Thursday, September 20, 2001

A University Library Creates a Virtual Walk Through Tin Pan Alley By BROCK READ In one image, a beaming Irving Berlin sits at his piano. Above, an arc of words proclaims: "He's a Rag Picker." In another, a couple dressed in Roaring Twenties garb dance the "Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble." These are but two images in an online archive displaying works from the Templeton Sheet Music Collection. Exploring the unusual archive is a virtual walk through Tin Pan Alley -- by way of Mississippi State University. The university's library is digitizing and conserving the collection, an archive of about 22,000 pieces of ragtime, blues, show-tune, and war-song folios from the 1890s to the Great Depression. Charles H. Templeton, a businessman from Starksville, Miss., bequeathed the sheet music to the university before his death last year. He also left the university his collections of musical instruments and memorabilia from the turn of the century. The sheet-music project is led by Michael Ballard, the university archivist, and Stephen Cunetto, a systems administrator who works in the library's Instructional Media Center. It's an ambitious undertaking that breaks down into two parts: While one team scans and conserves the pieces of sheet music, another group works to create a comprehensive database listing all of the images. Both jobs, Mr. Cunetto says, are very time-consuming. He estimates that one library assistant spends half of her time cataloging materials for the database, which archivists have yet to complete. Mr. Cunetto expects that it will be finished soon and that it will accessible through the Web site for the collection. In the meantime, the Web site makes available the sheet music that has already been scanned -- to date, about 600 pieces, categorized by genres that Mr. Templeton himself had established. Each piece is scanned in its entirety at several different resolutions and presented online in Adobe Acrobat format. "The documents are in good shape," Mr. Cunetto says, but preservation concerns still play a great role in the scanning process. "Each piece, as we scan it, is being put into an acid-free sleeve and a Ziploc bag," and the scanners are not allowed to handle the pieces without wearing gloves. Conserving the vintage pieces is one of the project's main goals. Like conservators of fine art, the archivists try to restore the documents to their original condition whenever possible. "We do a little touch-up here or there," Mr. Cunetto says. "If there's a little writing on the individual copies, we'll take care of that" -- preserving the originals and making clean digital copies from which scholars can work. Library officials hope that the online archive will provide researchers with an easier, less potentially damaging alternative to handling the texts themselves: Mr. Cunetto hopes that 85 to 90 percent of research will occur on the Web site and away from the physical collection. The digital archive holds appeal for scholars, students, and the general public, Mr. Cunetto says. "A former [Mississippi State] music professor who is now in Florida uses a large number of pieces in his repertoire. While he's performing the pieces, he shows on a slide projector above him the covers of the sheet music." Other researchers, he says, include laymen examining works written by relatives, economists interested in the advertisements of the period, and art historians. The university has never had the sheet-music collection appraised. But it has learned an interesting lesson in copyright law. According to Mr. Cunetto, the library cannot make all of the collection public, because pieces published after the early 1920's are still under copyright. The library is still making digital copies, which will be posted online as soon as the law allows. Until then, students and historians will have to travel to Mississippi to see the later works, which will someday rest in a museum the library is planning to house the collection. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

After at least 4 assaults, some foreign students plan to leave U.S.; more protection urged U.S. calls for reprieves to student-loan borrowers affected by jetliner attacks New York may offer free tuition to families of victims of terrorist attacks Students at 140 colleges plan rallies for nonviolent response to terrorism Cartoon in Berkeley paper sparks protests and campus debate College fund raisers step lightly to avoid alienating donors British student union enforces ban against campus activities by militant Islamic group Default rate on student loans drops again, but worsening economy could end trend Bush to nominate dean of Rice U. music school to lead NEA A university library creates a virtual walk through Tin Pan Alley Educause to present 2001 awards Sweden will create a virtual institution by compiling universities' online offerings