Search

The Packard Humanities Institute has released a new edition of Johann Christian Bach's operas and dramatic works, available in both printed and digital formats. The University of Iowa's Rita Benton Music Library has received a grant to digitize and preserve early recordings of Czech music. The RISM Editorial Center is seeking updates to its Series C, the Directory of Music Research Libraries. The Leon Fleisher papers at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University are now open for research, documenting Fleisher's career as a concert pianist and educator. The Music Library Association awarded the Diversity Scholarship to support candidates from underrepresented groups pursuing a master's degree in library and information science. The text also provides information about various awards and grants given by the Music Library Association, as well as highlights from the journal Notes. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the music library profession. It acknowledges the presence of racism, sexism, and microaggressions in the workplace and professional conferences. The author emphasizes the need for recruitment and the development of systems that support diversity, equity, and inclusion as librarians from underrepresented communities enter the field. The article also mentions other essays in the volume that cover topics such as training, hiring, faculty status, and collection management. Overall, the article calls for action to address the lack of diversity in librarianship. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses two biographies of composers. The first biography is about Percy Aldridge Grainger, an Australian-born British-US composer, pianist, and polemicist. The author of the biography, Teresa Balough, provides a comprehensive overview of Grainger's life and work, focusing on the positive aspects and his contributions to music. The second biography is about Vagn Holmboe, a Danish composer who was active in the second half of the 20th century. The author, Thomas Michelsen, highlights Holmboe's significance as a composer in Scandinavia and his influence on the music scene in Denmark. [Extracted from the article]

The article is a review of the book "Careers in Music Libraries IV" edited by Misti Shaw and Susannah Cleveland. The book is part of a series that explores the field of music librarianship and provides advice and guidance for professionals in the field. The review highlights several essays in the book, including topics such as technical services in libraries, careers in music archives and special collections, and diversity in music librarianship. The reviewer praises the volume for its comprehensive coverage and recommends it as an essential resource for music library professionals. [Extracted from the article]

In recent years, academic institutions across the country have responded to an increased interest by our community in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Libraries are no exception; many music librarians are currently engaging with the vital task of diversifying their collections, which may have historically excluded a range of marginalized voices. The authors, who include early-career music librarians identifying as persons of color, share lived experiences and provide strategies for embarking on this collection development journey, in the hopes that others in similar situations—particularly other early-career librarians—can feel solidarity in this task and discover new methods and ideas for embarking on this crucial work. After an introduction and literature review, the article presents challenges, opportunities, and overarching questions and answers regarding various aspects of inclusive collection development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon Ettarh's call to dismantle vocational awe in librarianship, this article outlines the shared components of Western libraries and Western music that lay the groundwork for vocational awe in each of these institutions and explores the ways in which vocational awe uniquely manifests for workers in the interdisciplinary field of music librarianship. The article explores the narrative of music's goodness, disciplinary training, and manifestations of vocational awe as they appear in the institutional cultures of practice of music and librarianship: inability to develop work-life balance, job creep, low morale, and inequitable compensation. In naming this phenomenon as it is situated within music and music librarianship, we critically examine how it may affect our own narratives and values. We seek to empower those in music library work to become mindful of and address the presence and influence of vocational awe at individual and institutional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical music information literacy enables an individual to recognize and navigate the power structures that exist in our systems of music information construction, dissemination, preservation, and access. It relies on an instructor's critical disposition toward information, which is passed on to the student who can then recognize the relationship between power and scholarship. Together they can seek to resist and tear down inequitable systems and practices. If we understand collections to be a locus of musical study and discourse, it is necessary for library workers, as well as those using music collections like researchers and performers, to engage in critical praxis and critical music information literacy if we hope to create an anti-racist, equitable society that "bend[s] toward justice." Using this definition of critical music information literacy, we explore theories that inform its praxis within music library workership, briefly summarize challenges due to the materiality of music information, and offer some practical applications for reflection, adoption, and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Barclay Squire (1855–1927), the long-serving assistant keeper specializing in music within the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum, dubbed one part of the King's (now Royal) Music Library's collection of Handel manuscripts the "Smith Collection." This understandable action taken a hundred years ago has served to confuse subsequent scholars, has inhibited the identification of the copies made for Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–1751), and has obscured a complex history of collection management involving private sales and purchases, gifts, and dispersion across the Atlantic. Drawing on eighteenth-century newspaper advertisements, biographical inquiry, poetry, binding techniques and labels, the author tracks the fourteen volumes of a special set that originally belonged to Frederick, Prince of Wales, across two and a half centuries. The volumes are now to be found on two continents and in three libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heavy metal, once considered an outlier among the popular music genres by music critics and scholars, has nonetheless consistently enjoyed a large and dedicated fanbase. In the twenty-first century, it has become an increasingly popular subject of music scholarship, which has led to an increase in the number and variety of metal resources available to and collected by libraries. This article will provide a basic introduction to heavy metal music and materials and some suggested best practices for working with these materials in a library or archival setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Japanese Americans were involuntarily confined en masse during World War II. They were heavily scrutinized: their senses of belonging and identification were interrogated, contested, always fraught, and often ambiguous. [...]

