Frontera Collection of Mexican and
Mexican-American Sound Recordings

The Arhoolie Foundation's Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican-American recordings (the Frontera Collection) is the largest repository of Mexican and Mexican-American vernacular recordings in existence. The Arhoolie Foundation, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and the UCLA Library have joined in a project to digitize the collection, with financial support from Los Tigres del Norte Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Strachwitz Fontera digital archive is managed by the UCLA Music Library and UCLA Digital Library Program. Services to support metadata management, database and website development, and long term preservation of the collection are provided by the Digital Library Program. The Frontera project team advises on technical and descriptive standards for the project, which ensure the persistence of the audio files and descriptive data that the Arhoolie Foundation and UCLA Library staff are creating. Digitization standards for both the disc labels and the audio files have been set at a high level to conform to emerging national standards in the field and to preserve the highest possible fidelity to the sound qualities of the original analog formats.

Visit the Frontera Collection website.