Riverside Archives WRVR Digitization Project

Deadline is July 31 – Your Help Needed to Edit WRVR Transcripts!

You’re invited to help The Riverside Church Archives make its historic WRVR collection more accessible! In 2018, the Archives began preserving and digitizing thousands of culturally significant radio programs from between 1961 and 1971. Sermons, music, lectures, radio plays: Riverside’s former public radio station WRVR produced all kinds of programming. Many of the era’s notable civil rights activists, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, were recorded right here at Riverside and broadcast across the New York City area.

We need your help to correct computer-generated transcripts in order to make these important recordings available to the hard of hearing and easier for researchers and the public to find!

It’s a super simple process! The editing can be done by nearly anyone, and is perfect for older youth during summer break, young adults, retirees, and just about anyone interested in these fascinating recordings.

Begin Editing Transcripts

We need to edit as many transcripts as we can by July 31, 2021, so thank you in advance for your help!

Nervous about diving right in? The American Archive of Public Broadcasting has training resources with helpful tips and demonstrations.


WRVR Digital Collection

The WRVR-FM (Riverside Radio) Collection includes more than 3,500 digitized radio programs created by WRVR-FM, a public radio station owned and operated by The Riverside Church in the City of New York that began broadcasting on January 1, 1961, and continued as a commercial radio station from September 1971 until 1976.

Thanks to grants from American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH, and the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), we are pleased to make our digitized collection available to the public.  You are invited to explore the WVRV Collection, which spans 1961-1973 and includes a wide variety of programming:  progressive religious and philosophical discussions, sermons, speeches, and event coverage.  Highlights include documentary coverage of the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham in 1963, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous Beyond Vietnam speech, and over 1,000 episodes of Just Jazz with Ed Beach.

Explore the WRVR Collection