Mellon Foundation Grants Support to Catalog Yale's Historical Sound Recordings

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $789,000 to Yale and Stanford universities and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to facilitate the cataloging of historical 78-rpm sound recordings at all three institutions.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $789,000 to Yale and Stanford universities and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to facilitate the cataloging of historical 78-rpm sound recordings at all three institutions.

During the 40 months of the grant period, the three partner institutions will create original catalog records for over 29,000 commercial 78s that were issued by record companies as single discs. These recordings represent a treasure trove of musical and spoken-word performances, but until now information about their contents has only been available to scholars through an array of published and private discographies, card catalogs, stand-alone computer databases and the brief catalog records of the Rigler Deutsch Index. Once the grant concludes, records for the 78s will be fully searchable in the online catalogs of all three institutions, as well as through Online Computer Library Center’s WorldCat and Research Libraries Information Network’s Eureka databases.

Commenting on the award, Yale University Librarian Alice Prochaska said, “The Mellon Foundation’s generosity facilitates an exciting collaborative project, and I am simply delighted that Yale University Library is playing a key role in it. It will transform access to these important sound recordings for scholars and other listeners both in the United States and in every part of the world.”

The cataloging grant follows a six-month planning grant, also funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in which Yale, Stanford and the New York Public Library organized and prepared their historical audio collections for cataloging. With combined holdings of nearly a million commercial recordings in all formats, plus privately produced archival audio materials, Yale’s Historical Sound Recordings Collection, Stanford’s Archive of Recorded Sound, and the Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the New York Library for the Performing Arts constitute three of the largest collections of audio recordings in the United States.

Yale’s library resources include more than 11 million volumes and information in all media, from ancient papyri to electronic databases.  The library is an important international research center, visited by scholars from all over the world, and a highly valued partner in teaching and research at the University.  The library is engaged in numerous ambitious projects to expand access to its collections.  Housed in 22 buildings, the Library employs a staff of nearly 600.  For additional information on the Yale University Library, including its hours of service and digitized versions of some of its collections, visit www.library.yale.edu.

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Media Contact

Dorie Baker: dorie.baker@yale.edu, 203-432-1345