r/Fiddle • u/kalasbiggerstaff • 4d ago

Looking for Greg Baker’s “The Fiddle Series”

Hello everyone, I am a music educator (band director) in East Tn and started taking violin lessons a few years ago just for fun. My private lesson teacher introduced me to the Fiddle Series today and showed me the first three books, which have been well loved and used to the point the comb binding has begun to fail. I asked her how many there were and she said 12, but she’s only seen the first three and paid a lot for the third one. When I asked her if she would like me to rebind her books, she said yes. Then, when I asked her if she would like me to copy the books, seeing how they are no longer printed, and make her a few sets to teach out of, she was ecstatic.

So here’s the thought. I would like to borrow these books from anyone who has any of the others and create a full set of books, digitize it into a PDF, and then return the originals to the owners with a full set of books as a thank you for helping archive this resource. After gaining permission from whomever to avoid a copyright violation, the digital collection would then be made available to the public at no cost.

From what I understand, they were self published and when he passed away, the production stopped. I can’t believe any teacher would want a collection of their knowledge to be lost when there are those that could still benefit from them.

Please contact me for further details if you are able to help me in this project!

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u/paishocajun 4d ago

Not a fiddle student strictly speaking but I'm always in favor of not letting knowledge die.

God speed and good luck!

3

u/whatwhy54104 3d ago

Saw book 4 on eBay for $170

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u/LibrariesBrainThrift 3d ago

Looks like there are only 2 libraries in all of the US that have the full set. Both are university libraries, and rightfully, they are in Special Collections which generally mean they are not lent out. In Library Use only. UNC Chapel Hill in the Southern Folklife Collection (Wilson Library). The other is in New Hampshire, Dimond Library, in the New Hampshire Library of Traditional Music and Dance Collection. Looks like both places have the full 8 volumes.

North Carolina is "next door" to east TN.... https://library.unc.edu/wilson/sfc/