Thomas Binkley Archives

The Archive of Early Music Recordings was established in 1989 with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and support from Indiana University . Thomas Binkley, then Director of the Early Music Institute at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, saw the need for a permanent archive of sound recordings to provide a research tool into many aspects of musical performance, especially regarding the early music revival and the musical and musicological changes to which it is related.

Not long after the original grant made the establishment of the Archive possible, Thomas Binkley retired from the Early Music Institute, and Wendy Gillespie was designated to take over the running and development of the Archive. In grateful acknowledgement of Professor Binkley's seminal efforts in its formation, the Archive was renamed the Thomas Binkley Archive of Early Music Recordings.

In recent years, the Archive has been dependent upon contributions of expertise, labor and product for growth. We solicit the cooperation of other institutions to further our mission. Cooperating institutions survey the recording activity in certain geographical areas and assist in acquiring recordings for the collection. Recording companies are asked to make donations of new recordings to the Archive. Private donors are another critically important resource, especially for long-playing, long-unavailable records.

The Archive currently comprises nearly 7,000 recordings in various formats. The objects are housed in a dedicated, secure space in the Indiana University Cook Music Library, which opened in January 1996: the staff of the library provides technical support and professional processing of acquired materials. In the future, the entire Archive should be available as digitized sound files of the Variations Project, a system already in use at the Music Library. The project will enable interested listeners to dip into the rich resources of the Archive on site at Indiana University, and, a bit further down the road, from any workstation with access to the World Wide Web, without compromising the preservation of the original recordings.

Future plans also include a fully searchable data base available world wide, so that researchers will be able to find complete information on both individual artists and ensembles, and information about recordings of specific pieces. With joint supervision and cooperation between the Early Music Institute and the Cook Music Library, the covers and liner notes of recordings, as well as the sound, will also be available online for consultation.

Although the contents of the Archive are not yet available in an html format, you may peruse the collection by connecting to IUCAT, the on-line catalog of the Indiana University Libraries. Use the following keywords to search the archive:

• tba and bm and sound

• and cd
• and lp
• and tape
• and http (Variations)

If you would like further information about acquisitions, donations or access to the Archive, please e-mail The Director of Thomas Binkley Archive.