Those designing library discovery systems are presented with numerous challenges, many of which relate to "non-book materials" such as music scores and recordings. Generally, cataloging rules and search or discovery systems are optimized for text written "about" a specific subject or works bearing distinctive, consistent titles. Music scores and recordings do not routinely have distinctive titles, and they exist in a multiplicity of formats. Two additional issues affect users' ability to retrieve music results: a bias toward Western art music and users' expectations based on familiarity with the "one search box approach" found in commercial online retailers' Web sites. This article explores the history of music librarians' efforts to facilitate discovery of music materials. By examining the problems inherent in music discovery and the attempts to solve them through cataloging and discovery systems, the history provided here ends with the release of the Music Discovery Requirements 2 (MDR2): recommendations for those who are guiding the development of discovery interfaces which include music materials, and those who are developing standards for recording and encoding data. Four music-specific issues along with MDR2's recommendations are explored in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents updates on music-related issues and events as of April 2019. Topics include the completion of the processing of the Richard J. Howe Collection of Musical Instrument Literature by the Archive of Record Sound at Stanford University, the completion of a project funded by a grant from the Grammy Museum announced by Yale University's Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, and the Miami University Copyright Conference on September 26-27, 2018 attended by a number of music librarians.

The Memorial Library of Music (hereafter referred to as MLM) is one of the Stanford University Libraries' most used special collections, and its most important music collection. In 1944–45 businessman George T. Keating gave a gift of music manuscripts and first and early editions of scores that formed the foundation of the collection. Keating continued to provide funds, and worked closely with curator Nathan Van Patten to acquire additional items. Correspondence between the two, in addition to that of antiquarian dealers and composers, provides most of the extant information about efforts to expand the collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Grawemeyer (1912–1993) dedicated funds to the University of Louisville's Dwight Anderson Memorial Music Library that support the Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition, and created the Grawemeyer Collection, a special collection of the scores, sound recordings, and information files for the award's nominees since 1985. Over the past thirty years, this unique special collection not only grows physically every year, but has also grown in the way it is managed and used. This article provides a detailed account of these two aspects that create the rich history of this "living" special collection by describing the many successes and challenges faced by the librarians in charge of the collection, and how they dealt with issues of processing, storage, and discovery as well as the collection's current management and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notes, in its second series, began with the December 1943 issue. The transition from an occasional, mimeographed collection of stapled sheets to a quarterly, printed periodical was accomplished by the first editor Richard S. Hill of the Library of Congress. The professional and scholarly journal of the Music Library Association has been the document of record for much of the activity in music libraries ever since. Here we are seventy-five years later, pondering the life that the journal has led, and wondering about the future in a personal take on the people, ideas, things, and places with which Notes has been concerned. Notes retains stature due to its community of readers, writers, and editors who wish to continue the tradition of a high quality, peer-reviewed, consistently reliable and regular publication, with an ecumenical outlook. Those virtues are particularly toilsome and challenging to maintain in the face of the many pressures upon the profession, upon scholarly and society publishing, and upon the individuals who read, write for, and edit the journal. One way in which our professional association provides us with agency despite these challenges is through information sharing and debate about the routes our communities of people, ideas, things, and places have taken and wish to be taken. Notes may not be perfect, and she certainly requires constant attention in order to flourish, but she is a beacon of hope for what promises to be a tumultuous second seventy-five years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section offers news briefs on music libraries as of March 2018. A major renovation was completed by the Architecture & Fine Arts Library at the University of Florida in summer 2017. Two autograph manuscripts by composer Alfred Schnittke were acquired by the Anne Potter Wilson Music Library at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. The "Index to Printed Music" is owned by Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale.

