It’s therefore appropriate that this is my final column as your President, as I will officially have handed the MLA ceremonial gavel over to Bonna Boettcher by the time the next issue is in press. An autumnal mood is definitely in order as I step down after my two-year term.

It’s hard to single out the highs (luckily, there were far fewer lows!) of these past two Presidential years. Perhaps I’m most proud of the hard work accomplished by the membership and the Board in wrestling with some difficult issues as we look towards our next 75 years.

The conference will be held in the heart of the downtown area at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. The hotel, which has recently undergone a $70 million restoration, was completed in 1939 after eleven years under construction. It is one of the many majestic railway hotels across Canada built by the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National Railways. The amenities in each of the rooms include coffee-maker, computer jack, ironing board and iron, express video check-out, minibar, and umbrella. Within the hotel you will find the luxurious Spa at Hotel Vancouver, an exclusive Fairmont Gold floor, a state-of-the-art health club, award-winning restaurants and designer shops. The hotel is within walking distance of many of Vancouver’s landmarks, cultural events, entertainment and shopping.

Public transportation in and around Vancouver is provided by Translink. You may want to explore more of the city and its environs by taking one of the city’s many buses, the Skytrain or Seabus. Fares run from $2.00 to $3.00 CDN depending on the distance traveled.

While in Vancouver, you may want to explore many of Vancouver’s tourist areas. Explore Stanley Park’s trails and gardens. Visit Lost Lagoon and the Vancouver Aquarium located within the park, or take a leisurely stroll or rental-bike ride on the park’s seawall. Visit the city’s historic Gastown and see one of Vancouver’s newest attractions, Storyeum, where B.C. history comes alive. From Gastown, visit nearby Chinatown, the second-largest Chinatown in North America. The Vancouver Art Gallery is right next door to the conference hotel and is free to visit on Thursday evenings.

The Local Arrangements Committee will offer four tours. A First Nations Cultural Tour will visit the Totem Pole site in beautiful Stanley Park, and continue on a scenic drive to the world-renowned Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. The Museum’s collections include many Northwest Coast artifacts and stunning modern native carvings. Ancient totem poles tower in the Great Hall and outdoors beside Haida houses. The tour will conclude in Gastown at Hill’s Native Art, a large gallery offering wonderful Pacific Northwest Coast native art, sculpture, and crafts. This tour will be offered twice on different days, to give as many people as possible a chance to take this spectacular tour.

A Vancouver City Sightseeing Tour will take you through colourful Chinatown and historic Gastown, through Stanley Park, and finally to Granville Island, with its fresh Public Market and many galleries, artists’ studios, marinas, and specialty shops. You may choose to stay longer to explore this area and return to the hotel on your own. The City Tour and First Nations Cultural Tour are both provided by International Conference Services, who will handle their registration and set up a tour desk at the conference hotel to hand out tickets before the tours.

A free tour of the Vancouver Public Library will be offered on two different days. Designed by Moshe Safdie and Associates, the VPL is a rectangle within an ellipse, spanning 9 floors, and opened in 1995. The Local Arrangements Reception will be held at the Vancouver Public Library.

Organists won’t want to miss the Organ Crawl, which will visit four interesting organs in greater Vancouver. Beginning with a spectacular drive over Lion’s Gate to the “North Shore,” the tour will visit West Vancouver and North Vancouver before returning downtown via a scenic drive, with lunch stop, through Stanley Park

Entertainment events during the week include the Brentano Quartet at the Vancouver Playhouse on February 15, Kodo Drummers of Japan at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on February 14, tenor Ben Heppner at the Chan Centre at UBC on February 12, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum Theatre February 11 & 12 and February 19 & 21 (James Ehnes playing Walton’s Violin Concerto), and much more. Details are included in the conference registration mailing. Up-to-date entertainment information can be found in the “Time Out Listings” at http://www.georgiastraight.com . Tickets Tonight (http://www.ticketstonight.ca) offers half-price tickets on show days and a searchable database of events.

Opportunities abound in Vancouver for outdoor activities before, during, and after the conference. Municipal golf courses operate year-round, and bird-watchers can spot many species at local parks and beaches, or at the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary, an hour’s drive from the city. Skiers can hit the local slopes (Grouse Mountain, Cypress Mountain and Mount Seymour), or plan an outing to world-class Whistler/Blackcomb, site of the 2010 Olympic ski events. Early spring flowers will be on show in the city’s botanical gardens, including Van Dusen Botanical Garden, Queen Elizabeth Park with its floral conservatory, and the University of British Columbia’s Nitobe Memorial Garden and Botanical Garden. Visitors to Victoria, on Vancouver Island, can stop at the famous Butchart Gardens. Web links and suggestions for how to get to these places are included in the registration mailing and on the conference website. Tourism Vancouver (http://www.tourismvancouver.com) offers much information and links to places and events.

The second theme of the conference is reorganization and the music librarian. For the Thursday afternoon plenary session, panelists Brenda Muir (Library and Archives of Canada), Ned Quist (Brown University), and Paula Elliot (Washington State University) will discuss experiences and approaches to library reorganization, with Jeanette Casey (Northwestern University) as moderator. Among the groups that will pursue this topic later in the conference are the Music Library Facilities Subcommittee and Technical Services Roundtable.

