On what would have been his 90th birthday, the Dolby Family and Stanford Libraries announce the placement of Ray Dolby’s papers at Stanford University. Dolby’s papers join the archives of Ampex Corporation, an industry leader in magnetic recording and where Dolby worked early in his career. The Stanford Libraries acquired the Ampex Corporation Records in 2001, with assistance from Dolby Laboratories. Both collections are part of the Stanford Libraries’ Silicon Valley Archives, which recently expanded its program to include exhibition, teaching and event spaces in the newly renovated Hohbach Hall in Cecil H. Green Library.
“The addition of Ray’s papers in the Silicon Valley Archives offers scholars a rich corpus of primary source material spanning the early years of sound recording inventions and history,” said Michael A. Keller, the Ida M. Green University Librarian at Stanford. “Moreover, this wonderful treasure trove of material offers a glimpse into the person behind the technology that changed the way we experience movies and recordings.”
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The Ray Dolby Papers will have research value across many disciplines at Stanford and beyond and the connections between Dolby and Stanford continue to be discovered. “Dolby Labs and Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) have had much in common over the decades,” said Chris Chafe, the Duca Family Professor of Music at Stanford and the Director of CCRMA. “Research on digital sound and spatial hearing has involved staff and students working at both, often sharing hard questions and algorithm development.”
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Dolby Laboratories now operates in more than 20 countries with thousands of films and innumerable products leveraging Dolby technologies, further demonstrating the scientific and artistic worlds Dolby traversed.
“The Silicon Valley Archives includes collections that document the historical interplay between technology and entertainment,” said Henry Lowood, the Harold C. Hohbach Curator at Stanford Libraries who oversees the Silicon Valley Archives. “The Ray Dolby papers will provide a significant perspective on this topic as it relates to audio technology, joining collections like the Ampex collection, the Mary Beth and Richard Hess technical manual collection, and the John Chowning papers in University Archives, among others.”
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
