Much of The Friends of Bruce Springsteen Special Collection donated to Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music
By Patricia A. Miller (Patch Staff) - Updated
WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. – A nonprofit group has formally gifted a large collection of Bruce Springsteen's works, periodicals and artifacts to Monmouth University archives.
The university established the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music earlier this year. Much of the collection of The Friends of Bruce Springsteen Special Collection now belongs permanently to the university's archives, according to the university website.
Much of the collection had been on loan to the archives for the past six years. Now with the donation, the materials have a permanent home.
“When Bob Crane and I started this collection more than 15 years ago, we imagined something big: something impressive, permanent, and unique, an unparalleled resource of use to fans, students, and scholars around the world,” said Christopher Phillips, publisher and editor of Backstreets and president of the Friends of the Bruce Springsteen Special Collection. “Given the importance of Bruce Springsteen’s work in our own lives, we wanted to preserve and consolidate all this material before it faded away. But I don’t think either of us imagined how much the collection would grow — thanks to the dedication, labor, and generosity of fans worldwide — and that we’d eventually find such a perfect home."
The Bruce Springsteen Special Collection originated in the summer of 2001 when the Springsteen fanzine, Backstreets Magazine, organized a fan-to-fan campaign to collect and organize essential items from each phase of Springsteen’s career.
The items were originally placed in the Asbury Park Public Library. Monmouth received the collection on loan in 2011.
The collection includes photographs, recordings, oral histories, film footage and other documents totaing almost 35,000 documents from nearly 47 countries.
“The Archives represent a learning opportunity for our students that will resound for decades to come,” said Kenneth Womack, dean of the Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Monmouth University. “We owe a great debt to the Friends for establishing the collection and for working with Monmouth University to expand the holdings and seek out new ways for sharing music education across our local communities and beyond.”