The Sound of Music, literally.

“How do you solve a problem like Maria?”

The library is a great place for both research and recreation and I love it when the two are combined.  Case in point, I recently watched the movie musical The Sound of Music again and naturally wondered how much the movie differed from the true story of the Trapp family. 

In this article, an archivist (and archivists and librarians are kissin’ cousins) discusses the Trapp family story and shows a bunch of primary source documents related to their immigration to the U.S. 

In our vast suite of research databases, under the category of Biography, is the Biography Resource Center which has a few biographies of Maria von Trapp.

And if you really want to get in depth and read a whole book, you can read Maria’s Story of the Trapp Family Singers and their further adventures.   Or you can read about patriarch Georg’s Austrian navy stories.

If all the true stories are too much, there’s a companion book for those who just can’t get enough of the movie.

Also, because we buy almost every musical we can get our hands on, we have compact discs of the original soundtrack, the original and new Broadway casts, the original and new London casts, and so on. Or hear the Trapp Family themselves!

Finally, just for fun, read this Vanity Fair interview to find out about how much Julie Andrews dislikes her own nose.

– Tim