Change Log
The Kelly Files Database site came on-line
in June, 2018. Here's a log
of what's changed since then (in reverse chronological order).
August 22, 2021
John Milmo provided updates to the Original Series, Unlettered and Suffix-f files,
which have now been incorporated into the database.
Fixed bug in Advanced Search that caused failure when search involved
file name.
May 30, 2021
The database has been updated to correct errors discovered by Christian Zwarg,
Peter Adamson, Paul Steinson and John Milmo, adding 16 recordings and
otherwise improving the search results.
April 18, 2021
Several new and modified Kelly files have been incorporated, taking the total
number of recordings over 452,000.
April 9, 2021
The 0KA file has been added to the collection, yielding an additional
1,101 recordings.
"Matrix numbers" for the Original Series of recordings have been
corrected to reflect te day of recording and a daily serial number.
Updated versions of the BL, BK and Unlettered files have been incorporated.
February 26, 2021
Some recordings in the 0LA and CTPX files were marked with the wrong
recording size. These have now been corrected.
Issues for some recordings were erroneously listed multiple times
in search results.
February 13, 2021
New titles were added to Suf-o and Suf-a, a format correction was made in Suf-L,
and the name of a pianist accompanying Elsie Carlisle was corrected in the Bb/Cc file
as a result of correspondence from a user of the site.
A new file prepared by John Milmo, covering mobile van recordings,
special recordings and private recording made between 1934 and 1960 has been parsed,
and its more than 8,600 recordings added to the database.
November 21, 2020
Bug fix: A search term that contains a single quote (apostrophe),
such as "Joseph O'Mara" failed with an ugly crash. Now it doesn't.
In many cases, Kelly's files used "smart" quotes instead of simple
quotes, and the resulting recordings were very difficult to find in
a search. Now the problematic characters have been replaced with
simple quotes.
November 1, 2020
Over 7,000 recordings from the HMV Celebrity Series Recordings and
Historical Reissues 1924-1958 listing (10” records in the DA, DJ, DL and
DR series, 12” records in the DB, DK, DM, DO, DQ and DS series, and
reissues in the ABHA, ABHB, AGSA, AGSB, IR, IRX, VA and VB series)
have been added as ‘new’ recordings because they began life as Victor
recordings.
In addition, recordings in that series that began life as
HMV or Gramophone Co. recordings may have additional issue numbers
added if the issue number from those series was not already in the database.
September 6, 2020
Many entries for recordings by Sir John Barbirolli were
improved based on input from Malcolm Walker.
August 23, 2020
John Milmo provided revised versions of the -g/-h/-i
files, and several new documents listing recordings
from 1934, with prefixes starting with 0A. As a result,
the database has approximately 2,000 additional
recordings. The latest tally is 425,193.
August 16, 2020
A replacement for the 0BA/2BA file has been incorporated,
with many corrections made by John Milmo and John Bolig.
August 1, 2020
A replacement for the old Suf-G file has been incorporated.
Based on scans that were made of the 7” recordings at the
EMI Archive, data has been added to many of the recording
entries in this file, and suffixes appended to the matrix
numbers, faithfully transcribed from the actual recordings.
Many of the matrix numbers have extended suffixes, the
precise meaning of which can now only be guessed at.
Whatever these extended suffixes meant, the practice was
probably
discontinued once the matrix numbering was standardised
in 1904 (see the first article by John Milmo under the
Resources tab in this website).
July 19, 2020
Several items have been corrected in the Suf-a, Suf-d and
Suf-e files and, based on extensive work by John Milmo and
Peter Adamson, a completely revised version of the
Suf- A(D) file has been incorporated; all of this is
related to some of the earliest recordings in the database.
June 6, 2020
A few corrections to recording suffixes in the Suf-k file
to correctly capture early use of suffix C and HP, and a few
other corrections based on user reports.
May 24, 2020
A few more corrections, based on reports from
various people.
May 10, 2020
A few corrections have been made, based on reports from
various people.
May 2, 2020
Fixed a bug (reported by Peter Adamson) that caused all
issue numbers for recordings in the BR.docx file to be dropped.
Also corrected a couple of errors reported by Enric Giné.
April 5, 2020
A couple of errors reported by Theo Morgan have
been corrected.
March 21, 2020
A few errors reported by Philip Stuart have
been corrected.
March 8, 2020
John Milmo provided an updated BV file, giving us an
additional 150 or so recordings, for a total of
423,094.
March 1, 2020
A few errors in the BF and BT files, discovered by
Peter Adamson and John Milmo, have been corrected.
December 30, 2019
Bug fix: Search criteria based on some (apparently
seldom used) fields (e.g., file name) were being
ignored.
Some searches did not find all matches when data
included accents.
December 14, 2019
The website has been moved to a new server.
December 11, 2019
The basic search function should be somewhat faster.
November 10, 2019
A few titles from the BR.docx file were incorrect, now
fixed thanks to a report from Dr. John Waś.
October 27, 2019
Recording sizes for suffix-e and suffix-f recordings
were incorrect; now they are not.
October 13, 2019
-
Recording sizes (e.g., 7-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch) are now
included in the details when a recording is selected in the
search results.
-
As a result of some small corrections, a few additional
recordings were captured, and some spurious false hits
dropped. In total, the database now has 423,110 recordings.
