The Packard collection includes approximately 2,500 discs created, produced, commissioned, or collected by Frederick C. Packard, Jr., during the years 1933-1963. The collection forms part of the Woodberry Poetry Room. While it does not contain a complete inventory of his work, the collection features substantial numbers of discs from all stages of the recording and production process, and constitutes the single-largest aggregate of his recordings of spoken literature. In addition to the discs he created for publication, the materials include rare outtakes; original recordings never reproduced or intended for commercial release; Harvard-related language lessons, lectures, sermons, theatrical, radio, and musical performances; and the voices of Harvard students and professors recorded in his role as Professor of Public Speaking. The collection also features listening copies that Packard (and Woodberry Poetry Room curator John Lincoln Sweeney) created based on exchanges he arranged with the Library of Congress, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Radio Éireann.
Content types:
Performed music and Spoken word
Formats:
Lacquer disc, Pressed LP disc, and Metal disc
Extent:
30 linear feet (90 boxes of discs, 17 boxes of original sleeves, and additional ephemera)
Consists of rehearsal, demo, and master recordings made by Green of motion picture soundtracks, television and radio broadcasts, and concert performances. Includes sound recordings made by others in which Green is featured. Also includes copies of motion pictures and television broadcasts that relate to Green's career.
Content types:
Performed music, Spoken word, and Two-dimensional moving image
Formats:
Open reel tape (unknown material), Analog audiocassette, U-matic (including U-matic S), and Motion picture film
The WFCR Collection contains nearly 4,500 reel to reel recordings of locally-produced radio programs, reflecting over fifty years of the cultural and intellectual life of western Massachusetts. Drawing upon the talents of the faculty and students of the Five Colleges (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and UMass Amherst), the collection offers a remarkable breadth of content, ranging from public affairs to community and national news, cultural programming, childrens programming, news and current events, scholarly lectures, classical music, and jazz.
Content types:
Sounds and Other
Formats:
Reel-to-reel and Digital tape (DAT, DCC)
Extent:
462 linear feet
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
The American Revolution collection includes hundreds of hours of recordings from WBCN during the period 1968-1974, along with posters, ephemera, videos, oral histories, and other associated materials. The audio and video content has been digitized by our partners, Lichtenstein Creative Media, and will be made available to the public through our digital repository. Materials are currently in the process of being transferred to UMass.
Content types:
Sounds and Other
Extent:
Hundreds of hours
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
The BCMP collection consists of many dozens of reel to reel audiotapes of radio broadcasts aired over WMUA during the 1970s and early 1980s by and for the universitys African American community. Included is a range of locally-produced public affairs, cultural, and music programming, with some content licensed from around the country. A few of the tapes are associated with the Five Colleges National Public Radio affiliate, WFCR.
Content types:
Sounds and Other
Extent:
300 recordings
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
A professor of English at UMass Amherst, James A. Freeman is a scholar of seventeenth century British literature who has compiled an impressively eclectic array of publications and research projects. Educated at Amherst College (AB 1956) and the University of Minnesota (PhD 1968), Freeman joined the faculty in the English Department at UMass shortly after completing his doctorate. He has published on topics ranging from Latin and Greek poets to Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Tennyson, James Agee, Donald Duck, 17th century regicides, and 1930s radio. He has also served as a regular contributor and editor for the Association for Gravestone Studies Quarterly. The Freeman collection consists of many hundreds of cassette tapes of radio broadcasts from the 1930s through early 1950s, reflecting the culture of commercial radio during its golden age. The collection includes representatives of most of the major genres, including comedy, drama, suspense and mystery, soap operas, and westerns. There is some depth popular programs such as Amos and Andy, the Great Gildersleeve, Philip Marlowe, and Nero Wolfe, but the collection also includes less common and short-lived shows.
Content types:
Spoken word
Formats:
Analog audiocassette
Extent:
27 linear feet
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
Airchecks of local and national radio programming up to 1979 with emphasis on years 1955-1969. Archive includes news,sports,interviews,DJ airchecks, documentaries and specials.
Content types:
Performed music and Spoken word
Formats:
Optical disc (including CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, VCD) and Analog audiocassette
Bulk of the collection is correspondence concerning rights to a Traven story adapted for radio and television by Ted Allan, a playwright who worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Audiotape recordings of interviews conducted with members of the Pioneer Valley community for a public radio program. Titles of the shows that aired include: "Portrait of a Farm Woman," "Hadley: the Portrait of an Endangered Town," Keeping Rural Businesses in Business," and "Shepherds, Bumpkins and Farmers’ Daughters."
