Assessing Field Recordings in Three Appalachian College Archives – Appalachian College Association

The goal of the Assessing Field Recordings Project of the Appalachian College Association (ACA) was to assess the nature, extent and importance of the Appalachian music holdings at three ACA member colleges: Berea, Davis & Elkins, and Ferrum, all small, private, liberal arts institutions.  Dr. Kip Lornell of George Washington University conducted site visits to understand how each college supports its noncommercial music collections in terms of physical storage, long term preservation, and accessibility. This attention is particularly appropriate at a time when as Lornell observes, “American music - especially grassroots and popular music - is clearly the growth area in music departments across the United States.”  

Berea College (Kentucky): The major collections in Hutchins Library’s Department of Special Collections and Archives include approximately 15,000 Appalachian music performances. These collections are particularly strong in documenting Kentucky fiddle traditions, Old Regular Baptist singing and preaching, and ballads and other regional song genres.  Digitization standards follow those of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives.

Davis & Elkins College (West Virginia): Collections at the Booth Library and College related Augusta Heritage Center are impressive for sheer volume, breadth of genres, and quality of performances. An NEH preservation grant in recent years made possible analog preservation copying of selected portions of these collections. Approximately one half of the preservation copies have been transferred to audio CD for listening. However, equipment limitations prevent making the highest quality digital transfers from all of analogue formats represented.   

Ferrum College (Virginia):  Ferrum’s music collections are housed in its Blue Ridge Institute, which also includes major artifacts and photographic collections. The Institute is recognized by scholars, publishers, and record producers as one of the premier collections of materials related to African-American folk culture in the Appalachian region of Virginia and the state as a whole.  Grant funded analog preservation copying over the years has been accomplished for portions of these collections. However much remains to be done.

Conclusions

In his report Lornell observes that these approximately 25,000 unique Appalachian music performances are of major importance because they reveal a great deal about the diversity of 20th-century daily musical life in sections of Appalachian Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. However, at present they are a “…sadly underutilized resource that I strongly believe should be shared not only among the Appalachian College Association schools, but with a much wider community of musician enthusiasts and scholars across the world.” Particularly notable are Berea’s hymnody recordings, Davis & Elkins’ Helvetica (Swiss-German) material, and Ferrum’s African American songs and tunes - none of which have been sufficiently documented by commercial record companies.   

While each of the Archives has successfully accomplished digital transfer of thousands of musical selections in a variety of aging analogue formats, none has sufficient funds for personnel and/or equipment to mount defensible, long term preservation measures, create online catalog records, and make possible wide spread scholarly access on the scale of entities such as JSTOR or ARTstor.

Appalachian College Association Presentation