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INTRODUCTION
It is an enormous challenge to manage archival and special collections in libraries. A great deal of effort is put into deciding how to store, describe, and draw attention to the materials contained therein. These collections can be finite, in that their scope is predetermined, and materials are not added to their corpora. Also, once a decision has been made to curate a collection, it is possible that it could sit for decades before it is processed or made available for study. The Grawemeyer Collection, housed in the Dwight Anderson Music Library in the University of Louisville's School of Music (hereinafter, Music Library), which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2017, is a notable exception. While its scope has remained the same-to collect the nomination materials of the Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition-its management has changed considerably in the last thirty years. More importantly, however, approximately 150 to 200 scores, recordings, and information files are added to it annually. While this poses a challenge, it is also a blessing, given that the collection has amassed nearly five thousand individual pieces of music written in the last thirty-seven years. Each crop of nominations provides a snapshot of the diverse range of contemporary Western art music styles and genres in the five years prior to the award year.1 Witnessing the changes and developments in the music's publication and aesthetic, and watching the generations of composers phase in and out of the nominee list is like observing the continuum of music's history unfold. In this article, I will describe the history of the collection, including the changes and challenges in its handling since its inception.
Charles Grawemeyer (1912-1993), a successful industrialist and investor from Louisville, became quite interested in the notion of ideas late in his life, and was intrigued by the process and concept of the Nobel Prizes.2 Grawemeyer had established much smaller award programs in the past,3 but surprised his family and friends when, in 1984, he created a nine million dollar endowment fund to establish the Grawemeyer Awards. The result is a series of five awards given annually in the fields of study that Grawemeyer, while not an expert in them himself, was particularly interested in: music composition, religion, education, world order, and psychology. He...