How to access Ed Fenninger Sound Archives at Boston Public Library

[Don Saklad <dsaklad@gnu.org>]

Have any of you folks made any efforts to use
public records principles
[ Massachusetts Public Records Division
  jwalsh@sec.state.ma.us
  http://www.rcfp.org/tapping/index.cgi
  tel. 617.727.2832                     ]


to access our public Ed Fenninger Regional and
Massachusetts Library of Last Recourse
City of Boston Public Library Sound Archives
Department
[ efenninger@bpl.org ]

?...


Our public Ed Fenninger BPL Sound Archives have audio
collections of local radio stations that disbanded long
ago.

You need to be very determined because Ed has denied
having materials that turned up!



With a bit of unshakable determination you can tour our
public sound archives located in our BPL Copley Square
Library Johnson Building as a nonpublic department
downstairs separated over in another area from the
usual recordings for borrowing by contacting
Eulene Harris
[ eharris@bpl.org ]


Before the flood Olga Pachenko compiled her version
of sound archives collections

  By Olga Pachenko
  Sound Archives of the Boston Public Library, 1918-present 
  
  Over 250,000 recordings,
  approximately 40% of which are of classical music,
  35% of popular music,
  10% of jazz, and
  15% of other types of recordings,
  such as spoken or
  children's recordings.
  
  About 40% are 78rpm records,
  40% LPs,
  10% tapes (including open reel and cassete),
  5% compact discs, and
  5% other formats, including
  videotapes,
  45s,
  piano rolls, and a very few
  cylinders and
  wire recordings.
  
  Among the spoken recordings are
  412 reel-to-reel tapes of the Boston Public Library's
  Ford Hall Forum lectures,
  
  about 1900 cassette recordings of all lectures given in the
  Rabb Lecture Hall (1970s and 1980s),
  
  186 reel-to-reel tapes of Latvian Heritage Programs
  (1960s and 1970s),
  
  18 videotapes of Boston Legacy Programs,
  
  about 175 videotapes of Eliot Norton's theater reviews on
  WGBH-TV, and
  
  565 tapes of the Metropolitan Opera Broadcast
  (1950s and 1960s).
  
  The archives also holds
  243 recordings once belonging to Walter Piston and
  691 once belonging to Serge Koussevitzky.


"Establishment of a Trust Fund for Sound Archives:
 [ http://www.bpl.org/WWW/trusteeagenda52000.html ]

  Voted:
  that, there be and hereby is, established the Sound
  Archives Fund in the amount of $430,072, said gift to
  be held as a fund until otherwise ordered by the
  Board, the income to be applied to the establishment
  and subsequent operations of the Sound Archives
  Department and the services it renders.
 
  These restrictions may be modified or eliminated
  despite further contributions to this fund or reliance
  by any outside party on the original vote."

  Mr. Bernard A. Margolis
[ bmargolis@bpl.org
  http://www.bpl.org/WWW/trusteeagenda52000.html ]

New England Chapter of the Music Library Association
http://www.wesleyan.edu/nemla/news125.htm
http://www.wesleyan.edu/nemla/news126.htm