The University Library is pleased to announce the release of a new resource: Voice of America African Music Collection (also known as the Leo Sarkisian collection).

In 2009, the Voice of America entered into an agreement with the University of Michigan Library to digitize tape reels of musical field recordings from the Leo Sarkisian collection for preservation purposes and to provide access for teaching, research, and other non-commercial purposes. Through the efforts of Kelly Askew, then Director of the African Studies Center, and Matthew Lavoie at the Voice of America, 360 field recordings that were made by Leo Sarkisian (recently retired from the Voice of America) were selected for digitization at MLibrary. 

The collection is accessible to the public in the Music Library, where the digitized tape reels are available on CDs. The digitized files are also permanently stored for preservation purposes in HathiTrust.