# Jasper Forster: 2023 Junior Fellows Program Display Day

RISM, or the International Inventory of Musical Sources, is an international database that documents extant musical sources worldwide. Previously, RISM only accepted sources created prior to 1800, but have recently changed this to now include manuscripts from any era. This change inspired the following project focused on publishing records of American music manuscripts from the 19th and 20th century held within the Library of Congress to RISM. As a Junior Fellow in the Music Division, Jasper Forster researched the Music Division's extensive collections for works in manuscript by African American composers prominent during the 1920s to 1950s. Jasper located these works, reviewed their contents, and gathered metadata to create digital records for each manuscript. This information included location of the source, its call number, how it was acquired, the scoring, any unique attributes, and more. In addition, Jasper encoded music incipits for each manuscript, and sometimes multiple if the work had multiple movements. Once this information was gathered and reviewed, working with their mentor Paul Sommerfeld, Jasper published these digital records to RISM, allowing for further discoverability of these manuscripts by both scholars and performers. This project sheds further light on an important piece of American legacy - specifically African American musical legacy. Composers reported to RISM include Florence B. Price, William Grant Still, Lillian Hardin Armstrong, J. Rosamond…

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2023
- By: Library Of Congress
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2025661509/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2025661509?play=1)