Janis Ian Archives Fund

The Janis Ian Archives are a unique resource for music history research, offering unfettered access to Ian’s publishing, recording, and live performance contracts, copyright paperwork, financial negotiations, and tax returns. Beginning with her grandparents’ immigration papers, circa 1916, the Archives will follow the journey of Ian’s 1937 Martin D-18 guitar, chronicle the HUAC years with insights into her parents’ FBI files (and what FBI surveillance cost Ian’s family over the decades), and then travel through the civil rights, women’s, and LGBTQ movements. Visitors to the Archives can view Janis Ian’s correspondence with other musical artists, famous friends, and collaborators, as well as flip through song notebooks, diaries, and a journal that includes Ian’s first poem, written at age ten.

Ongoing support is needed to preserve, catalog, and periodically display the priceless items housed in this vital one-of-a-kind resource. Unlike most archives, this resource is open for professionals and non-professionals alike. While many artists have received significant amounts of money for turning over their archives, The Janis Ian Archives are entirely different – Ian’s belief in Berea College is so strong that she has donated all materials without compensation. Her only stipulation is that records remain open to the public, not just scholars and Ph.D. candidates.