Investigations into Mahler's music benefit from careful attention to the early printed editions, which contain details about both the music and its reception. While early printed editions are rare, institutions like the Newberry Library (Chicago) have substantial holdings that yield many details that will supplement current biographies in elucidating the publishing history of Mahler's music, information that may at times challenge some of the assumptions made about his legacy in the mid to late twentieth century. The article includes a detailed table of the Mahler holdings of the Newberry Library, along with an analysis of significant titles in its collection. The criteria used in this article can be applied to other items to revise or update descriptions in catalogs or annotated bibliographies. As a result, it may be possible to understand better the reception of Mahler's music through sources that have been hiding in plain sight in many libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The confluence of three technologies--personal computers, music notation software, and the World Wide Web--has made do-it-yourself publishing an attractive and practical career choice for a significant number of contemporary composers. Purchasing from these artists' personal Web sites is typically the only way to acquire their self-published scores. Cross-checking the composers' Web-based sales catalogs with WorldCat holdings indicates that self-published, self-distributed music--in contrast to scores that are being published and distributed through established mainstream channels--is largely being overlooked and underserved by libraries. Libraries must develop new routines appropriate to this distinctive new form of digital publication that would allow for the identification, selection, and acquisition of self-published and self-distributed scores. In lieu of such routines there is an inexorable danger that libraries will miss the only opportunity they may have to preserve and document--thoroughly and faithfully--the musical culture of our time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paer, Ferdinando (1771-1839) Add. 39. Sinfonia / Dell' Opera intitolata il Sargino / ossia L'Allievo d'Amore / Musica del Sig:re Ferdinando Per [sic] / Ridotta p Solo Cimbalo o Pian [...]

This section offers news briefs on the Music Library Association Inc. as of June 2019. Topics discussed include recipients of the Ralph Papapkhian Travel Grant including Britt Burns and Joshua Dieringer, completion of the processing of the Maria Callas Sub-Collection of the Robert Baxter Collection by the Archive of Recorded Sound at Stanford University and a research guide from the Yale University Oral History of American Music.

In 1961 and the early 1970s, the Music Library at what is now the University of North Texas received the vast sheet-music collections of radio stations WFAA and WBAP, respectively. Containing hundreds of thousands of pieces, they consist primarily of piano-vocal scores and stock arrangements of a wide variety of popular music. The stations, both pioneers of radio in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, had amassed the collections when live music on the radio was the norm. Station employees created card catalogs for their use, but all songs have now been entered in UNT's online catalogs. Today, many people are unaware that most music on the radio was once live. Details about the history of radio shed light on the governmental rules that mandated this, and caused stations to collect sheet music and hire many performing musicians. Eventually, as the use of live music declined, many stations discarded their sheet music. We are very grateful that WFAA and WBAP gave theirs to the university instead. This unusual treasure continues to benefit diverse patrons both inside and outside the university community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bibliographic control of sound recordings has been an issue ever since libraries began acquiring them. The description of recordings is generally more difficult than that for print materials, due to the prominence of both composers, as creators of the works recorded, and the performer(s) of these works, and also to the anthology-like nature of many recordings. One of the foremost problems with recordings is whether to catalog each work on the recording separately or the entire recording as a unit. The variety of ways in which works have been packaged has necessitated changes to cataloging and description standards over the years in order to consistently display information to users to support their decision making. This account looks back at how the cataloging of sound recordings has been handled over the decades, to provide a historical context in which to place the development and adoption of Resource Description and Access (RDA) as it relates to description and access of sound recordings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses appraisal in relationship to the documentary evidence of music making, and the principles behind acquisition decisions in an archival setting. It also explores the concept of enduring value as it applies to music materials, and formulates clear definitions of the distinct facets of archival appraisal. This is a crucial component to any archival management program that can contribute to the healthy growth of the institution and its collections. The author formulates foundational elements for archival practices that actively expand the scope of the documented musical heritage preserved in archives throughout the world, and outlines strategies for collecting a well-rounded and inclusive view of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs relating to music libraries in the U.S. as of December 2017. The Michael Schwartz Library at Cleveland State University acquired the Darius Milhaud Society collection from the estate of its founder, Katherine Warne. The Fine Arts Library at the University of Texas in Austin is transforming its spaces to accommodate new students in the College of Fine Arts. The Irving S. Gilmore Music Library at Yale University was one of the 2017 Grammy Museum Grant recipients.

The Theodore M. Finney Music Library of the University of Pittsburgh houses the Mirskey Collection, a large collection of salon orchestra music used in the early twentieth century by Nek Mirskey's Polonia Orchestra. The collection includes a large amount of photoplay music, or music composed for the accompaniment of silent films, and it has lately attracted the interest of silent-film-music scholars. This article briefly discusses the phenomenon of film scoring during the silent era, and takes a close look at the work that Pitt has done in providing access to the collection, which includes rare examples of the silent-film-music genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about Canadian music can be an elusive commodity. Perhaps this is due to our self-deprecating nature, or our longstanding tendency to wait until our artists succeed elsewhere before we [...]

