Size
Since the arrival of the first collections of sound recordings in 1948, the Archives holdings have grown to include 7,000 cylinders, 250 wires, 10,000 cassettes, 70,000 discs, 40,000 tape reels, 500 videotapes, 600 compact discs, and 200 digital audio tapes, representing over 250,000 hours of recording time. Listening copies are available for approximately 65% of the cataloged recordings. In addition to audiovisual recordings, the collections include original manuscripts, transcriptions, correspondence, and field material from a number of early collectors, as well as pamphlets, articles, piano rolls, linguistic slip files, photographs and slides, films, computer storage media, historic recording devices, and books.
Acquisitions
Most of the Archives field collections are donated by researchers who deposit their original recordings in exchange for high-quality working copies. Commercial recordings are obtained through purchase or by exchange or donation from institutions and private collectors.
Highlights of the Collections
Archives holdings document the history of ethnographic sound recording, from wax cylinders made during museum expeditions in the 1890s to recent commercial releases on compact disc. The core of the collection consists of some 2,000 field collections; unique and irreplaceable recordings collected by anthropologists, linguists, ethnomusicologists, and folklorists throughout the world. Extensive holdings of Native American, African, and Latin American music and spoken word, and several large collections of early jazz and blues 78s reflect the research interests of the faculty and students at Indiana University.
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Historic Collections
Important historic collections encompass several thousand cylinder recordings of Native American music made by individuals who were among the first to make use of sound recordings to document the music and language of various cultures, including Franz Boas, George Amos Dorsey, and George Bird Grinnell. The Archives also houses the results of remarkable early expeditions to other parts of the world: the Jacob H. Schiff Expedition to China (1901-1902), carried out by Berthold Laufer, and the Morris J. Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897-1902). Both were sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, by whose courtesy the collections are on deposit at the Archives of Traditional Music. Recordings made by scholars of later generations-- Melville Herskovits, Frank G. Speck, Natalie Curtis Burlin, and Harold Courlander-- are also well represented.
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Spoken Word Collections
Significant spoken-word collections include the Archives of the Languages of the World, collected by Carl and Florence Voegelin, the Nichols Collection of interviews with African authors, and the Dennis Duerden Collection of African drama and music, which features lectures, interviews and readings by black poets and playwrights. The history and traditions of numerous African communities are represented in a large body of oral data.
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Special Collections
The Archives houses a number of special collections, among them the Laura C. Boulton Collection of recordings collected worldwide from 1929 through 1978, with accompanying field notes, papers, and correspondence; the Hoagy Carmichael Collection of recordings, photographs, and memorabilia; the George Herzog Collection of Native American music, field notes, and music transcriptions; and several collections from Somalia.
