ARSC was founded in 1966 by a group of
academics, primarily
music librarians, who felt that contemporary professional associations such as the
Music Library Association (MLA) were not paying enough attention to the special needs of recorded sound archives, and that scholars were giving too little attention to historical recorded sound as opposed to printed sources. In contrast to professional organizations such as the MLA and the
American Library Association, ARSC by design also welcomed private record collectors, since they held (and needed to preserve) many important recordings that were not present in institutional collections. Furthermore, ARSC was intended to bring together collectors from all genres,
classical,
jazz,
popular, etc., as well as those concerned with spoken word recordings. After three organizational meetings in 1965 and 1966, and the election of its first president, Philip L. Miller, Chief of the Music Division,
New York Public Library, ARSC's first annual conference was held at
Indiana University in March 1967. Its first publication was the
Preliminary Directory of Sound Recording Collections in the United States and Canada (1967), listing 1,500 public and private collections. This was followed by the launch of the
ARSC Journal (1968), Data from this massive project is now part of the
WorldCat online library catalog. ARSC is governed by an eight-person board of directors, seven of whom are elected biennially by the membership. The eighth, the executive director, is appointed by the president with the approval of the board, is non-voting, and handles day-to-day operations. In the early years ARSC's leadership consisted primarily of professional archivists, but in later years it broadened to include scholars and private collectors, several of whom have served as president. A historical listing of officers and committee chairs can be found on the association's website. Although ARSC is based in the U.S., about ten percent of its membership is located in other countries. The association maintains close relations with the
International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) and is a member of the
Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA), an international umbrella group concerned with audiovisual preservation matters worldwide. ARSC is also an observer of the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). ==Presidents==