His voice travels through the chords of the headphones and into the listener’s ears. The highs and lows in his pitch, his pauses, and the speed of his speech all add further meaning to his poetry.

“Hearing Allen Ginsberg read his works at SF State is amazing,” said visiting research scholar Sara Wingate Gray while listening to a recording of Ginsberg’s works in the audio and video archive on the fifth floor of the Humanities building.

The Poetry Center has been recording the spoken works of poets since its opening in 1954, using microphones and tapes to gather audio clips from almost 3,000 poetry readings by legendary poets like Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, Anne Sexton and Maya Angelou.

As the tapes start to wear out over time, better preservation methods are implemented to maintain the audio poetry for future audiences.

“Currently, to hear these poets, people have to physically visit the center or order them from a catalogue,” Gray said.

Gray, 29, was commissioned by the university to help convert a portion of the audio and video recordings to SF State’s new digital file and sharing Web site, Data and Instruction Virtual Archive (DIVA), where students will be able to listen to archived speeches and video recordings from poets online.

“This is a really important archive,” Gray said. “To see and hear someone’s work can be invaluable in regards to understanding it.”

Ginsberg’s famed “Howl” and 600 other audible poetic works have been chosen by the Poetry Center staff to be stored on the online archive, to give audio and video recordings longevity and overcome issues concerning physical wear.

Andrew Roderick, one of three members of the SF State DIVA team, said the program—designed by members from BSS Computing, a facility that provides computer services and oversight of resources from academic programs—was officially launched at SF State in September to make digital files more accessible for students, faculty, and the general public.

“It became clear to [the DIVA team] that there was no coherent support for campus resource areas like the Poetry Center with collections of works that could be digitized,” Roderick said.

Poetry Center Business Manager Elise Ficarra expects to have a good selection of the collected readings live on DIVA by next fall, which will be accessible through login use of the DIVA Web site.

“There is a special importance to keep the spoken word alive, especially after the poets pass away,” said Creative Writing alumna Nicole Fain, 24, who graduated from the university last spring. “The fact the Poetry Center is using something like DIVA to keep these recording intact is important to history.”

Fain didn’t learn about the recorded archives of the Poetry Center until her junior year but said the new program will bring more awareness to the resource.

“I wish I would have known about the audio and video archive when I was freshman,” she said. “At least it seems like more people will be able to access it once its gone digital.”

Although students like Fain agree that audio recordings of poetry are powerful, other students still believe in the written word.

“I think both [audio and print] are necessary for the art of poetry. Some is meant to be read, some is meant to be spoken,” said senior Creative Writing major Kendyll Pappas, 21.

Until the process of transferring the audio and visual archive to DIVA is complete, students can visit the archive room adjacent to the Poetry Center in Humanities 509.

The next Poetry Center event to be recorded for the new DIVA archive will be a performance by Jayne Cortez and the Firespitters, on Oct. 29, at the Victoria Theatre at 7:30 p.m.