-
A problem reported by Peter Adamson, which comes up
occasionally when database errors occur, has been
at least partially addressed.
-
Corrected an error that resulted in incorrect titles
for recordings in a few files that had "dittoed"
titles.
- >
Handled a few cases in the suffix ae file where second title
paragraphs started with an asterisk.
-
Fixed bug in parsing of the prefix 0f file, reported
to John Milmo by Sam Brylawsk.
August 25, 2019
-
Basic Search now allows for variant spellings of
[a] performer names and [b] titles / composer names.
-
Problems parsing the 0F.docx file have been corrected,
giving us an extra 1,057 recordings.
-
Some idiosyncrasies in the am.docx file have been
recognized by the parser, yielding another 1200+
recordings.
- In total, the database now 423,120 recordings.
-
A few very long titles have been broken into
shorter pieces.
-
The automatic counting of results on the search page
may sometimes be a bit faster.
June 15, 2019
Various parsing corrections have removed many duplicate
and otherwise spurious recordings. At the same time,
recordings with takes like '-1A', '-2A' and so on are
now better handled, and many that had been erroneously
discarded are now captured.
New recording total is 420,834.
Many recordings from the BX file had missing titles,
which have been recovered.
June 13, 2019
Toronto Raptors win 2019 NBA Championship!
June 1, 2019
John Milmo provided an additional file (0ER.docx) which has
now been taken into the database, adding over 2,000 recordings,
and leading to a new total of 420,688 recordings.
May 5, 2019
An error in the location for some recordings in the ~UNLET
file, pointed out by Peter Adamson, has been corrected.
The database can now have up to 5 title lines for a recording
(previously only 3).
A recently-introduced bug that suppressed details of some Issues
has been fixed.
April 20, 2019
Two greatly improved files (suffix ae and suffix ak)
provided by John Milmo have been incorporated.
This, and some parser improvements, result in
a new total of 417,988 recordings in the database.
March 19, 2019
A bug (introduced in the March 17 release) meant that
issue numbers were not displayed for some
recordings. This has now been fixed.
March 17, 2019
Improved parsing of the suffix ab file, thanks largely
to updates from John Milmo.
The Resources page has been expanded.
The database now has a total of 414,515 recordings.
February 24, 2019
Improved parsing of the 0BR file, especially with regard
to recordings with takes like -1A.
The database now has a total of 412,586 recordings.
February 10, 2019
Locations for recordings in the BB file have been updated
to be more complete and accurate.
Relay recordings (in the BR and 0BR files)
have been updated to identify the remote location
where the recording took place.
In the Bb file, a notation about some 1" Doll's House
recordings had been lost, but is now recovered.
The indefatigable John Milmo provided a considerably-updated
file (BT2.docx, replacing the BT.docx file).
The database now has a total of 411,240 recordings.
January 31, 2019
John Milmo provided a new file (0AB.docx) and one with
updates (0LA.docx).
These having been incorporated, and a correction made
to the parsing of the 0BR.docx file,
the database now has a total of 411,065 recordings.
As requested by Peter Adamson, the Export function
now also emits,
for each recording, the name of the Kelly file it came from,
the Location where the recording was made, and any Notes
the database has about the recording.
January 24, 2019
Two other files provided by John Milmo (0TB and 0ZA) have
been incorporated, and the database now holds 401,874
recordings.
January 21, 2019
John Milmo provided updated versions of the 0RA and
0VH files. These having been incorporated, and a few
parsing improvements made, the database now has a total of
400,584 recordings, and many errors
and inaccuracies have been corrected.
December 31, 2018
The Feedback page has been updated to reduce the
volume of spam being generated by malicious "bots".
December 29, 2018
Numerous corrections have been made, especially in parsing
(a) locations and (b) recordings with multiple title lines.
The database now has 398,102 recordings.
December 23, 2018
The parsing of the Original Series file has been improved,
following recommendations from Peter Adamson.
December 17, 2018
Various improvements have been made, in
particular to better capture data about operatic works
in the MAT304 0M file, and a few errors pointed out
by users have been corrected.
December 9, 2018
Improvements to parsing resulted in an additional 1,912 Recordings
being captured. We now have 397,999.
We fixed a bug that caused any basic search qualified
by Location to return zero results.
A few errors pointed out by users have been corrected.
October 26, 2018
Parsing of the Kelly files has been somewhat improved, especially
with respect to the capturing of issue numbers. As a result, we
"lost" 5 recordings that had been collected in error. We now have
396,085.
A few bugs have been fixed, and the database design has been somewhat
improved, although that had no effect on the site's operation.
We made a few minor tweaks to the Search page to improve usability.
October 6, 2018
We recently received an additional
Kelly file (the
one named 0CS.docx) and have now incorporated its changes
into the database. As a result, we now have 396,090
recordings, up from the previous count of 393,640. Several
improvements to the parsing program have also been made,
particularly with regard to capturing Issue Numbers.
September 2, 2018
Numerous small corrections to
the original Kelly files have been made, along with
improvements to the parsing program, enhancing the accuracy
of the database, and yielding a new total of 393,640 recordings.
July 14, 2018
We recently received an update to one of the Kelly files (the
one named 0EA.docx) and have now incorporated its changes
into the database. As a result, we now have 393,130
recordings, up from the previous count of 391,778.
June 26, 2018
The site comes on-line, with a database containing
391,778 recordings.