Press Release from the EFDSS today
For Immediate Release
May 6 2010
Excellence Award for Vaughan Williams Memorial Library

The International Association of Music Libraries has granted the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in London their Excellence Award.

The IAML said:

"This library is a long-established centre of excellence, holding a unique and rare collection of folk-music materials in a wide range of formats. Special collection catalogues are available online, as are the Roud Folk Song Index and the Broadside index, complementing six major manuscript collections also made available online through Heritage Lottery funding and Cecil Sharp's diaries. The library has forged effective partnerships with relevant institutions and collections, including outreach activities at eleven local primary schools and websites for children and teachers. This library targets the needs of its users and continues to update its resources and widen accessibility to its collections. It is important from many points of view, not least in its preservation of the cultural history of these islands and promoting its holdings very effectively."

Other recipients of the award include Birmingham Music Library, British Library Document Supply Centre: Music Service, ExploreMusic (Gateshead Libraries), Royal College of Music Library, Trinity College Library Dublin (music collections), and Westminster Music Library.

Housed in Cecil Sharp House, the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library is England's national folk music and dance archive. Its first permanent home was established with the opening of Cecil Sharp House in 1930, and Cecil Sharp's daughter Joan was the first librarian. Today the library is known as the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in honour of the eminent composer, song collector and President of the EFDSS, Ralph Vaughan Williams, who died in 1958.

VWML is a multi-media library. The collections include books, manuscripts, off-prints, pamphlets, periodicals, serials, press cuttings, broadsides, prints, paintings, line drawings, photographs, slides, artefacts, ephemera, records, reel-to-reel tapes, phonograph cylinders, videos, cine films, CDs and audio cassettes.

The bulk of the VWML's collections relate to British folk culture and elements of British based cultures in other lands, particularly North America and Ireland. Song and dance are only two facets of a rich and fascinating tapestry of traditional and customary practices which attracts wide interest, from media and arts organisations to educational and state institutions, and from private researchers to professional performers. These practices can only be understood in their social context and through comparison with other cultures. Hence, there is also a wealth of information from and about other world cultures, as well as important works on social history and folklore.

For more information on EFDSS or the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, please visit the website at www.efdss.org.