Alumni spotlight: Hollis Wittman

Contact: Sara Volmering

February 24, 2025

Hollis Whitman standing in front of boxes with items from Curtis Smith collection.

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—When Hollis Wittman began her graduate studies in musicology at Western Michigan University in 2017, she had no idea that a student job in the University Libraries would transform her career path. Now, years later, she has returned to Western to complete a project she first started as a student: organizing and processing the Curtis Smith Collection at the Zhang Legacy Collections Center.

Wittman first encountered the Smith Collection while working at the Center. Curtis Smith, a longtime professor in WMU’s School of Music, was a composer known for his innovative works, including the invention of the bowed piano.

Curtis Williams sitting at a piano. — Photo of Curtis Smith sitting at a piano is part of the collection.

"The piano has strings on the inside,” Wittman explains. “He would put fishing line around the strings and then bow it like you would a cello.”

Wittman was deciding on a research focus for her master’s thesis when Mike Duffy, fine arts librarian, visited her music research class. Wittman left that class inspired and energized by career options in librarianship.

"It was really kind of life-changing for me to be like, ‘Oh, you can do that. That's a career,’" says Wittman.

Duffy recommended that she try to get a job at the library; and in 2018, Wittman joined our Special Collections team as a student employee. Later that year, she was tapped to help organize and ingest the Smith Collection, partly due to her ability to read music.

Sonota for flute and piano by Curtis Smith sheet music. — Sheet music from the Curtis Smith collection.

"It was easier to arrange after having had an understanding of his music. His life was based around music,” Wittman says. “He was the kind of person for whom it was very important to be remembered and recognized, so he kept everything."

She hopes that more composers and performers will work with archivists while they are still alive to ensure their work is preserved.

"I would love to see an environment where we're doing more of that partnering."

Smith's collection spans 45 cubic feet and includes compositions, correspondence, notes and emails, along with numerous copies of his works. Wittman’s work with the collection was also the focus of her master’s thesis.

The work on the collection was not finished before Wittman graduated and headed off to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for library school.

After graduating, Wittman pursued a career in metadata and digital preservation, now serving as a metadata and music specialist at Virginia Tech. However, her passion for physical archives brought her back to WMU to finish processing the collection during a summer visit to Kalamazoo.

Hollis Whitman sorting through items from the Curtis Smith collection. — Hollis Wittman sorts through items in the Curtis Smith collection.

Processing the collection meant making tough decisions about what to keep, ensuring the materials would be accessible and manageable.

"Space at the Center is limited and keeping 40 copies of the same solo isn’t an option. Making efficient use of space and ensuring that the collection is well cared for was a particular focus for me."

For Wittman, the completion of the Smith project represents a full-circle moment.

"I think that my experience at Western really helped me to see that there were different options and that I could choose between them and find what ended up being a really good fit for me."

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