Improving Environmental Conditions for UCLA Ethnomusicology Collections

FAIN: PG-233729-16

UCLA; Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA 90024-4201)
Aaron Michael Bittel (Project Director: May 2015 to October 2017)

The purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for UCLA’s Ethnomusicology Archive, which is housed in the university’s music building. Collections number nearly 150,000 recordings and include unique field recordings, as well as commercially produced recordings of traditional, folk, popular, and art music from Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific islands, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Some highlights include the earliest known recordings of some rural Mexican musical traditions from the 1960s and the “race” records and “hillbilly” music of D.K. Wilgus, a renowned scholar of folksongs and ballads. The collection is used broadly by the UCLA community and by scholars from all over the world.

The UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is part of one of the oldest and most highly regarded academic programs (and the only independent department) in ethnomusicology in the U.S. Its audiovisual collections have been central to the Department as research collections and teaching resources since the Archive's founding in 1961. The Archive is accessible to the public and serves scholars and students from around the world, as well the UCLA and Southern California communities at large, and have exposed innumerable people to music traditions from around the world. The applicant seeks funding to improve environmental monitoring and collection care in collections spaces, as a result of recommendations made in a recent preservation assessment. Environmental monitors will be used as part of an early detection system, long-term monitoring, and to provide data for a Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections planning grant application to address long-term collection safety and stability.