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| © Debra L. Rothenberg/rothenbergphoto.com |
Welcome to the new online home of the Bruce Springsteen Special Collection! Believed to be the world's most extensive Special Collection devoted to Bruce Springsteen and his bands, the Collection serves the research and informational needs of music fans, scholars, authors and others with a serious interest in Bruce Springsteen's life and career.
With materials dating from 1949 to the present, the Collection includes over 11,944 holdings in multiple formats: books, song books, tourbooks, magazines, fanzines, Internet articles, academic journals and papers, comic books, selected printed items, and newspaper articles.
To date the Collection has received documents published in 42 countries, reflecting the enduring international interest in Springsteen's music and live performances: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the former German Democratic Republic, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, UK, Uruguay, USA, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Zimbabwe.
For information about accessing or contributing to the Collection, please see Frequently Asked Questions; to see a list of our donors, please see Donors and Friends.
The Collection was organized in 2001 by the Springsteen fanzine Backstreets Magazine, and housed at the Asbury Park Public Library as a cooperative project between the Library and a fan group which has evolved into the Friends of the Bruce Springsteen Special Collection, a non-profit organization.
Thanks to fans throughout the world who have shared generously from their private collections, the size of the Collection now exceeds the storage capacity of the Library. Today, slightly over half of the Collection's materials are housed at the Library; the remainder, including our newest additions, are accessible through the Friends of the Bruce Springsteen Special Collection. Meanwhile, work continues on a relocation plan that will eventually allow the Collection to expand into additional areas of Springsteen history.
A dedication ceremony for the Collection was held on December 8, 2001. Backstreets editor Christopher Phillips summarized our vision for the Collection when he said:
We believe this to be the largest collection of books and magazines devoted to Springsteen's career in any public library anywhere. The truly essential works by biographers, critics, scholars, journalists and fans are together in one place. The collection documents all phases of Springsteen's career and should be an indispensable tool for researchers and fans alike.
And during a concert that evening at Convention Hall, Bruce Springsteen said:
I want to thank all you folks who showed up at the library today for our little section there... The collection has almost 1,000 books and magazines on myself and the band--more stuff than every place except my mother's basement!
