundscape; and word/text processors to refine the insights gained and to communicate the research. However, these are poorly connected, and it is up to the individual researcher to manage these disparate tools and digital artifacts in their research process. Through a collaborative design process (co-design), two computer scientists and one ethnomusicologist are working together to design a "lab notebook" for ethnomusicology research that utilizes a spatial hypermedia framework to provide a unified work research environment. This paper focuses specifically on how this framework can support a workflow for a close listening of an audio file, which used over time has the potential to grow, we posit, into a personal digital library of content.