Libraries Media Center

Puget Sounds | Documenting Music Cultures Close to Home

Collection Development Policy

I. Vision and Mission

This collection supports the UW Libraries mission to enrich the quality of life and advance intellectual discovery by connecting people with knowledge about the Puget Sound music community.

The collection supports the UW Libraries vision statement by giving students and the UW community access to a locally focused music collection that will meet their diverse information needs and give students a local perspective that will inform their experiences as information smart global citizens.

This collection specifically supports the Media Center objective to build a collection of AV media that has a regional focus

History and Purpose of the Collection: The Puget Sounds collection was originally funded by a grant from the Friends of the University of Washington Libraries. John Vallier, Head of Distributed Media Services, wrote the grant proposal and was the PI for the grant. The grant was awarded to initiate a collection to document the local kaleidoscopic nature of music performed and produced in the Puget Sound region. Stretching north to the San Juan Islands and south to the State Capital of Olympia, the Puget Sound region is home to a diverse network of urban and rural communities. The collection serves as a cultural and historical perspective of the local area through the music created by local artists. The collection aims to map out the musical landscape of the Puget Sound region.

The initial collection was developed by three main constituents: Head of Distributed Media Services, graduate student interns from the University of Washington Information School, and students involved in a freshman seminar. This approach to collection development brought diverse viewpoints to the project and ensured that the initial collection would reflect the diversity of local Puget Sound music.

II. Scope of the Collection

Description of the Collection: Currently, the collection consists of compact discs housed in the media center at Odegaard Undergraduate Library. No style, genre, or music culture is excluded from this collection. Rather, everything from native music to western music traditions, art rock to hip hop, folk revival to free jazz, classical to new age, freak folk to shockabilly, Latin American folk to Balkan folk are represented.

Geographic Restrictions: This collection was developed with specific geographic restrictions. Currently, the collection is being limited to the following counties in the Puget Sound region:

• Skagit, San Juan, and Island Counties
• Jefferson and Snohomish Counties
• Kitsap County
• King County
• Pierce County (Tacoma)
• Mason, and Thurston Counties (Olympia)

Languages: This collection is not restricted by languages and may include a variety of Asian and Native American language recordings in edition to English and other European languages that reflect local culture.

Chronological Periods: The initial grant to support the collection focused on recordings that were produced and published after the year 2000. The current Media Center collection was also examined and recommendations were made to provide access to current holdings from local music through subject access. The collection will continue to grow and older materials should be investigated and added to the collection in addition to collecting new regional music.

Audience: The audience for this collection is in line with the audience for the Media Center collection and includes:

• University of Washington Faculty, Students and Staff;
• Other academic institutions in Oregon and Washington through Summit consortium borrowing;
• Researchers not officially affiliated with the University of Washington or Summit participating institution.

Local music collections present unique challenges to evaluative criteria. In addition to the limitations of scope outlined in the previous section, other issues need to be addressed. Many important local musicians are not producing published recordings, and it may occasionally be necessary to include an unpublished recording in the collection. To address this, the following evaluative criteria should be considered:

• Publication: Is the music published by an established record label. Any published recordings within the scope of the collection may be considered for inclusion.


• Local Presence: If there are no published recordings by a group or artist does their local presence create an impact in the music community that warrants inclusion? This may include a vigorous local performance schedule, heavy radio airplay or strong presence in the local music press.


• Requests: Local music that is requested by faculty, students, or other UW constituents should be included in the collection.

The collection is housed within the Odegaard Media Center collection. Access is being provided to the collection through subject headings assigned by the cataloging department.

Other collections on campus that have ties to the local music community include:

• University of Washington Music Library
• Ethnomusicology Archives

All gifts made to the Puget Sounds collection must comply with the University of Washington Libraries gift policy. For more information the Libraries’ policy, visit the Libraries Gift Policy.