The Milman Parry Collection has seen many recent advances in connection with its current digitalization project, The Singer Continues the Song: Text and Music from the Milman Parry Collection. Originally developed by Dr. Matthew Kay, the project moved into production with the award of a generous challenge grant from Harvard’s Library Digital Initiative (LDI) in July 2002. The Singer Continues the Song has two distinct goals: first, to make available to the general public a wide selection of the original manuscripts and audio recordings contained in the Parry archive; second, to develop a new set of tools which will improve access to archived materials.
The digitalization project includes material from two major collections contained within the general framework of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature (MPCOL): the Milman Parry Collection proper, consisting of materials collected by Parry in the years 1933-35, and the Albert B. Lord Collection, assembled by Lord in 1950-51. Although over 200 texts have been selected for digitization from the former collection alone, this is still only a small portion of its roughly 12,500 individual items.