University of South Dakota (America's Shrine to Music Museum)

The National Music Museum will verify catalog data and create approximately 6,250 high-quality digital images of musical instruments from the collection of Arne B. Larson, around which the museum was originally founded, and the museum's collection of European instruments made before 1800. Direct public access to the collections is severely limited by the small number of instruments that can be accommodated for display and by the museum's distance from major population centers. The project will result in the first complete and accessible photographic documentation of these cultural, educational, artistic, and scholarly musical resources. The database will benefit museum staff in their curatorial, research, and teaching endeavors, as well as specialists and public visitors worldwide. Progress and success will be periodically gauged by the number of instruments reexamined, photographed, and entered into the database, and by statistics of website visits.