The online presentation of Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection would not have been possible without the support and guidance of Alan Jabbour, former director of the American Folklife Center and consultant to the digitization project. He conducted the fieldwork resulting in the recordings and written documentation of the collection. He has researched fiddle tunes throughout his career, and that body of knowledge has been put to use in the annotations of these recordings. His ongoing relationship with the Reed family resulted in additional information and photographs for the online presentation. And he contributed the essay "Henry Reed: His Life, Influence, and Art," which appears as the Special Presentation.
Rachel I. Howard, Digital Conversion Specialist, and Thomas H. Bramel, Digital Projects Coordinator for the American Folklife Center, organized and developed Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier for the National Digital Library Program.
Carl Fleischhauer, Karen Singer Jabbour, Jesse Thompson Eustice, and Kit Olson generously lent the photographs of Henry Reed, his home, and his family that illustrate the essay. Dean Reed, James Reed, and Neal Reed graciously permitted Carl Fleischhauer to photograph family photos from their personal collections in 1975; some of those copy photographs have been included online. JJT, Inc. scanned the photographs. Phil Michel of the Library's Prints and Photographs Division managed the contract for the digitization of the photographs.
Rachel I. Howard transferred the original 7-inch reels to DAT, digitized the audio, scanned all manuscript pages, converted the fieldnotes to Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and encoded the HTML pages. In consultation with Alan Jabbour, she built the database, drafted descriptive texts for the presentation, and researched the related publications and glossary pages. Advised by Melissa Smith Levine and Emily Howie, she conducted copyright and permissions research.
Larry Appelbaum of the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division also transferred some of the 7-inch reels to DAT.
Glenn Ricci of the National Digital Library Program designed the site. Melissa Front assisted in the layout of the special presentation. Dave Woodward of Information Technology Services programmed the indexing of the database. Jurretta Jordan Heckscher and Emily Lind Baker of the National Digital Library Program's Editorial Team edited the framing texts.
The American Folklife Center's director and editor, Peggy A. Bulger and James Hardin, assisted in the editorial process. Coordinator of Reference Judith A. Gray and Coordinator of Processing Nora Yeh advised on the archival processing of the collection.
Terry Reed provided much information and assistance, and his own research efforts may be seen on the Web site (external link) he dedicated to his grandfather. Special thanks are due to all the many and farflung members of Henry Reed's family, whose ongoing support and encouragement have been invaluable.
