Browse Exhibits (1 total)

Gennett Records and Early American Recording History

This exhibit was created by the 2015 IJS Archives Fellows as a counterpart to the archival processing component of their fellowship.  The 2015 Fellows processed the Gennett Records Division of Starr Piano Company records and sound discs, a collection that came to the Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) via Bill Grauer, who acquired some ownership of Gennett after its demise in the early 1930s.  Grauer donated his materials to Marshall Stearns, the founder of the IJS, at an unknown date, most likely before Stearns donated the Institute's collections to Rutgers in 1966.

To process the collection, the Fellows inventoried, appraised, arranged, and re-housed the materials and then created an EAD finding aid to help users locate relevant content.  During the course of processing the collection, the Fellows flagged materials of interest for an online exhibit and used both online sources and the IJS's extensive collection of discographies, histories, reference books, newsletters, record catalogs, and sound recording liner notes, to research the label's history and contextualize the objects in the exhibit.