Music Library Association |
No. 154 |
September–October 2008 |
| President’s Report Philip Vandermeer, MLA President |
In June we held our Board meeting at the MLA Business Office at A-R Editions in Middleton, Wisconsin. Since partnering with A-R, this has become a tradition and we appreciate all the work that Pat Wall, Jim Zychowicz, and Kirk Stantis do to make us comfortable. The staff at A-R are great hosts and our relationship with them remains one of the great positives for our association. During this time the Board:
Approving budgets is one the Board’s most important functions. Led by our Fiscal Officer Eunice Schroeder and our Assistant Fiscal Officer Paul Cary, the Finance Committee examines all budget needs and requests and constructs a draft budget for the whole Board to consider. After presentation and discussion the Board will often require changes and the Finance Committee will return to the spreadsheet to make those changes (thank goodness for Excel). The Board than approves the final budget for MLA’s fiscal year. As of this writing, we are approaching the Fall Board meeting (September 10–13). Typically our fall meetings are held at the home institutions of various Board members, and we always enjoy seeing the shops of our colleagues. This year we are being hosted by Member-at-Large Holling Smith-Borne in Nashville, Tennessee. At this meeting, the Finance Committee and Board will meet with the Convention Manager and consult with the chair of the Local Arrangements Committee to draw up and approve the budget for the annual convention in Chicago. Additionally, we will continue an experiment in long-range planning that we began last year in Chapel Hill, NC. I have asked the Board Members-at-Large who do not serve on the Finance Committee to create an Ad-Hoc Planning Committee to make some recommendations on priorities for the Board to discuss and implement. The members of this group include Reports Gatherer George Boziwick, Parliamentarian Holling Smith-Borne, Assistant Reports Gatherer Lois Kuyper-Rushing, and Assistant Parliamentarian Nancy Lorimer. With the creation of our mission statement, the implementation of our new committee structure, the expansion of member services, and the need to make our association more flexible and responsive to the need of its members and the profession at large, on-going, regular planning is something with which we must be engaged, and the creation of a regular way to do it is imperative. Change in MLA will no doubt have some effects on the ways we have always done things. Our constitution and by-laws will no doubt have to be updated and there will be ballot initiatives on which members will need to vote. Some of our committees will be renamed and have new mission statements. Some might go away to be replaced by others. But I assure all MLA members that none of this will be done surreptitiously or precipitously, and all of you will have opportunities to serve if you want to. We may make mistakes along the way, but I assure you that mistakes can be corrected. In all times of change, people might feel temporarily unbalanced, but in the long run we are all out to make MLA an indispensable and relevant organization. |
Music Library Association The Music Library Association provides a professional forum for librarians, archivists, and others who support and preserve the world’s musical heritage. To achieve this mission, we:
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Career Development and Services Committee Announces New Projects Sheri Stormes, Chair The Career Development and Services Committee (formerly the Personnel Subcommittee) has been very busy. Below are highlights of our major projects for this year. Keep an eye out for the following in the coming months! Study of Minority Participation in Music/Fine Arts Librarianship: Career Advisory Service Proposal Résumé Review Service Update |
Have you renewed? It is easier than ever to renew your MLA membership. MLA’s E-Commerce Site provides a secure, convenient way to become an active MLA member. Just go to the MLA Web site and click on the “Join MLA” button at the top of the page. |
We’ll be heading to Chicago! The next issue of the MLA Newsletter will include information on the upcoming annual meeting in Chicago (Feb. 15-21, 2009). The Local Arrangements Committee tells us there will be three plenary sessions this year, and much, much more. Check the next issue of the newsletter, or the MLA Web site for more details. The full Web site for this 78th annual meeting is under construction, but will soon have current information on registration, programs and, of course, Chicago. |
MLAers Attend Rare Book School MLA was well-represented in the American Music Printing and Publishing course offered at this year’s Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. Led by the distinguished Dr. Don Krummel, the class examined and discussed examples of the art of printing and publishing ranging from the Bay Psalm Book (9th ed., 1698) to tunebooks of the early 19th century to Tin Pan Alley publications to late 20th-century popular song sheets. Hands-on sessions included attempts at wielding engraving tools, perusal of sorts used in mosaic typesetting, and some rather challenging hunt-and-peck at the Effinger music typewriter. The charms of the Old Dominion State, the beauty of Thomas Jefferson’s campus, and the helpfulness of the RBS staff combined to make a most enjoyable experience for all. |
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Veronica Alzalde, Madison, WI |
Amy R. Keyser, Sterling, VA |
Sarah Engledow Brown, Music Librarian, Middle Tennessee State University |
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Call for Presentations : 2009 ARSC Conference The Association for Recorded Sound Collections invites presentation proposals for its 43rd annual conference, to be held May 27–30, 2009, in Washington, DC. ARSC is dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings—in all genres of music and speech, in all formats, and from all periods—and welcomes presentations on all aspects of recorded sound of interest to our community of collectors, historians, musicians, preservationists, and archivists. In general, we seek talks, papers, panel sessions, and demonstrations that are informative and well organized, display a passion about their subjects, and include compelling audio and visual content. We especially welcome presentations that showcase Washington, DC and the greater mid-Atlantic area. Presentation proposals are due January 5, 2009. Please use the submission form on the ARSC Web site: http://www.arsc-audio.org/conference/. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by January 31, 2009. For more information, contact David Giovannoni, ARSC Program Chair (dgio-arsc@comcast.net) |
| Beyond MLA | |
| Summary of MOUG 2008 Annual Meeting
