A year beside an album title can answer a smaller question than you expect. It may identify the edition being sold rather than the occasion when the musicians recorded the sound. That distinction matters when you are looking for a historical performance, comparing reissues or writing a note about a track. The safest starting point is the source’s actual field label, not a single year copied into every part of your collection record.
| Official field or question | What this example supports |
|---|---|
| Catalog identity | SFW40201 |
| Year released | 2015 |
| Collection recording eras | 1930s and1940s |
| Exact date of a chosen track | Not established by the collection-level era field |
One catalog record contains more than one kind of time
Smithsonian Folkways identifies Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection as catalog SFW40201, with a release year of 2015. It separately lists recording eras as the 1930s and 1940s. Those fields plainly do different jobs. The release year is not a reason to describe the collected performances as recordings made in 2015.
The collection-level era field also does not settle the exact session date of a particular track. If that is the fact you need, consult the relevant track documentation or liner notes. Keep an unresolved date unresolved rather than selecting a convenient year from the surrounding page. A broadly correct decade and an exact session date are different levels of information.
Build a small provenance card around the track
An original card can record the exact track title as listed, artist, edition/catalog identity, the source’s release field, any documented recording date and the source for each. Add a note when a field describes the whole collection rather than the chosen track. The table shows what this particular catalog record can establish without pretending that its summary supplies every session detail.
This can change a purchase decision. If you want a specific performance rather than merely a familiar song title, ask the seller or label for the relevant edition information before buying. A song can appear in more than one performance or issue. Do not use a matching title alone to promise that two listings contain the same recording. No audio comparison was used to establish a match here.
Keep a new edition from rewriting an older performance
When a later source supplies better detail, add it to the appropriate field and preserve the earlier source note. Do not silently turn an approximate era into an exact date or treat the date of a web page as the date of the performance. A useful record lets another reader see which question each date answers.
For a personal library, this is a practical reason to delay expensive duplicate purchases until the edition identity is clear. For a cultural note, it keeps a modern release from making a historical performance sound newly recorded. Precision does not require a complete chronology; it requires an honest distinction between the facts established and the ones still being researched.
Sources & further reading
Published sources for the details and examples discussed in this story.
