[78-L] Large University Throwing away records?

[Michael Biel]

kunst at email.unc.edu wrote:
>> Just a quick note to point out that the John Edwards Memorial 
>> Collection actually was transferred to a the Southern Folklife 
>> Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, where it is very much intact
>> and is used quite heavily by researchers. I know there is no
>> shortage of horror  stories, but this is not one of them. Franz

Yes I do know this because I have been there, but if it happened once at
UCLA, how do we know that in 20 or so years from now it won't happen
again to this new collection. 

From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> And Bowling Green State University's collection is alive and well. dl

Although the Pop Culture program at BGSU is a major force at the
university, the record collection is alive and well because Bill Schurk
is alive and well, but approaching retirement age.  JEMF was also
considered alive and well until UCLA dropped its support.  And who would
have guessed three years ago what is happening to Belfer at Syracuse?   


I do not trust the administrations at academic institutions.  They are
not academics, despite the degrees they might hold.  Rarely do they have
any research background, despite the research they might have done
(begrudgingly) to get their degree.  The university is not controlled by
the faculty or the staff, it is run by a board of
businessmen/politicians/moneysources, and even if they reluctantly allow
a faculty member and a student on the board, those two quickly find they
are outnumbered and outinfluenced by the A-list personalities on the
board who can easily bamboozle these two
fish-out-of-the-water-and-out-of-their-league and convince them to go
along with the powerful crowd because they cannot get their way anyway
and why rock the boat and risk getting a reputation of being a rebel and
ruin your chances for your future.  Just look at what is happening at
Harvard right now.  They care about NOTHING but their endowment which is
still rich beyond all imagination but they are laying off nearly
three-hundred because it has shrunk a few percent.  They're not broke,
just less rich.  Students and faculty be damned, that endowment must be
grown!!!  Maybe that's why they put their record collection in the
dumpsters.

I'd been in higher education since 1964, and I never ever was
disappointed in distrusting academic administrations.  They have always
lived down to my low expectations.

Michael Biel, Ph.D., Professor-Emeritus 



>> At ARSC we were given a very impressive presentation of the donation and
>> digitization of a major West Coast American Folk Music collection at
>> UCLA. During the Q&A I reminded them (and informed the generally
>> younger audience who had never known) that they were the institution
>> that closed down and sold off the even more impressive Jonathan Edwards
>> Memorial Foundation country archive.