Library & Archive
Teacher Resources
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The Foster Hall Collection contains thousands of sound recordings including cylinders, 78 and 33 1/3 RPM discs, cassette tapes, compact discs, roller organ cylinders, and music box discs; almost 4,000 photographs, including nineteenth-century ambrotypes and tintypes; and about 400 lantern slides (ca. 1930's) plus a small number of films and video cassettes. The Collection's cataloged titles include 1,000 books dealing with a wide variety of subjects, including Stephen Foster and his music; 1,800 songbooks; 220 songsters; approximately 6,725 first or early editions of Stephen Foster's music; and more than 2,000 miscellaneous 20th-century vocal and instrumental scores. Uncatalogued holdings include 82 original music manuscripts; numerous art related items, including paintings, drawings, statues and busts; and realia such as personal possessions of Stephen Foster and his family and items commemorating the composer and/or his music. The Collection's musical and mechanical instruments include two nineteenth-century square pianos, one of which was used by Stephen Foster (on loan from the Carnegie Museum); his melodeon and flute; a guitar (ca. 1850s); three cured horse's jawbones (minstrel percussion instruments); and a Chautauqua roller organ (1893), a Standard phonograph (ca. 1901), and a Regina Music Disc Player (ca. 1897) on long-term loan. The Collection contains a variety of maps, posters and handbills, and prints; a considerable amount of archival material, mostly pertaining to the history of the Collection itself; and about 435 cataloged titles of nineteenth- and twentieth-century periodicals, the majority of which are single issues. The collection also maintains a small assortment of nineteenth- and twentieth-century printer's plates, all of which were used to create editions of Stephen Foster's music. Back to the Guide's table of contents.
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