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The purpose of this master’s thesis is to find out how free music can be promoted in a meaningful manner towards young people living in an age of streaming and experience-orientation. This is achieved by investigating what music library work consists of, and how music streaming is perceived in relation to this. The investigation consists of qualitative interviews with library personnel working with music at public libraries in Sweden. The results show that there is a democratic reason to keep physical media such as CDs, although they are currently borrowed by a limited audience. This indicates a vacuum in terms of offering music free of charge to the entire population. While licencing commercial streaming services could prove too costly and might be regarded as somewhat superfluous, the interviewees in general seem positive towards libraries offering their own service. A library-specific service would ideally promote local musicians and could according to the author put public libraries on the map in a national as well as international sense. In conclusion suggestions are made to consider the value in keeping physical media by putting them in experience-oriented contexts, for example in involving adolescents in active listening and music discovery; regenerate Demoteket by working with it in a digital context; and focus on reaching adolescents by offering musical instruments and putting music in a context where the adolescents are rather than viewing the music department as exclusively an adult section. There is also reason for putting music in historical, lingual and geographical contexts, something that current streaming services lack. Both the physical space and the web can play important parts in exposing the music collection, which should be used as a means for experiences rather than as a goal in itself.

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to find out how free music can be promoted in a meaningful manner towards young people living in an age of streaming and experience-orientation. This is achieved by investigating what music library work consists of, and how music streaming is perceived in relation to this. The investigation consists of qualitative interviews with library personnel working with music at public libraries in Sweden. The results show that there is a democratic reason to keep physical media such as CDs, although they are currently borrowed by a limited audience. This indicates a vacuum in terms of offering music free of charge to the entire population. While licencing commercial streaming services could prove too costly and might be regarded as somewhat superfluous, the interviewees in general seem positive towards libraries offering their own service. A library-specific service would ideally promote local musicians and could according to the author put public libraries on the map in a national as well as international sense. In conclusion suggestions are made to consider the value in keeping physical media by putting them in experience-oriented contexts, for example in involving adolescents in active listening and music discovery; regenerate Demoteket by working with it in a digital context; and focus on reaching adolescents by offering musical instruments and putting music in a context where the adolescents are rather than viewing the music department as exclusively an adult section. There is also reason for putting music in historical, lingual and geographical contexts, something that current streaming services lack. Both the physical space and the web can play important parts in exposing the music collection, which should be used as a means for experiences rather than as a goal in itself.

Presentation given at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) 2017 Fall Meeting in Buffalo, NY. The Music Library Association Archives are housed at Special Collections in Performing Arts at the University of Maryland, College Park. This historic collection of manuscripts, oral histories, publications, and e-records documents MLA's official activities from its founding in 1931 to the present. At approximately 300 linear feet and growing, the collection has posed great challenges to MLA officers, the repository curator, and student workers. Examples include multiple reappraisal initiatives, ongoing records transfers, backlog, arrangement assessments, deaccessions, multiple repositories over time, changes in dedicated staff, and finding aid generation dependent upon evolving university practices.

Presentation given at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) 2017 Fall Meeting in Buffalo, NY. The Music Library Association Archives are housed at Special Collections in Performing Arts at the University of Maryland, College Park. This historic collection of manuscripts, oral histories, publications, and e-records documents MLA's official activities from its founding in 1931 to the present. At approximately 300 linear feet and growing, the collection has posed great challenges to MLA officers, the repository curator, and student workers. Examples include multiple reappraisal initiatives, ongoing records transfers, backlog, arrangement assessments, deaccessions, multiple repositories over time, changes in dedicated staff, and finding aid generation dependent upon evolving university practices.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine whether music formats, as well as social media and apps, has affected how people dedicated to music search for music – and how this relates to the master's thesis theoretical aspects, as well as previous research about music information-seeking and -retrieval and the significance of tactile attributes. This will also be put in a library context, focusing primarily on the library at Malmö Academy of Music (Musikhögskolans bibliotek) and the Malmö City Library (Stadsbiblioteket), and how the change of music format's aswell as searchmethods has affected libraries in general and said libraries in particular. In light of the questions at issue, my survey consists of questionnaries answered by library visitors at Malmö Academy of Music, aswell as interviews with personnel at the library at Malmö Academy of Music and Malmö City Library. In the analysis I aim to discuss the survey-answers in relation to previous research and theories – primarily in informationscience and media studies, regarding music information-seeking and music information-retrieval, the significance of tactile attributes and how the libraries are affected. Marshall McLuhans statement that ”the medium is the message” is also discussed in relation to the discoveries of the survey aswell as the analysis. Briefly the conclusions are that the survey participants use different varieties of searchmethods aswell as music formats, but the use of different music streaming services is most common – both in searchmethods and as music format. The change in searchmethods appears substantially in the transition from physical music formats to digital. The impact of social media is mainly connected to how the participants is sharing music nowadays, wich more or less appears to be the same as before the digital music formats. But it takes place in the digital sphere instead of being limited to a physical location. How this affects libraries music sections and music librar

