This exhibit highlights how women promoted classical music on the South Plains over the past one hundred years, but it also highlights how women recognized the significance of their work and sought to preserve this history by donating their records to the Southwest Collection. In this exhibit case, we share some of the materials and stories of archival preservation that started in the late 1950s.
Program Books
Each year, prior to the first September meeting of the season, the Lubbock Music Club publishes a yearbook for its members that contains information on each month’s programs, the year’s course of study, contact information for members, club history, bylaws, important dates, and other information on state and national federated club officers and activities. The Southwest Collection has almost all of the yearbooks from the past one hundred years of meetings, and those provide researchers a continuous history of this organization. Similarly, the South Plains (now Lubbock) Music Teachers Association has also donated many of their program books with similar resources for its members. Other music organizations across the South Plains have also periodically donated their program books.
Scrapbooks
Through the years, many women have compiled scrapbooks that document the history of their musical activities on the plains. The Southwest Collection has over thirty of these types of books, many of which are incredibly fragile today, with crumbling pages, folded up and delicate papers, brittle newspaper clippings, and deteriorating glue causing items to fall out. Regardless, they often contain the only extant copies of concert programs, student recitals, photographs, and documentation of special events. For example, Jeanette Ramsey Olive and Nancy McKee’s scrapbooking efforts in the mid-twentieth century were instrumental in documenting both organizations’ earliest history. In more recent times, starting in the 1960s, the Lubbock Music Club began creating achievement books that include photos of each meeting, program notes, and other information from the club that year.
Other Manuscript Materials
In addition to program books and scrapbooks, the Southwest Collection contains a variety of manuscript materials that detail other aspects of organizational histories. Whether it is financial papers, meeting minutes, ledgers of festival competition results, correspondence, or sundry brochures, these archival records document the stories of the immense behind-the-scenes work that has been done by these organizations.