DuPage County Hardcore (DCHC), an ongoing community archiving effort focused on preserving out-of-print media by Chicago-area punk, metal and underground musicians from the '70s through the '00s. Conceived in 2013 to preserve his own bands' material from the '90s, Archivist Dave Hofer soon moved onto digitizing other local bands' cassettes, vinyl and CDs, making them available for free to music fans. The collection has grown to over 900 releases, including previously unreleased demos and live recordings. DCHC has been featured in The Chicago Reader, Bandcamp Daily, and NewCity. Hofer will discuss the history of the project, navigating copyright, digitization and metadata, and challenges.

Scott Thomson of Harmless Records, and Pete Kourim of Oblivion will join the conversation.

Dave Hofer has been involved in the Chicago-area punk scene since playing his first show at the Elmhurst YMCA in 1995. In addition to his discography, Hofer has bylines in The Chicago Sun-Times, Punk Planet, Maximumrocknroll, Decibel, and Metal Maniacs. In 2014, his biography of bassist Danny Lilker, Perpetual Conversion, was published by Handshake, Inc. In 2019, after 15 years at Reckless Records, Hofer left to pursue his MLIS. He is currently a Project Archivist at the Ryerson-Burnham Library at the Art Institute of Chicago.

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