This master's thesis examines the use of blogs at public libraries to mediate music. With a methodological framework based on genre theory, developed by Sara Kjellberg, seven music blogs run by seven separate Swedish public libraries are studied in detail, within the context of Library 2.0 and Web 2.0. The questions that the study is set to answer are: "How do public libraries use digital and social media tools, blogs in particular, to mediate their music collections and activities?"; "In what ways do the blogs relate to the library as institution and the individual librarians respectively, and how are they represented on the blogs?"; and finally, "In what ways has Web 2.0 changed the conditions for and practices of culture mediation in the public libraries, and how do their music blogs relate to that change?". The method is based on the rhetorical genre theory of Carolyn C. Miller and John Swales, in which genres are seen as socially agreed on tools to use for certain communicative purposes. The study finds that the music blogs relate to what is called hybrid genres, where a number of more or less related communicative purposes, contexts, and forms and contents, are intertwined. The music blogs run by public libraries consist of an amalgam of various ancestral genres such as the reference interview, music journalism, and the private journal, and fuse the personal musical interest of the individual librarians with the general work of the public library as an institution. The blogs appear to be dependent on the individual writer's interest in and passion for both music and blogging, which in turn can be related to the various ideas concerning Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and contemporary cultural economics presented in the study.

The aim of this study is to examine the significance of having a music department at the public library in Enköping, and how the organization of the phonograms is handled. The different areas examined are the reason of the reintroduction of a music department, its budget, its users, the work with selection, the marketing, statistical data concerning loans, the work with classification, indexing, and organization of the phonograms and the future of the music department. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews with staff connected to the music department at the public library in Enköping. For the theoretical frame, Sanna Taljas discourse analysis of music libraries in Finland is used. Talja presents three discourses which all show different views on what kind of material a music library should contain. The first discourse, The General Education Repertoire, advocates that the music library should supply a collection that could serve as educational and represent the history of music and its different genres. The second discourse, The Alternative Repertoire, advocates that the music library should serve as an alternative to the sources of commercial music and offer material with a more alternative character. The third discourse, The Demand Repertoire, advocates that the music library should build its collection based on the users demands and needs. The study shows that all three of the discourses are present when material for the collection is selected, even though The General Education Repertoire and The Demand Repertoire are the two most conspicuous. The study also shows that a music department was reintroduced in the library stock based on things like an interest in the art form as such in the library management. The department has had a positive impact on the library's entire statistics, even though loan figures of phonograms have showed a negative trend since the opening. The figures still remain fairly high so the music department is believed to h

The aim of this study is to examine the significance of having a music department at the public library in Enköping, and how the organization of the phonograms is handled. The different areas examined are the reason of the reintroduction of a music department, its budget, its users, the work with selection, the marketing, statistical data concerning loans, the work with classification, indexing, and organization of the phonograms and the future of the music department. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews with staff connected to the music department at the public library in Enköping. For the theoretical frame, Sanna Taljas discourse analysis of music libraries in Finland is used. Talja presents three discourses which all show different views on what kind of material a music library should contain. The first discourse, The General Education Repertoire, advocates that the music library should supply a collection that could serve as educational and represent the history of music and its different genres. The second discourse, The Alternative Repertoire, advocates that the music library should serve as an alternative to the sources of commercial music and offer material with a more alternative character. The third discourse, The Demand Repertoire, advocates that the music library should build its collection based on the users demands and needs. The study shows that all three of the discourses are present when material for the collection is selected, even though The General Education Repertoire and The Demand Repertoire are the two most conspicuous. The study also shows that a music department was reintroduced in the library stock based on things like an interest in the art form as such in the library management. The department has had a positive impact on the library's entire statistics, even though loan figures of phonograms have showed a negative trend since the opening. The figures still remain fairly high so the music department is believed to h

