California State University, Northridge, is home to the International Guitar Research Archives, one of the largest guitar-related archives in the world.

The archive serves not only as a collection of guitar music, but also a history of the guitar and a documentation of the entire world from the eyes of guitar musicians.

The IGRA is made up of sheet music, photographs, paper records, scrapbooks, guitar journals and magazines, like Soundboard, Guitar Magazine, and music scores.

The archive also contains thousands of phonograph recordings of classical guitar, mandolin, and flute, which can be digitized for listening upon request.

The archive was founded in 1980 by late music professor Ron Purcell upon receiving the extensive Vahdah Olcott-Bickford donation. Olcott-Bickford was an astrologer and classical guitar teacher dubbed “the Grand Lady of the Guitar.” She was best known for her influential guitar method books and she was a prolific author of articles about the guitar and frequent correspondent with other musicians throughout her long career. In 1919, Olcott-Bickford became the first woman to make a guitar recording.

Olcott-Bickford had collected hundreds of guitar-related materials dating from 1874-1980. Near the end of her life, Purcell encouraged her to donate her collection to CSUN’s music department, as he deemed important enough to preserve. Julieta Garcia, the archivist for the IGRA, says the collection was eventually moved to the CSUN library to better preserve the items there.

“There was a conclusion made that the music department wasn’t the best place for these materials to live,” Garcia said.

Since the 1980s, IGRA has continued to grow, receiving donations from the Laurindo Almeida estate, John Tanno, and from Ron Purcell himself.

Residing on the 2nd floor of the CSUN library is a reading room where you can request the items from these collections to study. People can find and request these items online, or through email. Garcia says students can get specific about what they want, like requesting “turn of the century sheet music.” She says there aren’t many guitar-related archives as big as IGRA in the world, so they are regularly sent emails and visits from students and researchers from all over the globe.

“[The emails] are mostly international Students, grad students, PHD students, who are working on their dissertations from around the world. We get requests from throughout the U.S. but I also have emails from Italy. I have an email from France from someone interested in a guitar we have,” Garcia said.

The archive contains personal writings and photographs from classical guitarists throughout the 1900s, serving as bookmarks through history from the lens of musicians.

“We have a lot of historical documentation about the history of the world, what’s going on in the world, why people can’t pay for these things, they’re moving,” Garcia said.

The archive contains letters from classical guitarists during the economic crash of 1929, some of them detailing their struggles to stay afloat and pay their bills and fees. Garcia says the entire guitar society, like most everyone else at that time, experienced a lot of hardship trying to survive.

The IGRA is open to anyone who would like to access its resources. Special Collections and Archives is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and Saturdays 1-4 p.m. Students interested in requesting items from the archive can email asksca@csun.edu. IGRA also has a one-year paid fellowship program open to any full-time students interested in music, library science, music research, and/or the arts. One student will be chosen and the deadline for the application is September 13th, 2024.