About the Whitaker Collection
The Whitaker Collection is a large collection of over 15,000 long play recordings of jazz, classical and contempory music. The collection was amassed by a reclusive Natick resident, Russell C. Whitaker, who was killed in a freak accident involving a runaway motorcycle in 1992. Mark Malkovich, director of the Newport Music Festival and an avid record collector himself, realizing the depth of the collection, helped arrange for it to go to Newport's Salve Regina University, which had just built a new library. [View the PDF article from the Providence Journal] The collection is currently housed in Cecelia Hall.
POLICIES
1. All long-play records are to be played only in the music room in Cecelia Hall. This means that these records cannot be removed from the music room in Cecelia Hall.
2. Faculty only may remove the records from the music room in Cecelia Hall and must check out the items using the checkout program on the computer in the music room.WHO IS WHITAKER?
Read the Providence Journal-Bulletin story from July 19, 1992 about Russell C. Whitaker and how the McKillop Library acquired the record collection. View PDF articleALL THAT JAZZ
By Joe Foley, Head of Circulation, (Spring 2001)
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When the filmmaker Ken Burns comes out with a new series, it's an event. one of his latest ventures is the Story of Jazz, which is purely American and mostly an Afro-American art form. In conjunction then, with Ken Burn's Jazz Series, and the fact that Newport is home to the annual Jazz Festival, I would like to mention a collection of Jazz records (that's right -- records, vinyl, wax) that the McKillop Library possesses and is now located in Cecelia Hall. |
 | All the greats mentioned in the Ken Burns series are here in our collection. One could trace the history of Jazz just listening to this collection., which includes Fats Waller, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker, to name just a few. Lesser-known greats, but equally entertaining are also included. For preservation purposes, this collection does not circulate outside of the music room in Cecelia Hall. |
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