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IU launches online collection of Indiana's favorite songwriter
Nov. 16, 1999
EDITORS: Kris Brancolini, acting director of the Digital Library Program, and Gloria Gibson, director of the Archives of Traditional Music, are available for interviews. Brancolini can be reached at 812-855-6281 and Gibson can be reached at 812-855-8634.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Indiana University Digital Library Program and the IU Archives of Traditional Music today (Nov. 16) launched a Web site featuring IU's vast collection of materials pertaining to Hoosier composer Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael.
Just in time for the 100th anniversary of Carmichael's birth on Nov. 22, the Web site provides access to photos, correspondence, original lyric sheets, scrapbooks and selections of the songwriter's award-winning music contained in the Archives of Traditional Music.
Visitors to the site can listen to selections of Carmichael's most popular tunes, take a virtual tour of an exhibit that features Hoagy memorabilia, and view unique photos of Carmichael throughout his life. The Hoagy Carmichael Collection Web site can be viewed at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/hoagy/
The multimedia Web site is part of an 18-month project to catalog, digitize and preserve every item in IU's extensive collections pertaining to the life and career of master songwriter Carmichael (1899-1981). In the coming months, materials from IU's Lilly Library and the IU Archives also will be added to the collections now online.
When complete, this digital library will include approximately 250 hours of sound recordings, 4,550 pages of printed and textual materials, and 1,070 photographs. The collection represents the largest grouping of materials pertaining to Carmichael available anywhere.
"There's been such an interest in Hoagy lately," said Gloria Gibson, director of the Archives of Traditional Music, where memorabilia are exhibited in the Hoagy Carmichael Room.
"We've had calls and visits from people who simply love his songs, scholars who analyze his work within the context of American popular music, and researchers from the British Broadcasting Corp., National Public Radio and even CBS Sunday Morning, who have contacted the archives for Carmichael materials for their programming. This online exhibit opens our collections to so many more Hoagy fans and scholars."
Carmichael's songs are among the most memorable and widely recognized of the early 20th century. His enduring pop standard, Star Dust, has been recorded more than 1,600 times and translated into 30 languages.
Designed to appeal to a wide audience, the richness of the collections makes the site particularly valuable for those who want more detailed information.
"Developing this site is an opportunity for a research library to share its unique resources with scholars, and it means a greater number of individuals can see or hear the collection while the original material is preserved," said Kris Brancolini, acting director of the Digital Library Program.
For example, a group of high school music students can now hear a rare 1930s recording of Hoagy's music from their own classroom. "The site allows users to explore the collections in an entirely new way," Brancolini said.
The Hoagy Carmichael Collection Web site also makes it easier to locate related materials. When the project is complete, users will be able to enter a keyword and find references from many formats. For example, by typing the word "Georgia," users will be able to link to lyric sheets and sound recordings of Georgia on My Mind, photographs of Hoagy's sister, Georgia, who many believe inspired the song, and correspondence that mentions her.
The project is partially funded by a National Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that fosters innovation, leadership and a lifetime of learning.
IU has substantial experience in audio digitization, both in the Archives of Traditional Music and in the William and Gayle Cook Music Library, where over 5,000 sound recordings have been digitized and stored for online access. The Carmichael project builds on the accomplishments of IU's Variations Project, a national model for distributing CD-quality sound via computer networks.
(Eric Bartheld, 812-856-4817, ebarthel@indiana.edu or George Vlahakis, 812-855-0846, gvlahaki@indiana.edu)