| |
One Million and Counting:
A Tour through the Sound Recordings Archives
at Bowling Green State University
by Kit Clatanoff, Regional Collection Development Manager
The width of the Mississippi River and Iowa's endless horizons are wonders of the American heartland. So are the seven-story office building in Ohio constructed in the shape of a basket, complete with upright handles, and the enormous cutout of the Jolly Green Giant that looms up on the skyline of a lonely road in Minnesota. Size attracts attention, and mine was drawn to Bowling Green State University, which is home to the largest academic repository of popular music in the United States and, possibly, the world. Last month I was treated to a tour of a wonderland, which is how I will always think of the 10,000 square feet of popular music recordings and artifacts, from the obscure to the fabulous, of the Sound Recordings Archives on the third floor of the William T. Jerome Library at BGSU.
Stepping off the elevator, I was struck by the colorful walls, the 45s hung on string from the ceiling, and a halloo from Bill Schurk, the Archivist at the center of all activity. A bust of Elvis topped with a crown peered over Bill's shoulder at me as I hung my coat and turned around a few times to take it all in. There is no unused space in the Sound Recordings Archives. Even the walls are used to display posters of pop music icons, or long-past concert events. Every nook has a piece of fascination to investigate. Workspaces are filled with artifacts such as the pink "Disk Tote" for 45s, a dead ringer for the one my (older) sister used to own. She's long since tossed hers, but Bill had meticulously cleaned this one and put it into a clear wrap to preserve it. There was so much to see. I had imagined we might first stroll down the long shelves of LPs whose artwork warmed me like the sight of an old flame at a class reunion, but Bill wanted to talk about the catalog.
"Here," he said, waving at an area filled with tables fitted with lamps and computer connections, "was where the old card catalog used be." It must have been a whopper of a file, but the catalog information is now online. Getting it into OCLC MARC was, and is, a labor intensive effort, and most records require touching of some kind. Consider that every song is added by its title whether it is a stand-alone recording, or part of a collection of songs. Bill demonstrated this with a search of "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles, and the search returned 30 instances of that song held by the Archives, in a variety of formats and in various collections by many labels. If "Yesterday" were the song queried, 475 entries would be returned, and 94 each for "She Loves You" and "Norwegian Wood". Original cataloging of unique items is ongoing. The Archives has received grants in the past from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the cataloging of LPs, and now has support from the main cataloging unit in the library to address the backlog of uncataloged CDs.
Susannah Cleveland, Head of the Music Library and Sound Recordings Archives, joined us to talk about how such a treasure trove had come into existence. The short answer is that the Sound Recordings Archives was created to support academic programs at the University. In the late 60's, a new popular culture studies program was embraced by the campus community, and the materials gathered in an effort to support this program included pop music, despite some opposition from the administration about the value of collecting any items considered popular, let alone sound recordings. The collection was started with funding from the University, and also with donations of material by Bill himself from his own collection, and from others who heard about the effort and were eager to help. Bill's forays into yard sales, used records stores, attics, flea- and other types of aftermarkets in search of hard-to-find songs is a matter of (forgive me) record.
Susannah had an interesting perspective on the continuing change in how people access music. "We are often asked why we can't stream out the collection," she said with a smile, "or why we can't output our music onto Ipods." We all paused for a moment, blinking at the thought of the work and the funding it would take to accommodate such requests. For now, the thousands of researchers who want to take a listen must come in to the Archives. While the CD is today's standard for archiving music, most recordings in the Archives are in a more delicate format, and so do not circulate. Preserving each original recording is critical, so handling of items is restricted to staff members, who set up request from a station on the other side of the desk. The music is piped out to one of the twenty listening stations, in which the volume can be controlled. Patrons are able to examine album jackets and any notes.
Also on hand were music playback devices, from current equipment used by the staff all the way back to cylindrical players of the Edison era. The Archives had, at one point, some 2,000 cylindrical recordings, but no reliable way to play them, and so sent them to UC Santa Barbara. UCSB has an Archeophone, a machine created to play, without causing them to wear down, all of the many sizes of wax or celluloid cylinders. I thought Bill sounded regretful at the want of such a device, but it seemed to me that every other kind of player, even if in an incomplete form, was there in the Archives. Passing by furniture-like gramophones, outsized stereo components, and tiny plastic players for 45s brought the past to life.
While showing me the discographies that help with locating items that are filed if not yet cataloged, Bill ran down the history of the war of speeds that spawned different speeds of play and sizes of albums, the precise meaning of the expression "covering a song" of one artist by another, how LPs may be washed, and the different substances that have been used in sound recordings (wax, shellac, vinyl, acetate) over the years. The mention of shellac led us physically to look at the few shelves of 78s that still remain in the library. Most have been moved to remote storage, as the 78s had become, in Bill's words, "16 tons of shellac" that could no longer be supported on the third floor of the building.
From the 78s, Bill guided me at last through the maze of tall shelves filled with LPs, with stop-offs at 8-tracks and CDs. I can't say that it is impossible to describe the amazing LPs I saw in the stacks because that is exactly the business of this world-class research facility. I can, however, express the fascination I experienced in seeing the breadth and depth of songs available, and my admiration for the work that produced it. Think of a song you've heard on the radio at any time in your life. Odds are I saw it on the shelf, in its original jacket, in the Archives. Bill was the best possible guide. The depth of his knowledge of these recordings is matched only by his passion for them. His eyes light when he touches an old cassette tape entitled, "Tender Mercies Recalled Vol.3" by Lula Belle and Scotty, or an LP album cover featuring a long-ago local crooner with truly bad hair, or a Stones album that went platinum. Bill is still collecting current top pop, budget permitting, but he means also to collect those things he thinks other libraries may pass by, and has interest in recordings that did not necessarily have a wide commercial release. Bill emphasizes that the Archives is purposely not focused on a particular genre, as a number of other academic collections are, but on having a little of everything.*
This strategy, over the years, has positioned the Sound Recordings Archives as the sole source for a number of songs. I am struck by the understanding that a hundred years from now, a recording Bill is cataloging today may very well be the only copy in existence. Does a hundred years into the future seem like a far away time? Consider that Bill has been building this collection, now at one million items, for 42 years. "This is my life," he says.
* A type of music Bill doesn't collect is classical, with one exception. Because of their historical value, he's interested in adding to the Archives the first 100 of the ML4000 series from Columbia Records. These albums have a mid-blue cover with a Doric Column. If you have one in your cellar, give Bill a call. He also asks that readers please not surprise him with donations of records or other materials, but rather contact him in advance.
|
