In Search of Charles B. Ward [Presentation]

Feustle, Maristella

In Search of Charles B. Ward [Presentation]

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Description

Presentation for the 2014 Digital Frontiers Annual Conference. This presentation discusses Charles B. Ward (1864-1917) and includes a biography and further implications for biography and musical reception history through resources originally created with different purposes in mind.

Physical Description

18 p.

Creation Information

Feustle, Maristella September 18, 2014.

Context

This presentation is part of the collection entitled: UNT Scholarly Works and was provided by the UNT Libraries to the UNT Digital Library, a digital repository hosted by the UNT Libraries. It has been viewed 524 times. More information about this presentation can be viewed below.

Author

Feustle, Maristella University of North Texas

Organizer of meetings

Named Person

Person who is significant in some way to the content of this presentation. Additional names may appear in Subjects below.

Ward, Charles B.

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UNT Libraries

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Degree Information

Department: Libraries

Description

Presentation for the 2014 Digital Frontiers Annual Conference. This presentation discusses Charles B. Ward (1864-1917) and includes a biography and further implications for biography and musical reception history through resources originally created with different purposes in mind.

Physical Description

18 p.

Notes

Abstract: Charles B. Ward (1864-1917) was a composer and vaudeville performer who is mainly remembered today for two tunes: "The Band Played On," and to a lesser extent, "Strike Up the Band, Here Comes a Sailor" (not to be confused with Irving Berlin's "Strike Up the Band"). Attempts in the fall of 2010 to write a brief biography of Ward for the Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., initially became a circular tour through the same scant information in multiple sources. The fact that Ward shared the same name with a congressman from New York further complicated the search. Reconstructing a biography of Ward, even to suffice for the brief encyclopedia entry, would have been virtually impossible in the five-month time span due to costs of time and travel, and knowing where to look first. Three digital resources were indispensable in piecing together his story, and only one of those was expressly musical. Those resources were Family Search, Google Historical Newspapers, and the New York Public Library's digital sheet music collection. Massive aggregations of resources offered a large enough haystack to contain some improbable “needles.” The accumulation of documents which are of little import by themselves collectively tell the story of one man's life via "Big Data," culled through "armchair forensics" at a laptop in Denton, Texas. This presentation will include the biography of Ward that this research made possible, and discuss further implications for biography and musical reception history through resources originally created with different purposes in mind.

Subjects

Keywords

Source

Third Annual Digital Frontiers Conference, 2014, Denton, Texas, United States

Language

English

Item Type

Presentation

Identifier

Unique identifying numbers for this presentation in the Digital Library or other systems.

Archival Resource Key: ark:/67531/metadc402461

Relationships

In Search of Charles B. Ward [Presentation Notes], ark:/67531/metadc402448

Collections

This presentation is part of the following collections of related materials.

UNT Scholarly Works

Materials from the UNT community's research, creative, and scholarly activities and UNT's Open Access Repository. Access to some items in this collection may be restricted.

Digital Frontiers

Serving as virtual proceedings for the Digital Frontiers Conference, this collection contains abstracts, presentations, video, workshops, student responses, supporting materials, flyers, and other items from the conference and related activities.

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