Apart from these themes, the conference will offer plenty of variety. Topics range from Zen Buddhism and flute music to music blogs, sound healing literature, the musical humor of P.D.Q. Bach, and musical theater on stage and screen. Hear the latest on FRBR, information literacy competency standards, the four “R” projects (RISM, RILM, RIPM, and RIDiM), and doing technical services from home. The Continuing Education Forum will mentor a discussion of collection development and assessment. Collecting world music resources is another recurring theme in the Black Music Collections and World Music roundtables, Best of Chapters and other sessions. The Women in Music and Contemporary Music roundtables have joined forces to organize a session featuring contemporary women composers. Also coordinating their sessions are the Video and Performing Arts roundtables that have organized a real time video experience in creating primary resources for performing arts collections. Age-related issues in the profession will be under discussion by the Social Responsibilities Roundtable.

Several of the committee and roundtable sessions will feature Canadian music and music resources with presentations by Canadian musicians, music historians, and librarians. A special free concert of percussion/theater compositions by Stuart Saunders Smith, performed by the Sylvia Smith Percussion Duo, will provide a later Friday afternoon break from meetings.

On Saturday, a special “hot topics” session will be available for continued discussion of digital audio or other late breaking issues. For those in charge of roundtables and committees, this will be fertile hunting ground for ideas for the 2006 conference. So please come and make your voice heard! In a lovely setting, the Vancouver meeting will offer plenty to stimulate, educate, and entertain.

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After opening remarks by NEMLA chair Roy Rudolph, the meeting began with an overview of the MacDowell Colony by resident director David Macy. Edward and Marian MacDowell created the colony in 1907, and although Edward died shortly thereafter, Marian continued their vision to create the interdisciplinary colony that thrives to this day. The colony awards one-to two-month residencies to architects, composers, film and videomakers, interdisciplinary artists, visual artists, and writers. A list of composers who have visited the colony is available on the MacDowell Colony’s website (http://www.macdowellcolony.org/index.html)

Claudia Bissett (currently of Spaulding Library, New England Conservatory) described the history and the holdings of the Savidge library, and spoke about her work organizing the collection in 2001. The library is nearly at capacity, with 8,000 donated volumes. There is no budget for collection development, and circulation is on the honor system. Although the library’s initial holdings were the scores and piano of William Humiston, the current holdings are largely works by former colony residents. Artists are asked to donate one copy of their work to the colony and one to the Peterborough Public Library.

Announcements included a report of a highly successful outreach effort by NEMLA members Erin Mayhood, Darwin Scott, and Margaret Chevian at the recent New England Library Association conference. Their presentation, “Name That Tune: Music Services and the Public Library” includes power point presentations and links to many free online resources (http://www.wesleyan.edu/nemla/nela/) .

Music scholar and choral conductor Nym Cooke presented a talk entitled “Coast vs. Interior, City vs. Village in 18th Century New England Music.” Dr. Cooke, currently on the faculty of the Eagle Hill School in Hardwick, Massachusetts, specializes in the sacred choral music/psalmody of the late 18th century. His talk contrasted the life and compositions of William Billings, a lifelong Boston resident, with the life and work of rural composers such as Richard Merrill of Hopkinton, New Hampshire. Dr. Cooke then persuaded unsuspecting NEMLA attendees to sing a few sacred songs in four-part harmony.

After a walking tour, lunch, and committee meetings, Tim Page, music critic for the Washington Post and visiting faculty member at the University of Connecticut, spoke on “A Day in the Life of a Music Critic.” Mr. Page’s training is as a composer, and he credits his music career in part to encouragement he received as a child from librarians at the University of Connecticut music library. Mr. Page commented on a number of topics pertaining to music criticism. He feels that a first-class review contains a minimum of the critic’s voice, while still being interesting and effective. It’s relatively easy for a reviewer to throw darts of criticism, and much harder to express why a performance is extremely special or beautiful. In the final session, Paula Matthews introduced composers Eric Chasalow (current MacDowell resident composer) and Paul Moravec (professor at Adelphi and winner of 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music). Dr. Chasalow’s interest as a composer is in using interesting sounds, such as synthesizers and recordings of everyday life, to create dramatic shapes and forms. He played an excerpt for us from his composition “Left to His Own Devices.” Dr. Moravec pointed out that librarians are performing the important task of preserving musical traditions. This preservation is happening primarily in universities. Dr. Moravec writes music for his friends and loved ones as much as possible, to bring out the best in him as a composer. He played the “Ariel” movement for us from his Tempest Fantasy,” the score for which is available from Subito Music. Dr. Chasalow self publishes his compositions.

An afternoon reception sent us on our way, although several NEMLA members confessed that they did not want to leave! Chair Roy Rudolph extended NEMLA’s thanks to the program committee (Pat Fisken and Claudia Bissett), and to the MacDowell Colony.