This study investigates skills and aptitudes required and preferred by institutions for entry-level professional employment in music librarianship. All announcements from the Music Library Association's Job Placement Service's Job List 2008-2011 were examined, and entry-level professional positions were extracted. Each was then categorized by primary responsibilities, and required and preferred qualifications were coded. Data indicate that while some required skills are common among the field's specialties, each job type demands unique training and abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several announcements are presented relating to music library news, including the launch of the website for the Music Treasuries Consortium (MTC) www.loc.gov/musictreasures, the acquisition of musician Fred Mills' private collection by the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia, and the merger of the U.S. branch of the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML) with the Music Library Association (MLA).

The article presents news briefs for music libraries and archives. Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library acquired the papers of American composer Ullysses S. Kay. The Juilliard School celebrated completion of a room for the Juilliard Manuscript Collection on November 3, 2009 with a concert. The papers of country music singer Charlie Walker were acquired by the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University.

News briefs on music study are presented. The Music Library Association presented an award to Linda Solow Blotner. The U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities has made a major grant to the Sibley Music Library of the Eastman School of Music. Musician Ruben Blades has donated his personal papers to the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard University.

The article offers information on archival resources and a conference for the study of music and musicology. Emphasis is given to topics such as an online catalog from the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, jazz collections at the Conservatory Library at Oberlin College, and the conference "Music Research in the Digital Age," hosted by the Music Library Association and the International Musicological Society.

The article presents news briefs concerning musicology and music libraries in the United States as of December 2008. The music library of the University of North Texas (UNT) are beginning a digital archive project. The University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) has received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Miller Nichols Library. A financial gift was also given to Syracuse University for the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive.

The University of Houston Music Library implemented an internal wiki in 2006 to improve its policies and procedures manual as well as to assist in supervising student assistants. This article gives a brief overview of wiki use in libraries through a literature review; describes how the UH Music Library has used wikis as a policies and procedures manual; how it branched into other uses such as student assistant supervision; and evaluates the success of the wiki over the course of the one-year study according to a sample of usage statistics and experiences. A conclusion of this study is that users frequently consulted the wiki despite a decline in contributions after its introduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay explores the relation between the literary and musical canon and the concept of the "culture wars," of the 1990s onward. Questions are raised regarding the significance of subcultural interest and conflicts between the acquisition of "basic" music collections or alternative genres. The guidelines put forth in the Music Library Association's publication "A Basic Music Library," are discussed in relation to this challenge.

The article examines circulating music libraries in France. These libraries served as businesses that loaned music scores to subscribers, allowing people to rent music which they could not afford to buy. The French music circulating library began during the late 18th century by Belgian painter Antoine de Peters and Italian violinist Jean-Baptiste Miroglio. It analyzes the business models of these libraries as well as providing a list of known music circulating libraries from the late 18th century to the 20th century.

The article presents news briefs related to music libraries and universities. Stanford University Libraries has received several grants toward digitizing and preserving audio tapes documenting the Monterey Jazz Festival. A Virtual Rare Book Room has been established at the University of North Texas music library. In addition, the late founder of this music library, Anna Harriet Heyer, established a scholarship for those wishing to pursue a career as a music librarian.

The article discusses challenges faced by music libraries in establishing their collections. Music librarians must focus on questions such as the type of music that is studied at their institution and the main research interests of faculty and students. Budget is an additional factor, as are pricing trends and foreign exchange rates. Many music libraries use book approval plans, which serve as standing orders with a vendor, to assist in their acquisition of suitable library materials.

The article provides tips on music library acquisitions. A good idea is comparison shopping, beginning with vendor selection. Credit card purchases are also prevalent. Another idea is ordering direct from a publisher, unless it is one that is set up for e-commerce, and the library has ready use of a credit card.

The article discusses the effect of orphan works, a term used to describe the situation where the owner of a copyrighted work cannot be identified and located by someone who wishes to make use of the work in a manner that requires permission of the copyright owner, on music libraries. It offers information on a roundtable discussion led by the U.S. Copyright Office on the issue of orphan works which raised concerns toward section 108 of the U.S. copyright law which excludes copyrighted music from reproduction and distribution by libraries.

The article describes the planning and negotiation process involved in the decision of Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana to close its music branch library and move its music collections and services into the five-year-old J. Edgar & Louise S. Monroe Library. It analyzes such case in the context of the 1990 Association of College and Research Libraries' criteria laid out for branch libraries in colleges and universities for evaluating the efficacy of a branch library.

Profiles Japanese pianist Ruth Watanabe. Educational and career background; Inclusion of Watanabe in the November 1947 membership list of the Music Library Association; Information on her book "Introduction to Music Research."