USC Digital Voltaire

R. Wayne Shoaf

R. Wayne Shoaf is Metadata and Digital Librarian for the USC Digital Library. In that and related roles, he has helped to shape the Digital Library since its inception in the late 1990s and has contributed cataloging for tens of thousands of items accessible in the Digital Library. During that time he was also Director of Technical Services in the USC Libraries for ten years where he helped transition the Department from a primarily print-based operation to a primarily electronic operation. For the Voltaire project he cataloged the letters in the Digital Library, providing the metadata which facilitates discovery of those letters electronically.

For thirteen years, Wayne was at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC prior to transfer of that collection to the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna where he helped transition the composer’s legacy to a new center of study and performance in Austria. While at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, first as Assistant Archivist and then as Archivist, he mounted dozens of exhibitions, presented papers and classes on Schoenberg, published more than 30 articles and was responsible for the cataloging of the entire collection. His book, The Schoenberg Discography, published in 1987, was well received and sold out prompting him to compile a second edition which was published in 1994.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1985 from New York where he was Cataloger at: the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the Lincoln Center branch of the New York Public Library, as well as at the Mannes College of Music, and Columbia’s Butler Library. While in New York he received his Master of Science from the School of Library Science at Columbia University.

As a chemistry, music, and later engineering major he received dual undergraduate degrees having studied at the University of Colorado, Oberlin College and Oberlin Conservatory. His early career included stints as a professional musician, architect, and medical assistant.

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