FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 25, 2003

Agreement Signed for UM Libraries
To House NPR News Tape Collection
 

The University of Maryland Libraries, College Park, have become the institutional curator and depository for the National Public Radio (NPR) News Tape Collection as a result of an agreement signed by NPR and the University of Maryland. This valuable collection of some 21,500 audiotape reels chronicles, in depth, all of the major world news events that occurred between 1971-1983.  An additional 8,000 reels will provide the University with NPR News programming through 1988.

The tapes, to be located in the National Public Broadcasting Archives (NPBA) in Hornbake Library, will be accessible on or about May 1. As part of the agreement, NPR will transfer each year to the Libraries some 4,000 additional tapes spanning events beyond 1988.

In hailing the agreement with NPR, Dean of Libraries Charles B. Lowry said, “the NPR News Tape Collection is the most significant non-commercial radio news archive in the country.  Covering the first 15 years of NPR news programming, the initial transfer--with more reels to be delivered over time--contains in-depth reportage of the main news events of the 1970s and 80s.  Stories dealing with the release of the Pentagon Papers, the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and the rise of Reagan conservatism are just a sampling of the rich materials contained in the Collection.”

“Besides providing NPR news programmers access to the tapes,” Lowry said,   “we also plan to promote the Collection to students of journalism, political and diplomatic history, political science and other disciplines. We look forward to working with NPR to make its news tape legacy available to researchers here and around the world.”

Commenting on the agreement, Rob Robinson, Senior Librarian at NPR, pointed out that "this is an exciting new relationship with the University of Maryland. The University's faculty and students will now have easy access to years of the best news and cultural stories on radio. They will be able to hear the voices of the newsmakers and artists of the recent past. In addition, the NPR tapes are a collection of dozens of different award winning programs that can teach the art of radio production. NPR will now have faster and easier access to our archives, too. We will use that improved access to make our new productions even richer in sounds and content."  Robinson is a graduate of the University of Maryland, having received a Master in Library Science degree in 1973.

NPR has also provided the Libraries with a copy of its News Tape database in electronic format and, according to Tom Connors, Curator of the NPBA, this will eventually be loaded into catalogusmai, the online catalog serving the 16 University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institution Libraries, to provide a convenient reference tool for the collection. Plans are also in the works to digitize the collection and provide online access in the near future.

For the past 25 years the federal National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which in the past year, decided to relinquish control, has managed the NPR News Tape Collection. Following an intensive evaluation process involving several educational institutions, NPR selected the UM Libraries as the depository primarily because the NPBA were already located in Hornbake Library and housed a substantial number of NPR administrative records.

To accommodate NPR’s ongoing need for background material, the agreement provides NPR news programmers with access to the collection on a regular basis for their various news shows. More than 150 series titles are contained in the Collection including such NPR program stalwarts as Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Horizons, About Books & Writers, as well as various Congressional hearings held prior to the advent of C-SPAN including the Watergate proceedings. Morning Edition and All Things Considered have the second and third largest weekly radio audiences in the country respectively.

Major NPR on-air personalities heard on the tapes include Bob Edwards, host of Morning Edition since its premiere in November 1979 and the most-listened-to program in public radio; senior national correspondent Linda Wertheimer who hosted NPR's flagship news magazine, All Things Considered, for 13 years; Senior Correspondent Noah Adams who covers stories on the working poor across America and is a former All Things Considered host; and Robert Siegel, current host of All Things Considered. Others include Cokie Roberts, Alex Chadwick, and Susan Stamberg. Ms. Stamberg’s papers are housed in the NPBA.

The NPR News Tape Collection also chronicles Bob Edwards’ radio friendship with sports broadcasting legend Red Barber, with whom he talked about sports, camellias, and the nature of man every Friday morning for nearly 12 years.

National Public Radio was founded on February 24, 1970, with 90 public radio stations as charter members. Today, NPR serves a growing audience of nearly 21 million Americans each week via 732 public radio stations and the Internet and in Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa via NPR Worldwide, to military installations overseas via American Forces Network, and throughout Japan via cable. In its more than 30 years, NPR has won every major award in journalism for news and cultural programming in America.

Persons interested in listening to materials in the NPR News Tape Collection can gain access by visiting the NPBA on the third floor of Hornbake Library on Mondays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
 

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