has been the closest we have ever had to an official filk archivist. Over the years, he amassed and catalogued an incredible collection of filk convention material, recording many performances, from concerts to filk circles. He also ensured that performers had an opportunity to obtain copies of their performances.
In his archivist role, Harold worked to identify and preserve as many recordings of filk music as he possibly could, and put together a huge collection of tapes made at conventions and housefilks, as well as filk from other sources. This was all backed up digitally off site to prevent loss. He was also wise enough to assign people to carry on his work of preserving this collection. Because of this work, people in the distant future will have the opportunity to listen to our music. In his recording, Harold was very respectful of people’s wishes and intellectual property rights. As noted on his website (FloatingFilk.com) “Do Not Record requests are always honoured“. He was courteous to a fault.
He also made a CD-R of the concert recordings for Interfilk donation. Over the years, he donated over a dozen such recordings to Interfilk.
He has also contributed to MASSFILC’s songbook index by making books available for indexing. He digitized filk zines, and, with the zeal of a completionist, attempted to collect them all. He made rare back issues available to Interfilk, along with copies of the digitized files.
Harold assisted in running sound at too many cons to mention, and ran filk programming at I-Con 2008 and I-Con 2009, and was Techno-Guest at ConCertino 2009.
Harold was a volunteer’s volunteer, from as early as the mid-1990s. At every filk convention he attended, he volunteered for the sound crew. He could often be seen during set-up and tear down, often under the stage, or climbing on chairs to get the equipment carefully and efficiently up or down.
For these contributions to filk music and the filk community, Harold Stein is inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame this 13th day of April two thousand nineteen.