Complete Project Abstract

The University of Pittsburgh and the Society for American Music are partnering on a Collaborative Planning Grant to bring together librarians, archivists, and scholars toward developing a digital and sustainable reference tool for locating source materials in American music history.

Resources of American Music History: A Directory of Source Materials from Colonial Times to World War II, compiled by D.W. Krummel, Jean Geil, Doris J. Dyen, and Deane L. Root (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1981), was the first major reference work to provide access to the primary materials of American music history, and thus quickly became a major reference tool for American music studies, but it was prepared in the era just prior to computer-based access to repositories’ historical collections and Internet communications.

The audience for an electronic version would be international, including students and scholars of American studies throughout the world.  Within the United States, it would certainly include music librarians, but also the large and growing numbers of college students and faculty of American music, as well as K-12 teachers and students who work with source documents.  No other bibliographical tool provides descriptions of the source materials for research and study for the full field of American music. 

RAMH2 will address the need for locating current information about primary sources in American music, whether in libraries, museums, or private collections, a particular concern to the growing number of students, scholars, and music librarians. The planning phase of this project will address issues related to accessibility of the materials by a global audience.  It will determine how to engage the wider scholarly community in building these resources so that the end result will be available to all online by some intelligent means of discovery, will incorporate the needs of all who study these primary source materials in American music, and will continue to meet these needs in the future.

The planning process will focus on four major tasks:

 

• Identify the scope, types and quantity of materials which would be included in RAMH2;
• Identify existing standards for their description and access;
• Determine the tools needed to collect, store, and refresh that data continuously; and
• Establish what kind of online searching users would need to access the information.

The main focus of the planning of this project will be a planning conference, to be held in Pittsburgh April 26-28th, 2009, which would bring together key individuals representing various organizations and user groups that have a vested interest in the implementation and success of RAMH2.

For more information on RAMH2, please visit our Grant Proposal page.