In case you have not heard, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recently opened the doors to its libraries and archives located in a new four-story, $12 million building on Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, OH. The collection, catalogued over the last few years, includes more than 3,500 books, 1,400 audio recordings, photos, albums and covers, oral histories, scrap books, and 270 videos. A few of these music artifacts include personal letters from Madonna and Aretha Franklin and a 1981-82 video of the Rolling Stones tour. Library and archive Director, Andy Leach, has stated that they will be adding thousands more books and recordings and hundreds of videos will be added as previously stored items and new donations are catalogued. Leach went on to state the following:
“We hope to serve music scholars, teachers, students and the general public. We hope to see all of them here.”
Fans and scholars will not be able to check out items from the library or the archives, but anyone can use the library reading room to browse through books, listen to audio recordings and watch videos. A smaller archives reading room allows supervised access to certain cherished items.
Now is the time to go and enjoy the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame libraries and archives as they were opened to the public with very little fanfare. They will most certainly be more crowded after April 9th when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame hold their actual grand opening. It should be a grand affair!
Music Sumo 