Library Information Technology, Learning and Teaching, and Research are pleased to announce the release of the 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 Collection for preservation purposes and to provide access for teaching, research, and other non-commercial purposes. Through the efforts of Kelly Askew, Associate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies in LSA, 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. They were digitized by our own Digital Media Commons at the Duderstadt Center over the past several years.

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.

 

The finding aid for the collection is available at:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mlibraryead/umich-mlib-sarkisian