The aim of this study is to examine how work at music departments in public libraries has changed with time. To analyze this, the role of music libraries as well as music library users, selection, holdings, acquisition and technological development have been examined. The examined data consists of qualitative interviews with music librarians and library assistants at public libraries in Sweden. To get a time perspective, handbooks and articles about music departments in libraries have also been analyzed. This study emanates from Sanna Talja’s discourse analysis of music libraries in Finland. In her study of Finnish music libraries she has found three discourses that give the library different roles in society. The first discourse, The General Education Repertoire, states that the role of the music library is to educate the citizens by supplying a broad record collection with “classics” from all kinds of genres. The second discourse, The Alternative Repertoire, states that the role of the library is to be an alternative to commercial music and the record industry by providing alternative music, that can’t be found everywhere. The third discourse, The Demand Repertoire, states that the role of the library is to satisfy the library users’ needs and thus adapt the collection and acquisitions to the local demand. The study shows that all three discourses are present at the public libraries examined in this master’s thesis. My interviewees state that they want to offer a broad collection with all genres represented but they find it also important to provide alternative music that is difficult to find elsewhere. At the same time, a demand repertoire, where the collection is more adapted to users’ wishes and needs, gets more common and librarians have a less critical attitude towards certain genres that were formerly banned at public libraries. The study also shows that work at public libraries has changed a lot with time. The music departments started with only listening s

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to study how well the online catalogue of The Music Library of Sweden works when ordinary users are searching for sheet music. The issues studied are: Why do the users fail to find the sheet music they are looking for? Do the users take advantage of the possibilities that the classification codes of the SAB system offer? If not, why? The source material of the study is 144 comments from a user questionnaire about the online catalogue and, in addition, the search log for one day (513 queries). The comments were sorted into seven groups depending on the type of information need, for example searches for certain instrumentation or genres and problems with spelling. Each analysis ends with suggestions for improvements of the catalogue and its instructions. The thesis show, according to the Zipf’s principle of least effort, that sheet music searching in the online catalogue is demanding too much effort and knowledge of the users. Searching with SAB classification codes is too complicated which may be the explanation why only 2 percent of the queries in the log are code searches. In 51 of the 76 cases where users failed to find sheet music the queries would have succeeded if the patrons had used classification codes. The SAB system is thus not used as often as it deserves. The variety and amount of failed queries in the material show that sheet music is difficult to search, for several reasons, for example the complex construction of uniform titles of musical works and that the searchable vocabulary of the online catalogue often differ from the users’ own.

The aim of this study is to examine how work at music departments in public libraries has changed with time. To analyze this, the role of music libraries as well as music library users, selection, holdings, acquisition and technological development have been examined. The examined data consists of qualitative interviews with music librarians and library assistants at public libraries in Sweden. To get a time perspective, handbooks and articles about music departments in libraries have also been analyzed. This study emanates from Sanna Talja’s discourse analysis of music libraries in Finland. In her study of Finnish music libraries she has found three discourses that give the library different roles in society. The first discourse, The General Education Repertoire, states that the role of the music library is to educate the citizens by supplying a broad record collection with “classics” from all kinds of genres. The second discourse, The Alternative Repertoire, states that the role of the library is to be an alternative to commercial music and the record industry by providing alternative music, that can’t be found everywhere. The third discourse, The Demand Repertoire, states that the role of the library is to satisfy the library users’ needs and thus adapt the collection and acquisitions to the local demand. The study shows that all three discourses are present at the public libraries examined in this master’s thesis. My interviewees state that they want to offer a broad collection with all genres represented but they find it also important to provide alternative music that is difficult to find elsewhere. At the same time, a demand repertoire, where the collection is more adapted to users’ wishes and needs, gets more common and librarians have a less critical attitude towards certain genres that were formerly banned at public libraries. The study also shows that work at public libraries has changed a lot with time. The music departments started with only listening s

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to study how well the online catalogue of The Music Library of Sweden works when ordinary users are searching for sheet music. The issues studied are: Why do the users fail to find the sheet music they are looking for? Do the users take advantage of the possibilities that the classification codes of the SAB system offer? If not, why? The source material of the study is 144 comments from a user questionnaire about the online catalogue and, in addition, the search log for one day (513 queries). The comments were sorted into seven groups depending on the type of information need, for example searches for certain instrumentation or genres and problems with spelling. Each analysis ends with suggestions for improvements of the catalogue and its instructions. The thesis show, according to the Zipf’s principle of least effort, that sheet music searching in the online catalogue is demanding too much effort and knowledge of the users. Searching with SAB classification codes is too complicated which may be the explanation why only 2 percent of the queries in the log are code searches. In 51 of the 76 cases where users failed to find sheet music the queries would have succeeded if the patrons had used classification codes. The SAB system is thus not used as often as it deserves. The variety and amount of failed queries in the material show that sheet music is difficult to search, for several reasons, for example the complex construction of uniform titles of musical works and that the searchable vocabulary of the online catalogue often differ from the users’ own.

