The Tom Law San Francisco Bay Area Punk and Rock Handbill and Poster Collection was recently acquired and is housed in Special Collections, Green Library. It contains approximately 1400 original posters of Punk Rock Band performances in the San Francisco Bay area.
The Archive of Recorded Sound recently held its first ever listening party on October 17th. We were thrilled to welcome over 40 attendees to the event here at the Archive, who were invited to flick through multiple boxes of duplicate 78rpm records, dating from approximately 1900-1940, to select those they would like to hear played on our 1925 Victrola Credenza, just one example from our magnificent phonograph collection here at the Archive which dates from 1904-1930. More details about this collection, including images and demonstration videos, are now available on our website.
Ahead of their 50th anniversary show this Saturday (October 26th) at the Bing Concert Hall, I am very pleased to announce the successful recent completion of a 6 month project aimed at archiving and digitally preserving the Stanford Mendicants' complete recorded output between 1964-2012.
The Stanford Media Preservation Lab (SMPL) has many partnerships on campus and the recent move provided a great opportunity to spend some time working in the audio room of one of those partners, the Archive of Recorded Sound (ARS). Several recordings were digitized and documented while there. Two projects completed of interest are the digitization of several recordings made by the a cappella group the Stanford Mendicants and the transfer of cassette tapes from the book and audio set: Photochemistry of Organic Molecules (POM) held by the Media & Microtext Center.
Wagner in his century
2013 marks the 200th birthday of musical giant Richard Wagner. In commemoration, the Music Library offers on display a selection of 19th century items related to Wagner, including an 1860 edition of the overture to Rienzi, his first successful opera; the sheet music for “Les deux grenadiers” (1843), an early song Wagner published in the hope of making a name for himself in Paris (he failed); the dedication page for the score of the Ring cycle (1875), which salutes Wagner’s champion King Ludwig II of Bavaria; and Richard Wagner's Lohengrin und Tannhäuser (1852), by Franz Liszt, commentaries on Wagner’s “système dramatique”, his approach to composition in which the interplay of words and music supports a deeper quality of expression in service to the drama. Through December .
In addition to its extensive audiovisual and print collections, the Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound also maintains a collection of audio equipment that highlights the development of playback and recording since the turn of the 20th century. At the center of this collection is a magnificent set of historic phonographs, ranging from a 1901 Edison Home A cylinder phonograph to a 1926 Victrola Credenza. These machines practically demonstrate the rapid changes in audio playback formats and machinery that occurred during the first quarter of the 20th century.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Abraham Tewolde, our Stanford University Libraries 1st-generation intern this summer, details and images of notable examples from this collection, along with demonstration videos, can now be found on the Archive's website.
Stanford University Libraries is pleased to introduce Opening Night! Opera & Oratorio Premieres, a cross-index of data for over 38,000 opera and oratorio premieres. It allows complex searches across multiple categories or simple browsing within any single category, such as genre, composer, librettist, premiere date, country, oratorio subject, or theater. The database is linked to SearchWorks, Stanford University Libraries catalog, allowing users to easily find related scores, recordings, and writings.
It is with a heavy heart that I introduce the fourth and final post by our Stanford University Libraries 1st-generation intern Abraham Tewolde, whose time with us here at the Archive of Recorded Sound comes to an end this Friday, August 16th. Working with Abraham this summer has been a real joy. The diligence, aptitude, and speed Abraham has demonstrated during his work here has been nothing short of remarkable, and witnessing the enthusiasm he has shown as he has learnt about the history of recorded sound, library research methods, and archival practice has been a true pleasure.
Thanks must go to Felicia Smith and Chris Bourg for devising and coordinating the excellent 1st-generation intern program here at Stanford Libraries. Thanks also goes to Benjamin Bates, Interim Operations Manger at the Archive of Recorded Sound, for his supervision of Abraham's daily tasks and help coordinating his schedule over the past few months.
All the staff here at the Archive would like to wish Abraham well as he starts college here at Stanford in the fall, and thank him for all of his hard work. We look forward to hopefully seeing more of him in the Archive in the near future.
