Former Faculty Member William Ashbrook donated his collection of nearly 700 titles to the Cunningham Memorial Library.
Education:
M.A. in English Literature, Harvard University.
B.A. in English Literature, University of Pennsylvania.
William Ashbrook (January 28, 1922 — March 31, 2009) was an American musicologist, writer, journalist, and academic.
Born in Philidelphia, Pennsylvania Ashbrook earned a BA in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1946 and a MA in the same field from Harvard University in 1947. From 1949 to 1955 he taught humanities at Stephens College and from 1955 to 1974 he was a member of the English department at Indiana State University. From 1974 to 1984 he was professor of opera at the Philidelphia College of the Performing Arts (now the University of the Arts).
Although Ashbrook trained to be an English professor, he had a life long interest in Italian opera and his scholarly publications in the field of music far outshown his contributions in other areas. He is best remembered for his 1965 biographical work on Gaetano Donizetti and for the books The Operas of Puccini (1968; rev. 1985) and Donizetti and His Operas (1982). Ashbrook was also a regular contributor to several classical music journals, magazines, and other publications, including Opera News, Opera and the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He was also a former editor of The Opera Quarterly. He died in Denver, Colorado at the age of 87.
Almost every bibliographic record for an item in the William Ashbrook gift includes the phrase "Gift of William Ashbrook" in it's Note field.
To find an Ashbrook item focused on an artist or a particular topic, perform a keyword search that includes the artist's name (last is usually sufficient) or the topic word or words and the search phrase "Gift of William Ashbrook". Make sure you use quotation marks around the phrase to ensure it conducts a phrase search.
If interested in the research of William Ashbrook, search the Fusion Plus catalog for "Ashbrook, William" as a phrase.
Caveat: do not search for "William Ashbrook" as a keyword. The Note in the gift field makes it difficult to search for information about him. To combat this, search for Ashbrook as an author, then use the William Ashbrook subject headings to locate materials.
So, to find all the Opera materials at Cunningham Library that were a part of the Ashbrook gift, perform this Fusion/Fusion Plus keyword search:
Opera AND "Gift of William Ashbrook"
Use the Fusion Plus catalog as your first option for locating books, scores, microfilms, journal titles (but NOT articles), sound recordings, and videos owned by Indiana State University, as well as Web-based resources that are accessible via the catalog (electronic books and journals, databases).