Content types:
Spoken word
Formats:
Analog audiocassette
Extent:
0.25 linear feet
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
A pioneer in organic agriculture in New England, Bill Duesing has been as an environmental educator, writer, artist, and lecturer over for four decades. After graduating from Yale University (1964), Duesing worked as a Cooperative Extension agent before turning to organic principles in the early 1970s. Emphasizing sustainability and greater local food sufficiency, he has been instrumental in developing organic standards for gardening and land care and he has served as both founding president and later executive director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association Connecticut and president of the NOFA Interstate Council. During the 1990s, Duesing produced two radio shows, "Living on the Earth" (WSHU) and "The Politics of Food" (WPKN), and he is author of (1993). The Duesing collection consists of transcripts of his radio show, "Living on the Earth" (1990-2000) and fourteen recordings of "The Politics of Food," which was broadcast monthly over WPKN (89.5 FM) in Bridgeport in 1997-1998. Each half hour segment of "Politics" included news, a fifteen minute interview, recipes, and tips, with interviewees including Mel Bristol, Jac Smit, Vincent Kay, John Wargo, Hugh Joseph, Joseph Kiefer, Julie Rawson, Michael Sligh, Kathy Lawrence, Lee Warren, and Elizabeth Henderson.
Content types:
Spoken word
Formats:
Polyester open reel tape
Extent:
14 items
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
"The Bill Cosby Radio Program" was a daily syndicated radio series of roughly 5-minute comedy inserts by Cosby and produced by Frank Buxton (who also served as the show’s announcer and comedic "straight man"). Along with sound man Gene Twombly, Cosby and Buxton improvised the episodes, which were syndicated to more than 200 top-40 radio stations around the nation on transcription discs by The Coca-Cola Company and distributed by McCann-Erikson (Coke’s ad agency). The show marked the beginning of Cosby’s long association with Coca-Cola and was the debut of many characters from Cosby’s comedy. This collection features twelve radio broadcast transcription discs (one 12-inch disc and eleven 16-inch discs) of "The Bill Cosby Radio Program" containing programs #21-130 (1968 Jan 29-Jun 24) and programs #141-145 (1968 Jul 15). The disc labels contain the original program description and art.
Content types:
Spoken word
Formats:
Pressed LP disc
Extent:
12 items
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
The Black Mass Communications Project was founded as an educational and informational outlet for Black students at UMass Amherst in 1968 and authorized in the following year as a Registered Student Organization. Over the years, BCMP played varied roles on campus, hosting cultural events, lectures, workshops, and social gatherings as to help keep black music alive. Many of its early members were also affiliated with the student radio station WMUA, and throughout the 1970s, the organization played a prominent role in providing programming to the station, offering programming highlighting African American music and current affairs. The BCMP collection consists of many dozens of reel to reel audiotapes of radio broadcasts aired over WMUA during the 1970s and early 1980s by and for the university’s African American community. Included is a range of locally-produced public affairs, cultural, and music programming, with some content licensed from around the country. A few of the tapes are associated with the Five College’s National Public Radio affiliate, WFCR.
Content types:
Spoken word
Formats:
Polyester open reel tape
Extent:
15 linear feet
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
The first public radio station in western New England, WFCR Five College Radio has provided a mix of high quality, locally-produced and nationally syndicated programming since May 1961. In 2012, the station reached over 175,000 listeners per week, with a mix of classical and jazz music, news, and entertainment. The WFCR Collection contains nearly 4,500 reel to reel recordings of locally-produced radio programs, reflecting over fifty years of the cultural and intellectual life of western Massachusetts. Drawing upon the talents of the faculty and students of the Five Colleges (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and UMass Amherst), the collection offers a remarkable breadth of content, ranging from public affairs to community and national news, cultural programming, children's programming, news and current events, scholarly lectures, classical music, and jazz.
Content types:
Performed music, Sounds (Other than music & language), and Spoken word
Formats:
Analog audiocassette and Polyester open reel tape
Extent:
462 linear feet
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
A noted figure in modernist theater, Edward Gordon Craig was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, on Jan. 16, 1872, the illegitimate son of the renowned actress Ellen Terry and the architect Edward William Craig. Although the most productive portion of his career was brief, he exerted a strong influence on the field of set design and lighting, and was fairly prolific as a writer on theatre. The six audio recordings that comprise the Craig collection originated from a series of BBC radio talks in the early 1950s. The reel to reel tapes include Craig’s reminiscences of Ellen Terry, Isadora Duncan, the old school of acting, celebrities, and how he played Hamlet in Salford, Lancashire.
Content types:
Spoken word
Formats:
Analog audiocassette
Extent:
0.5 linear feet
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
In 1955, the Literary Society of the University of Massachusetts and Professor H. Leland Varley received a grant of $5,800 from the Educational Television and Radio Center to produce a series of one-hour radio programs centered on a discussion of the impact of eight major American novelists from a European perspective. The subjects included Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck (who replaced the original choice, John Marquand). The collection is comprised of recordings of the Literary Society radio program, ‘As others see us.’ Moderated by a member of the UMass Department of English, each broadcast featured discussions by distinguished literary critics such as W.H. Auden, R.P. Blackmur, Perry Miller, Maxwell Geismar, and Renato Poggioli. Dos Passos, Faulkner, and Steinbeck participated in person.
Content types:
Spoken word
Formats:
Polyester open reel tape
Extent:
0.5 linear feet
Repository/Collector:
UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives
Includes manuscripts, cassette tapes and transcripts of interviews of Muni, photographs, programs, clippings, letters (mostly copies), scripts and articles relating to Muni's life and career. For collection details relating to radio check preliminary list in repository.