Founder's Day, who knew?

We have some new feature stories up at RockLibrary.com announcing the blog and the Challenge Grant. Emails, news stories, press releases and blog entries equal a lot of writing; at this point the dog thinks that I’m physically attached to the keyboard.

I’ve also been working on a video promo that will go up on Youtube later today. Don't panic, I'll post it here too.

The Rock & Roll Library is usually closed on January 28 and all the interns and volunteers have the day off. They call it Founder’s Day, my mother called it my birthday but either way, this year I’ll be hard at work trying to generate interest in the Giving Challenge.

Yes, we are really closed on my birthday. I thought that it would be great to give someone a day off for this reason and I feel like I have to honor it if I want it to outlive me, so I close the library on January 28 and I take the day off.
I like the idea that in 100 years January 28th is a holiday maybe called Music that everyone has off, hangs out with friends and loved ones and play or listen to music and lets music enrich their lives. It's a holiday about the good things and wherever you are there are good things so make the best of it. Yes, I like how that sounds, who wouldn't? Your birthday is a holiday that reminds people to stop and live in the moment and enjoy themselves. "If you get confused just listen to the music play..."

In the event that in the future my birthday is not celebrated around the world as "Music" or "Music Day" I would still like the Rock & Roll Library to be closed and a concert should be held for all the staff and their guests, and some other guests, basically a big party. It should be awesome and we should be the envy of all.

To everyone who has donated so far, please accept my deepest gratitude. I am striking out beyond the boundaries of inner circles, friends, colleagues and Rock Library supporters to reach the masses.

Wish me luck as I pursue radio stations across the nation to help spread the word about our pursuit of $50,000 from America’s Giving Challenge. Maybe you’ll hear me on the air in your city.

If you’ve got a favorite radio station outside Boston send me a link to their website and I’ll send them our press release.

We only have 4 more days to get as many people as possible to donate. Please ask your friends, neighbors, mother and/or dog (if he has his own credit card & email address) to donate! It's only $10. Please donate by clicking the orange "Donate" button on the left.

More later,

Anne

Help RockLibrary win $50,000

I am very excited to announce that the Rock & Roll Library is participating in America’s Giving Challenge which will award $50,000 to eight charities that receive the highest number of unique donations before 3PM on January 31, 2008.

The Challenge is pretty simple: donations of $10 or more must be made through my charity badge located on the right side of this blog and a unique donor is defined by a unique email address and credit card or PayPal account (Visa, MC, AMEX and Discover are all accepted).

This is an extremely exciting opportunity for us as we are currently focusing on development and fundraising to help propel Rock Library to the next level of success.

The Rock & Roll Library is a 100% volunteer organization that I founded in 1999. Through tens of thousands of volunteer hours, additional donated services from a wide array of professionals and nearly 10,000 hours contributed by college interns, the Rock & Roll Library was built from the ground up.

We started in 1999 by building our first website, laying out plans for educational programs and mapping out the Music Archive. As we continued to grow we built the RRL Music Archive 1.0 in Cold Fusion (which I was assured was the most robust and scalable of database programs) with database consultants directing Computer Science undergrads and ultimately we began adding content.

With lightning advances in programming and data management our original Music Archive database became outdated and with an offer from established web/database developers we embarked on our most significant project: building an entirely new website and database in a different program, Microsoft Sequel Server and .NET.

Needless to say a project of this magnitude took up a good amount of time and because it was being done pro bono it took longer than we had anticipated. However we persevered and ultimately re-launched RockLibrary.com and the new RRL Music Archive and began adding content: people, bands, albums, songs, events, news stories, biographies, band histories etc.

Our next step is to create strategic partnerships that will serve the RRL and its visitors such as Click to Buy: Song, CD, Book, DVD, Ringtone, Ticket and Sheet Music by providing reputable retail vendor options to visitors and provide long term funding streams for the RRL. However I am committed to maintaining the integrity of RockLibrary.com which you may have noticed does not accept ANY advertising.

I was an early adopter believing that the Internet was the way of the future. Maybe it was because I saw its possibility or maybe because it served my needs. I always believed that I’d build a brick and mortar music library that would attract music fans from around the world to study the history of music, what I didn’t expect was the Internet to come along and make my music library available to the world from their own homes.

Please click the big orange "Donate" button on the right and make your contribution today and if you would, please tell one other person about my work.

More tomorrow…

Anne