American Radio History : Resources in Archives

The National Public Broadcasting Archives began as a cooperative effort among several broadcasting organizations and educational institutions. CPB, PBS and NPR along with the Academy for Educational Development joined forces with the University of Maryland to preserve the history of public broadcasting in America. The National Public Broadcasting Archives is a major component of the Archives and Manuscripts Department of the University of Maryland Libraries.

The NBC Collection contains 150,000 sixteen-inch lacquer discs which date from the early days of the network to the 1980's. While the bulk of the NBC broadcasts at the Library were recorded following the network's establishment of its Electrical Transcription Service in 1935, the collections also contain a large number (nearly 200) of scarce earlier recordings, most of which were recorded by NBC's parent company, RCA. Following Pearl Harbor, the number of recorded programs in the archive soars, with Hollywood and Chicago programs now commensurate with their actual numbers. Since receiving the NBC recordings in 1978, engineers in the Library's Recording Laboratory have been engaged in re-recording the fragile lacquer discs onto more durable polyester tape. So far, all discs through 1952 have been re-recorded.

The MBC Collection spans the history of broadcasting and includes more than 25,000 television programs, 5,000 radio programs, and 12,000 commercials totaling almost 100,000 hours. Over 8,500 program assets have already been digitized. Highlights include: Chicago Tonight Collection, 10 PM Chicago Television Collection (Since 1/1/1987), Frontline Collection, David Susskind Collection, Kraft Collection, Tom Snyder Collection, and Chuck Schaden's Old Time Radio Collection. The MBC also holds more than 1,800 objects that helped shape radio and television history. The MBC has also digitized much of its collection of more than 3,500 photographs from broadcasting history.

The Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound of The New York Public Library is one of the richest resources of recorded sound in the world. The aural landscape that helps define a community, a country, or a cultural era can be studied through the Archives' extraordinary holdings, which cover virtually event aspect of recorded sound--from Mozart to Maria Callas to Motown, from symphonic works to presidential speeches. ; The Archives contains approximately 700,000 recordings and more than 100,000 printed items. Resources are available for study free of charge. Use their Find Archival Materials tool to search "radio sound recording" or "radio."

This overview of the Library's collections deals with the holdings of the Library in radio. The Library has nearly three million sound recordings and radio broadcasts, including one million broadcast discs; 1.2 million non-broadcast discs; and 250,000 audiotapes. Presently, there are about 500,000 radio programs. No other archive has a governmental directive to collect, and to collect as broadly, as the Library.

Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to ex DFSADFSDLFCSALD