Introduction

This semester I will embark on an archival practicum at William Carey University's Dumas L. Smith/ I. E. Rouse Library. The library has special collections in addition to the university archives. The Clarence Dickinson Collection is the most prominent special collection housed in the library. I have written about the Dickinson Collection for a previous class and used it for a digitization proposal in another class. The collection contains Dickinson's personal library of 5,000 volumes in addition to many other personal items that are of interest to researchers in the field of church music. Dickinson was known as the Dean of American Church Musicians and was perhaps the most famous church musician at the height of his influence. He helped to created the first doctoral program for church musicians in America at Union Theological Seminary. Before the creation of this doctoral program Americans had to go abroad to Europe to study, as Dickinson did in France and Germany. Dr. Donald and Frances Winters, who were instrimental in creating a school of music at William Carey, were responsible for the acquisition of the Dickinson Collection. William Carey University recently had much of the university's archival material, such as yearbooks,  digitized. But work remains to be done in organizing the actual print and analog materials.

Clarenc Dickinson