Elvis has entered the building. More specifically, he’s found a home on the third floor of Bowling Green State University’s Jerome Library. This week, the King’s 2003 LP called "Elvis 2nd to None" became the 100,000th item to be catalogued as part of the university’s Sound Recordings Archives. "It had to be," said Bill Schurk, sound recordings archivist. "It’s the daddy of recordings."
Created in 1967, the archives are billed by the university as the largest academic library of recorded popular music in the United States. Items that are catalogued have information listed online for users, who may listen to items but not check them out, and on a national library database.
What began with nothing now includes hundreds of thousands of recordings - CDs, records, cassettes, and more - as well as magazines, pictures, posters, books, and artifacts.
The research collection covers all genres, though most of BGSU’s classical music is in a different set of holdings, and serves the research needs of students and faculty as well as companies working on re-issues of popular recordings. To be eligible for the archives, a recording doesn’t have to be popular or perceived as important. It just has to exist. "They may not be popular now, but they do have a place in musical history," Mr. Schurk said.