Thomas Heck has posted a nice news story regarding the work I have been doing with the GFA to provide a custom version of my search database available on the GFA website.

Now that the search is available at the GFA website there will be some changes in the Digital Guitar Archive website in the coming months to streamline the information available here. Google Search has for a long time been creating the largest number of searches on the database. I'll be keeping that in mind as I rework the website.

I am now active on Twitter and Facebook (Robert Coldwell in San Antonio, TX). You are welcome to join either one to get more frequent updates on DGA activities.

Things have been very quiet on the site this year, but I have been working hard. After the Mel Bay distribution was set up I started back on the Mertz Opern-Revue series. My goal is to have the remaining 3 editions out this year. The planning has also been started for a number of other new editions. I'll make announcements of those as they get closer to production.

I have also been working with the Guitar Foundation of America on a project related to the Archive database. Tom Heck has a nice write-up of the database on the GFA website. Look for some big announcements on the future of the database in the coming months!

I recently joined a lecture by Tom Heck and Ron Purcell at the 2008 GFA Convention in San Francisco titled "Research Resources Online." The presentation is available here as both a PDF and Powerpoint file.

Please note that all information contained in these files are the intellectual property of Robert Coldwell and Digital Guitar Archive.

For those of you with iPhones or iPod Touches try out the new Archive Search feature built especially for those devices. It has the full functionality of the Archive Search including display of all thumbnails and links to launch music PDF files.

It is specifically designed to work on Apple devices, but may also work on other embedded browsers.

It may be accessed in the Archive Search block on the left side of the screen or through this link directly.

I have just added direct credit card payments to the online store. Now you have the option of paying directly by credit card or through PayPal. You do not need a PayPal account to pay by credit card.

Bobrowicz Volume II and Mertz Op.32 are coming very soon!!

I apologize for the delay, but the new online store is now open. I apologize to previous customers that they will have to enter their information again, but we switched to a new store engine which seems to work better. There may still be some bugs, so please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any problems.

In addition to the 3 new editions I also added a few GFA Soundboard issues to the store. These are duplicates I have and once they are sold the items will be removed from the storefront.

The release dates for the new editions are generally as follows. Any orders including these books will not ship until all items in the order are available.

J. K. Mertz Opern-Revue Volume II - ships around October 10th
William Foden Grand Sonata - ships around October 22nd
J. N. de Bobrowicz Selected Works Volume II - ships at the end of October

In the next few days I will add the new editions to the DGA Editions Catalog link on the left side of this site and create some book previews for everyone to see.

In the past day or so I've added both the IGV collection at the Münich State Library and the Levy Collection at Johns Hopkins University. The Levy Collection now has PDF files so I will be adding thumbnails of the digital files in the next few days.

The next step in the growth of the Archive Search is the addition of journal article author/title indexes.

Data from the GFA Archive and some chamber music entries from an article by Julio Gimeno have been added to the Archive Search database. Some Boije Collection items have also been updated (it seems they are very close to finishing their digitizing project). This brings the total records in the database to over 8000 and the number of thumbnails to over 34,000.

The next collections to go into the database will probably be Kenneth Sparr's personal collection, the Gitarristisches Archiv München, the Levy collection and the Mary Belle Swingle Guitar Collection at Yale. I expect to then begin working on title/author entries for journals such as Classical Guitar, Guitar Review, Soundboard, GuitArt, il Fronimo, etc. This will allow an immediate cross reference of information. For example, searching for "La Sentinelle" would bring up Matanya Ophee's article about the original composer as well as any guitar works which used that theme.

Joe Costello has been kind enough to provide a scan of the Augsburg Guitar Klub catalog that was put together in the 1950's. The collection as it exists today in the Augsburg Public Library is available as part of my Archive database or can be searched directly at the library's website.

I just realized the images in the George Krick Etude articles in the Archive were broken. Those have been fixed now.