FRONTERA COLLECTION OF MEXICAN AND MEXICAN AMERICAN RECORDINGS

THE ARHOOLIE FOUNDATION'S STRACHWITZ FRONTERA COLLECTION OF MEXICAN AND MEXICAN AMERICAN RECORDING

This collection is the plans to become, is the largest repository of Mexican and Mexican-American vernacular recordings in existence. This project is housed at THE UCLA Chicano Research Studies Center and sponsored by the Tigres Del Norte Fund, The Fund for Folk Record, Arhoolie Records. The projects objective is to provide access to reaserchers of Mexican and Mexican-American and The general public.

The collection is supposed to provide limited access outside the UCLA campus by allowing patrons to listen to clips of the collection. However, it seems that there is currently an error in providing this access. Otherwise, one can visit the campus and gain full access to all recording. The technology that the records are being digitized into seems to be Real Media since the extensions point to .Ram files which would obviously redirect to a Real Media format.

The website does not provide any information as to the selection of which materials digitize, however it seems that they have a pretty lofty goal in having already digitized 100,000 individual recordings on cassettes and 78 rpm, 45 rpm, and 33 1/3 rpm long-playing (lp) records all of which go back as far as the early 1900's to today.