The Ukrainian History and Education Center has one of the most extensive and important collections of Ukrainian recorded sound in the world, including
- LP phonograph recordings of Ukrainian music and recordings by Ukrainian performers published in the USSR and the West. This collection spans all genres and covers the entire 20th century.
- Early 20th century 78 rpm shellac discs of Ukrainian music and recordings by Ukrainian performers published in Europe and the United States. This includes extremely rare pressings of Ukrainian opera singers such as Solomiia Krushel'nyts'ka and Modest Mentsinskyi, as well as popular recordings issued by Columbia, Victor, and other American labels.
- Reel-to-reel and cassette recordings made from the 1950s to the early 21st century. Many of these are likely unique, and include live event recordings (such as speeches, concerts, literary readings, and church services), radio programming of the Voice of America and Radio Liberty, interviews, and other materials.
These recordings were acquired primarily through donations of the collections of Stefan Maksymjuk and Mykola Francuzenko, as well as audio materials in other, primarily paper-based, collections.
Digitization status
Given that the expected lifetime of magnetic tape is about 50 years, the UHEC has launched a major "emergency digitization" initiative in order to migrate the reel-to-reel and cassette recordings to modern media. This project is ongoing, and is being done concurrently with the processing of the source collections as a whole. This is somewhat contrary to standard archival practice, but it makes sense given the idiosyncrasies of these particular collections. Until such time as full finding aids are available, we are providing the following spreadsheets with details on some of the UHEC's audio accessions. Some of this material is already digitized. If it is not, then we may be able to provide on-demand digitization of selected tapes or discs.
Browse full or partial inventories:
- Stefan Maksymjuk collection open reel tapes
- Stefan Maksymjuk collection cassettes (non-commercial recordings)
- Stefan Maksymjuk collection Columbia F-series 78 rpm shellac discs (incomplete inventory)
Online audio access
Selected digitized audio is available throught the audio portal below, which also allows you to search by keyword and to do faceted browsing by language, topic, keyword, or speakers/performers. In part thanks to a collaboration with Dnipro National University, many of these recordings now also have detailed time-coded annotations and descriptions. The text of these annotations are included in the keyword search functionality, and the links allow you to immediately jump to a time point of interest in the recording. Not all digitized audio is available online due to copyright or other considerations. Please contact us with any research questions.