Saturday morning featured a guest lecture by Thomas Mathiesen, Distinguished Professor of Musicology and David H. Jacobs Chair in Music, and Director of the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature, Indiana University. His talk was entitled “The Music Library, Past, Present, and Future: A Personal Memoir.” This was followed by a concert of works uniquely held by the Sibley Music Library, coordinated by Alice Carli and David Peter Coppen.

Celebrations were also held the previous weekend during the Eastman School of Music Alumni weekend, which included the premiere of Four Seascapes by Dominick Argento, commissioned by the Sibley Music Library in celebration of its 100th anniversary. A special book was also published for the occasion, entitled: A World Treasure: The Sibley Music Library, which gives a history of the library and highlights some of its renowned holdings.

Andrea Cawelti, Harvard University

Adriana Paola Cuervo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Max Fleischman, Ardmore, PA

Jane Katherine Grover, University of Pittsburgh

Barry J. Hennessey, University of New Hampshire

Shayna Eve Hill, Washington, DC

Charly Denise Jackson, Lexington, KY

Frank Jolliffe, Centenary College

Alison Ruth Jones, Thomasville, NC

Ilias Kyriazis, Bloomington, IN

Karen A Peters, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Wayne Alan Sanders, University of Missouri--Columbia

Holly P. Skir, Huntington Station, New York

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings/Smithsonian Global, Washington, DC

David Thayer, Tallahassee, FL

Dr. Randall Scott Thompson, Oklahoma Wesleyan University

Julian Duke Woodruff, Sacramento, CA

OLAC conferences combine inspiring, informative presentations with very practical technical workshops and discussion groups. This year’s conference was titled, “Expanding Access: Connecting the Global Community to a Multitude of Formats.”

OLAC has always had an international membership, but this was the first conference held outside the United States. Montreal was a perfect location for the 11th Biennial Conference, held October 1-3, 2004. The program and local arrangements committees were outstanding, taking advantage of the magnificent city of Montreal. The Friday evening reception was held at the McCord Museum of Canadian History.

The Keynote Address was given by Allyson Carlyle, Associate Dean for Academics, Information School, University of Washington. She discussed the conceptual model in the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and the fact that successful implementation of FRBR must accommodate the challenges presented by a wide variety of non-print materials. FRBR has brought cataloging practice and theory to the world’s attention and may provide an opportunity to solve some of the problems presented by non-print materials that were not solved with AACR2.

Another plenary session, “Preparing 21st Century Cataloging and Metadata Professionals,” featured presentations by Lynne Howarth, former Dean of the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto and Allyson Carlyle. The importance of cataloging to Information Professionals is shown by the fact that all degree programs in Canada require introductory courses in bibliographic control and cataloging, which are taught by full-time tenured faculty.

The closing address was given by Guy Teasdale, Directeur, Services de support et de développement, Bibliothèque de l’Université Laval, Quebec City. The address, “Expanding Access, Expanding the Challenges,” noted that as digitization dissolves the frontiers between information objects of all formats, the challenges of providing access expand and must be met.

Two workshops were given in French, on cataloging integrating resources and on descriptive cataloging of musical sound recordings. Other workshops of particular interest to music librarians included “Descriptive Cataloguing of Music Scores,” “Videorecordings Cataloguing,” and the “Future of the GMD.” Other workshops were presented on cartographic materials on CD-ROMs, unpublished oral history collections, use of genre/form terms, still and moving images, and electronic resources. There were also some roundtable discussion groups, poster presentations and showcase sessions about the newly combined Library and Archives Canada, as well as the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec.

Pre-conference events included a 2 day intensive “SCCTP Integrating Resources Cataloguing Workshop” and a tour of the construction site of the Grande Bibliothèque du Québec.

MLA members are encouraged to read detailed reports of the OLAC workshops and sessions in the OLAC Newsletter (vol. 24, no. 4).

Martin Jenkins, Head of Technical Services, Wright State University Libraries

Bob Kosovsky, Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts Music Division, The New York Public Library

Terra Mobley, Music Librarian, Duquesne University

Tom Moore, Visiting Professor of Music, University of Rio de Janeiro

John Wagstaff, Music Librarian and Associate Professor of Library Administration, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

Other conference sessions include a librarian’s perspective on the problematic works of Igor Stravinsky, a panel discussion on film music, Arnold Schoenberg seen through the eyes of his children, and a look at composers who fled to Hollywood after World War I based on an upcoming PBS special “Exiles of Hollywood” presented by John Waxman of Themes and Variations. For a more detailed look at the agenda and access to a registration form, please go to the MOLA website at http://www.mola-inc.org.

Of particular interest to performance librarians, composers, and conductors will be the all day pre-conference seminar “Orchestra Librarianship for Librarians, Conductors, Composers, and Managers” on Friday, February 11, 2004 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Topics will span from career introduction on performance librarianship and music preparation guidelines to rights and rentals. Among the distinguished faculty will be librarians and staff from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, the Metropolitan Opera, The Cleveland Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen, Composer and Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The seminar is being presented by the Major Orchestra Librarians’ Association (MOLA), the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Orchestra Leadership Academy, and the Association of California Symphony Orchestras.

For more information please call (213) 972-3014 or email conferencehost@laphil.org.

Registration Deadline: January 10, 2005