Syracuse University Library receives Delmas Foundation grant to digitize cylinder recordings

Syracuse University Library receives Delmas Foundation grant to digitize cylinder recordingsOctober 26, 2007Pamela McLaughlinpwmclaug@syr.edu

Syracuse University Library has received a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation to support a project to digitize, preserve and provide access to the cylinder collection of the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive. Cylinders are the earliest form of commercially produced sound recordings, representing the period from 1877-1929.

The Belfer audio cylinder collection is known to be the largest collection of commercially released cylinders held by a private institution in North America. It includes 22,000 cylinders that represent some 12,000 discrete recordings of a variety of performances. The $25,000 grant will support digitization and metadata creation for 6,000 cylinders that have not been digitized in similar projects at other institutions. Access to the digital recordings will be provided on the Web.

The project serves the needs of scholarship in the humanities and the performing arts, and will make resources more widely accessible to scholars and the general public. Previous Delmas Foundation support set the stage for this project, enabling the Belfer Archive to inventory and catalog the cylinder and 78 rpm collections, and to test access to audio on the Web.

For more information, contact project administrator Melinda Dermody, head of Arts and Humanities Services, at 443-5332 or mderm01@syr.edu.