Sticky Notes: Finding the Music in WQXR Archival Recordings through the Bob Sherman Collection

Photo courtesy of Martha Ball

Title: Sticky Notes: Finding the Music in WQXR Archival Recordings through the Bob Sherman Collection

Date & Time: 12:00PM to 1:00PM, Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Format: Webinar via Zoom

Legendary WQXR host and producer Bob Sherman’s career spanned nearly 70 years and launched innovative music programs including Woody’s Children, The Listening Room, and Young Artists Showcase. Join New York Public Radio’s Archives team for a virtual conversation about lessons learned while processing materials from Sherman’s personal collection, making difficult but necessary choices so that his work and the music he shared lives on.

Building connections while processing an audiovisual collection elevates an inventory from helpful description to a rich, stable resource tethered to other collections and the archival institution itself. While processing this collection, Sarah Wardrop and Vincent Kelley continued the work of Sam Seliger by completing the inventory, prioritizing selections for transfer and reformatting, and discovering new highlights from Sherman’s career, further expanding New York City’s already illustrious public radio legacy. This presentation will explore processing an audiovisual collection within the unique production environment of NYPR, with takeaways for those seeking to connect the past lives of materials, derivatives as they exist today, and other archivists and producers alike.

ABOUT New York Public Radio 

With an urban vibrancy and a global perspective, New York Public Radio produces innovative public radio programs, podcasts, and live events that touch a passionate community of 26.5 million people monthly on air, online and in person.  From its state-of-the-art studios in New York City, NYPR is reshaping radio for a new generation of listeners with groundbreaking, award-winning programs including Radiolab, On the Media, Nancy, and Carnegie Hall Live, among many others. New York Public Radio includes WNYC, WQXR, WNYC Studios, Gothamist, The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, and New Jersey Public Radio. Further information about programs, podcasts, and stations may be found at www.nypublicradio.org. 

Speakers

Sarah Wardrop and Vincent Kelley are New York-based MLIS students at the University of Alabama, and are recipients of the EBSCO Scholarship in Audiovisual Preservation and Archiving. The program of study includes two semesters of local archival internships, which brought them both to the NYPR Archives this spring.

Sarah’s time at NYPR follows a prior internship at CUNY TV and 20 years of public radio programming and production (WFUV New York, WUMB Boston). This experience is part of her goal to learn from and help continue the good work being done to connect archives and public media.

Vincent is an audiovisual archivist based in Brooklyn. In his previous role as Archivist at The Riverside Church he served as project manager of a grant to digitize the audiotape collection from its former FM radio station, WRVR. He is a volunteer with the XFR Collective.

Sam Seliger is a graduating senior at Columbia University. He is currently the librarian and student archivist at WKCR FM, where he previously served as program director. He was NYPR’s archives intern during Summer 2023.

This discussion will be moderated by Martha Ball, member of the A.R.T. Programming Committee and Project Cataloger at NYPR.

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