Scope and arrangement
The Record company catalogs and ephemera collection is arranged in twenty-four series:
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- Call number
- *L (Special) 20-3
- Physical description
- 214 linear feet (684 boxes, one flat drawer)
- Language
- English
- Preferred Citation
- Record company catalogs and ephemera collection, Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, The New York Public Library
- Repository
- Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound
- Access to materials
- Request an in-person research appointment.
The Record Company Catalogs and Ephemera collection includes catalogs of record releases and various advertising ephemera generated by record companies and distributed to record dealers around the world.
Biographical/historical information
With the birth of the commercial recording industry in the 1890s, record companies began issuing catalogs, brochures, and other print advertising of their recordings. Initially, these included simple lists of titles, artists, and publisher's numbers of recordings. Eventually, the materials came to include posters, fliers, detailed monthly supplements, press releases, and numerical catalogs listing all recordings released to date by a company.
Administrative information
Custodial history
The Record Company Catalogs and Ephemera Collection is a collection compiled first by the Music Division of the New York Public Library, and, starting in 1965, by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound. Beginning in the 1930s, record store owners, record companies, and private collectors donated record company catalogs, press releases, fliers, posters, and other materials that marketed sound recordings. Library staffs gradually added to this collection between the 1930s and the 2000s.
Processing information
Processed by Music Division and Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound staff between 1930-2009 and by Jessica Wood between 2016-2023.
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Using the collection
Location
Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded SoundNew York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor