| This doctoral project includes an analysis and listing of the scrapbooks included in the Roslyn Rensch Collection and Papers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Roslyn Rensch Collection and Papers include more than 2,000 items of harp music, books, recordings, research papers, clippings, and letters collected from approximately 1900-1993. The two series of scrapbooks display a large portion of clippings, programs, and print representations of the harp. These scrapbooks contain a majority of the Collection's primary sources that can be of use in biographical research, research on society, music iconography, harps, and harpists, as well as other related topics. This dissertation focuses on the eleven Harp Scrapbooks and twenty-seven Roslyn Rensch Scrapbooks. This study contains the first extensive biography of Dr. Roslyn Rensch in print. It is intended to aid preservation attempts, beginning with the scrapbooks, and to establish the significance of the Collection and Rensch's unparalleled stature as a harp historian. |
