GRANT IN KEY WITH CSUN MUSIC SCORES.

Byline: Daily News

CSUN has received a grant to conserve its vast collection of musical scores at its library.

The Augustine Foundation recently gave $30,000 to California State University, Northridge's International Guitar Research Archive at the Oviatt Library.

The money will cover the purchase of supplies, labor costs for putting scores in new archival enclosures and relabeling and cataloguing the collection and marking the scores for storage.

When the process is complete, the scores will be more accessible to researchers and library staff, CSUN officials said.

The guitar archive is dedicated to preserving the legacy of American and foreign guitar music prints, journals and correspondence that reflect the history of the guitar in the United States from 1830 to now.

It was created in the 1980s by CSUN music professor Ronald Purcell, the archive's current director. It was founded with work assembled by collector, teacher and award-winning classical guitarist Vahdah Olcott- Bickford-Revere. After she died in 1980, the collection was given to the Oviatt Library.

Since then, the archive has grown to more than 10,000 music print titles of 19th and 20th century editions, including material that used to belong to guitarists Andres Segovia and Laurindo Almeida.

"The International Guitar Research Archive is a very important collection, and this recent grant helps ensure its availability to scholars for years to come," said Library Dean Susan Curzon.

The Augustine Foundation, which sponsors the study and performance of classical guitar, also gave CSUN $39,000 in 2006 to digitize a collection of classical scores.