Alan Ringwood In the opening plenary session, “Vendor Bibliographic Record Quality in OCLC,” Glenn Patton and Paul Cauthen addressed vendor bibliographic records in OCLC. Many catalogers cringe at the sight of an encoding level 3 record, knowing that it will most likely be a low-level vendor record, bearing little or no resemblance to the piece in hand, and will require extensive editing. The Vendor Record Contribution Program started in the mid-1990s, and there are 27 vendors currently participating. Vendor records exhibit a wide range of quality and fullness, and each level addresses varying needs in the library universe. On one end of the range are the pre-publication records that are based on preliminary publisher’s information, such as the Baker and Taylor level-3 records for sound recordings. These records can be significantly different from the actual item. This level of cataloging supports selection and acquisition; the record contains just enough information for a selector to make a decision and place an order. Records in the next level much more closely resemble standard bibliographic records. An example would be the M-level Harrassowitz records. These records are useful for selection, backlog management, and limited searching. Even better are the complete bibliographic records that boast access points supported by authority records, such as those from Casalini. Another category of vendor records is upgraded CIP records. These have been entered by national libraries as CIP and added to by vendors when the materials come in. One of the main points to come out of this presentation is that we all need to try as much as possible to improve the quality of the records that we see. A catalog record does not have to be complete from its inception; it can “grow up” over time. Encoding Level M and K records need only full level authorization to be replaced, and libraries with Enhance can add additional information to I-level records. Cathy Gerhart led the second plenary session on WorldCat Local. WorldCat Local is a way to implement WorldCat.org in a library’s local environment. It shows the library’s holdings to users first, and simplifies searching by providing one search interface for local titles as well as all of WorldCat. The University of Washington implementation of WorldCat Local uses a tiered display of holdings, showing local, consortial and national/worldwide holdings. Also, it includes article citations from ArticleFirst, ERIC, GPO and PubMed. OCLC is beginning to add records for CONTENTdm images which will be available in WorldCat Local. Users can register in WorldCat Local and add reviews to items. WorldCat Local integrates three delivery systems: Innovative Interfaces (Millennium), SirsiDynix (Horizon and Unicorn), and Ex Libris (Voyager). OCLC plans to continue integrating WorldCat Local with other ILS vendors. Some library materials are not included in the University of Washington’s implementation of WorldCat Local. These include licensed third-party record sets and some microform sets, records for on-order and in-process titles, records for some Special Collections titles, and records for anything with minimal level cataloging. In actuality, this means that materials such as music department records and local theses are not included in WorldCat Local. Problems with WorldCat Local include incomplete indexing of bibliographic records, awkward navigation, and incomplete display of information from bibliographic records. Of special concern to the music community is the absence of uniform title (240), performer (511) and recording (518) information in record displays. An editions tab provides ways to limit a search; however, the list of composers’ names for limiting is in order by the number of entries per composer, rather than in alphabetical order. This is quite problematic for generic titles and does not serve users well. Improvements to be made include displaying more information from bibliographic records, adding the ability to e-mail citations and save searches, adding RSS feed capability, and integrating other products such as WorldCat Identities and Fiction Finder. Glenn Patton and Jay Weitz fielded questions on numerous topics in the session “Ask MOUG: Public and Technical Services Issues.” The following questions and answers are representative.
For the full reports, and the minutes of the annual Business Meeting, please see the Music OCLC Users Group Newsletter, no. 98 (June 2008). | |
| In Recognition | |
The Corporate Members and Corporate Patrons are an important part of MLA’s membership. We appreciate their involvement and support of MLA, music libraries and librarianship. Thank you! A-R Editions Inc.
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| Members’ Publications | |
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Please send citations for items published or premiered in the past calendar year to the column editor, Gary Boye, via e-mail or snail mail at the address below. Please follow the citation style employed below. You must be a current MLA member to submit citations. Dr. Gary R. Boye Books
Articles and Chapters “An Interview with Allen Anderson,” Opera Today (28 May 2008). http://www.operatoday.com/content/2008/05/an_interview_wi_9.php
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| Calendar | |
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9–11 October 2008 17 October 2008 NY State/Ontario Chapter Meeting Submissions Due 23–25 October 2008 7–8 November 2008
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| Cover Photo | |
Photo “on the cover”: front (l-r): Thomas Pease, LC; Sarah Meredith, Buffalo State College; Laura Yust, LC; Michael Rogan, Tufts University. Middle: John (Jeff) Gibbens, freelance composer, Madison, Wisconsin; Catherine Dixon, LC; Laurie Sampsel, University of Colorado at Boulder; Winston Barham, University of Virginia. Rear: Ray Heigemeir, Stanford University; Eric Harbeson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Alison Hinderliter, Newberry Library; Dr. D.W. Krummel, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Daniel Grimminger, Mount Union College. Not pictured: Erin Mayhood and Rya Martin, University of Virginia. Photo courtesy of Ray Heigemeir. |
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Before I had the privilege of serving MLA in an official capacity, I must admit that I didn’t think much about the association outside the annual meeting. However, as I became more involved with MLA, first as chair of the Program Committee, then as Fiscal Officer, and now as its President, I have come to realize that the work goes on all year long. Because of this, the MLA Board has traditionally met not only at the annual conference in February, but also in the spring (usually late May or early June) and in the fall (most often in September).