Ed Novitsky

Ed Novitsky "The Archivist" is an American music historian, recording archivist, collector and music-industry consultant known for his work documenting recorded music and the catalogs of major American record labels. He is particularly associated with large-scale discographical projects covering Mercury Records, MGM Records, and Capitol Records, as well as research into recording sessions, master numbers, releases, artists, personnel, and recording histories.

Novitsky's career sits at the intersection of archival science and popular-music history. Rather than writing artist biographies, his work belongs to the specialist genre of the *label discography* — exhaustive, session-by-session documentation of everything a record label issued, including matrix/master numbers, recording dates, personnel, and issue history. This kind of work requires access to label session logs, artist files, and internal company archives, and is used by historians, reissue producers, collectors, and other discographers as a primary reference.

For over two decades, he has been described in his publishers' author notes as a "music historian and recording archivist who has been actively compiling artist and record label discographies for more than twenty years," and who serves as a *consultant and advisor to record companies and various music-related publications.*

Novitsky's work has contributed to the preservation and documentation of recorded-music history, particularly material from the mid-20th century. His name appears on major reference works used by researchers, collectors, historians, record companies, and discographers. His research has focused particularly on recording sessions, master numbers, release numbers, personnel, recording dates, labels, formats, and the relationship between recordings and subsequent commercial releases. Sets of his work are held and used by the *Smithsonian Institution's Libraries and Archives*