The Popular Music Archive

The Popular Music Archive sits alongside other department of Music collections and our aim is to make all of these collections publicly accessible. The archive is extensive, significant and wide ranging and consists of materials gifted to the IPM since its establishment in 1988. It contains a collection of over 80,000 vinyl records and thousands of reel-to-reels, as well as CDs, cassettes, and a substantial collection of paper archives. Among the paper archives are collections of British popular music newspapers and of various music magazines and fanzines. The Archive includes some rare material and a wide range of special donations, including:

• The Robert Shelton Archive
• The Robert Pring Mill Collection
• The Mikis Theodorakis Collection
• The Sylvia Patterson Jazz Collection
• The Radio City FM Collection
• The Karl Dallas Folk and Traditional Music Archive
• The David Friedman Collection
• The Eddie Calvert Collection
• The Roy Openshaw collection
• The Thompson and Gutman collection
• The Radio Merseyside Session Reel-to-Reel Collection
• The Mackenzie Dance Band Collection
• The IASPM Archive

An Collections at the IPM by Rob Strachan published in 2008 provides further details of the archive and some of the materials it contains.

The History of the IPM

The archive includes a collection of materials documenting the history of the IPM. The first 20 years of the institute are discussed in an interview with former IPM director David Horn published in Popular Music History (Volume 3, Number 1, 2008), while the establishment of the IPM is discussed in a journal article: The Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool.

Following its launch in 1988 the activities of the IPM concentrated on research, teaching, the supply of information, and the provision of resources and support for initiatives in education and employment.

In 2003 the IPM joined forces with the Department of Music to form a new School of Music (now a Department) and became a research institute.