Re: [ARSCLIST] Victor Records Discography Project Moves to UCSB

[Steven Smolian <smolians@xxxxxxxxx>]

Congratulations.  I'm sure you're the right place for this,

Steve

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Seubert" <seubert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 10:20 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Victor Records Discography Project Moves to UCSB


The following announcement has just been made by the University of
California, Santa Barbara.

The UCSB Libraries are pleased to announce that noted discographer,
collector and author William R. Moran of La Cañada, Calif. has chosen the
UCSB Davidson Library as the new location for the ongoing project to
complete of the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Records. A multi-volume
work with discographic information on all recordings made by the Victor
Talking Machine Company (later purchased by RCA) from 1900 to 1950, the
series is a cornerstone in the ongoing scholarly documentation of early
recorded sound.

Begun by Mr. Moran in the 1960s with his late co-author Ted Fagan,
principal translator for the United Nations, the first two volumes of the
Discography were published in 1983 and 1986 by Greenwood Press and remain
standard reference texts on early sound recordings. Mr. Moran has
established the William R. Moran Fund for Recorded Sound at UCSB to ensure
that their lifelong work is completed and that the recorded output of one
of the most significant cultural forces of the early 20th century will be
documented for researchers. The Library will be hiring a discographer and
support staff to continue the editorial project and begin planning for
publication of future volumes and an online database of the recordings. In
addition to the extensive documentation that Mr. Moran and Mr. Fagan
gathered in their work at the Victor archives, the research project will
draw on material held by the UCSB Libraries and other institutions.

Mr. Moran, a retired executive with Union Oil Company, traveled the world
collecting 78 rpm records and researching the artists that recorded for the
Victor Company. His research has appeared in dozens of articles and he
wrote and edited several other books including a book on singer Nellie
Melba.

Moran's choice of the UCSB Libraries highlights the ongoing work by the
Libraries to preserve recorded sound for future generations of scholars and
enthusiasts. With one of the largest collections of pre-WWII sound
recordings in the country, the Special Collections Department is recognized
as a leader in the field of preservation and dissemination of early sound
recordings. Mr. Moran previously gave several thousand of his recordings to
the Library in 2001 and engineered a reissue of historic recordings by
Lotte Lehmann released by the Library in 1988.

The project's website is at
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/pa/victor.html

David Seubert, Curator
Performing Arts Collection
Davidson Library Special Collections
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA  93106
(805) 893-5444 Fax (805) 893-5749
mailto:seubert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/pa/