Research into the practical needs and activities of orchestra librarians in New Zealand is rare. This study explores how orchestra librarians and conductors search for, access and manage printed music for the orchestras' players. The constraints of access and availability and the collaborative relationships that enable the sharing of resources are also examined. The research uses a qualitative approach with data collected from open-ended interview questions with eighteen participants who come from professional and amateur orchestras and the National Library of New Zealand. The findings show that orchestras in New Zealand access music from many different sources and the National Library plays a key role in this activity. The groups face constraints in accessing contemporary music (except New Zealand music) due to cost and copyright issues and there are constraints relating to the condition and use of printed hire music. The report concludes that there is a need for a national orchestra association in New Zealand to provide support for both amateur and professional orchestras. Cataloguing projects to increase the visibility and access of existing music resources and training programmes for performance librarians are other areas that are considered.

Research into the practical needs and activities of orchestra librarians in New Zealand is rare. This study explores how orchestra librarians and conductors search for, access and manage printed music for the orchestras' players. The constraints of access and availability and the collaborative relationships that enable the sharing of resources are also examined. The research uses a qualitative approach with data collected from open-ended interview questions with eighteen participants who come from professional and amateur orchestras and the National Library of New Zealand. The findings show that orchestras in New Zealand access music from many different sources and the National Library plays a key role in this activity. The groups face constraints in accessing contemporary music (except New Zealand music) due to cost and copyright issues and there are constraints relating to the condition and use of printed hire music. The report concludes that there is a need for a national orchestra association in New Zealand to provide support for both amateur and professional orchestras. Cataloguing projects to increase the visibility and access of existing music resources and training programmes for performance librarians are other areas that are considered.

The aim of this master's thesis is to study how the design of the music library space affects how it is used and its role as an arena for culture. This is done in form of a case study of Library 10 in Helsinki, a public library branch that specializes in music and information technology. The backdrop to the study is the changing context for cultural activity in the information society and the role of public libraries as public space and meeting place. By analyzing the distribution of space in the library, the distribution of functions and artefacts and the spatial use of the room, I interpret the ways in which this distributional logic produces a unique place for music and culture. I discuss the music library design in a space and place perspective, utilizing theoretical tools from cultural geography and the space theories of Henri Lefebvre. The result of the analysis shows a spatial logic that integrates culture with technology, combines simultaneous virtual and physical space and encourages social interaction. The distribution of functions and artefacts also represents a view of the user as both consumer and producer of culture embracing the entire creative circle, and confirms the importance of culture in the production of identity and belonging.

The aim of this master's thesis is to study how the design of the music library space affects how it is used and its role as an arena for culture. This is done in form of a case study of Library 10 in Helsinki, a public library branch that specializes in music and information technology. The backdrop to the study is the changing context for cultural activity in the information society and the role of public libraries as public space and meeting place. By analyzing the distribution of space in the library, the distribution of functions and artefacts and the spatial use of the room, I interpret the ways in which this distributional logic produces a unique place for music and culture. I discuss the music library design in a space and place perspective, utilizing theoretical tools from cultural geography and the space theories of Henri Lefebvre. The result of the analysis shows a spatial logic that integrates culture with technology, combines simultaneous virtual and physical space and encourages social interaction. The distribution of functions and artefacts also represents a view of the user as both consumer and producer of culture embracing the entire creative circle, and confirms the importance of culture in the production of identity and belonging.

At the end of the twentieth century the status of music databases in Spain is mixed. There is no directory or study that describes or even lists all that exists. There are some specialized studies, and music is included in many general surveys of Spanish documentation, while AEDOM has published thirty articles describing many centers of music documentation in the country. This article describes a preliminary telephone survey of 107 institutions made to determine: 1) if the collections are automated, 2) what programs are being used, and 3) the size and content of the databases. 61 percent responded that their collections are automated, using a great variety of computer programs from the simplest to those conforming to international bibliographic standards. Universities and public libraries lead the way with a developing network of access often through the Internet. Research centers lag somewhat behind, and although music documentation centers are involved in some large projects, these lack coordination. Museums tend to use unsophisticated systems, while schools and musical associations have, with notable exceptions, not addressed the problem at all. An extensive bibliography is appended

Myers, A., & Ishimura, Y. (2016). Finding sound and score: A music library skills module for undergraduate students. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 42(3), 215-221.Available here