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The following announcement has just been made by the University of California, Santa Barbara. The UCSB Libraries are pleased to announce that noted discographer, collector and author William R. Moran of La Cañada, Calif. has chosen the UCSB Davidson Library as the new location for the ongoing project to complete of the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Records. A multi-volume work with discographic information on all recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company (later purchased by RCA) from 1900 to 1950, the series is a cornerstone in the ongoing scholarly documentation of early recorded sound. Begun by Mr. Moran in the 1960s with his late co-author Ted Fagan, principal translator for the United Nations, the first two volumes of the Discography were published in 1983 and 1986 by Greenwood Press and remain standard reference texts on early sound recordings. Mr. Moran has established the William R. Moran Fund for Recorded Sound at UCSB to ensure that their lifelong work is completed and that the recorded output of one of the most significant cultural forces of the early 20th century will be documented for researchers. The Library will be hiring a discographer and support staff to continue the editorial project and begin planning for publication of future volumes and an online database of the recordings. In addition to the extensive documentation that Mr. Moran and Mr. Fagan gathered in their work at the Victor archives, the research project will draw on material held by the UCSB Libraries and other institutions. Mr. Moran, a retired executive with Union Oil Company, traveled the world collecting 78 rpm records and researching the artists that recorded for the Victor Company. His research has appeared in dozens of articles and he wrote and edited several other books including a book on singer Nellie Melba. Moran’s choice of the UCSB Libraries highlights the ongoing work by the Libraries to preserve recorded sound for future generations of scholars and enthusiasts. With one of the largest collections of pre-WWII sound recordings in the country, the Special Collections Department is recognized as a leader in the field of preservation and dissemination of early sound recordings. Mr. Moran previously gave several thousand of his recordings to the Library in 2001 and engineered a reissue of historic recordings by Lotte Lehmann released by the Library in 1988. The project's website is at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/pa/victor.html David Seubert, Curator Performing Arts Collection Davidson Library Special Collections University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 (805) 893-5444 Fax (805) 893-5749 mailto:[log in to unmask] http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/pa/