Launch of the Discography of American Historical Recordings
With the generous support of the Packard Humanities Institute, the American Discography Project releases the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) an online database with discographic information on over 100,000 recordings made in the early years of the American recording industry.
The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) is an expansion of the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR), a project started nearly fifty years ago to systematically document all recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey. Founded by discographers Ted Fagan and William R. Moran, the EDVR project has been based at the library of the University of California, Santa Barbara since 2005.
DAHR is the result of years of planning to create a single, integrated, and authoritative discography of every disc recorded during the 78rpm era, from the early 1890s through the mid-1950s. For its initial launch, discographic information on recordings made by the Berliner Gramophone Co. (1892-1900) and Columbia Records (1908-1925) compiled by noted discographers Paul Charosh, Brian Rust, and Tim Brooks is being added to the existing data for Victor Records (1900-1931).
In cooperation with the Library of Congress, extant recordings are systematically being digitized and added to the database, creating unparalleled access to our recorded sound heritage. Ten thousand Victor recordings are already available online as streaming files, and more than 10,000 more Victor and Columbia recordings have been digitized and will be added in the near future.
In the coming months and years, additional discographic data for OKeh, Brunswick, Decca, Edison, and other labels will be added to the database, along with tens of thousands more sound files, creating a truly comprehensive and authoritative research resource on American historical sound recordings.
Please report any issues you encounter with the database to eldridgerjohnson@gmail.com For a list of known bugs, click here.