Balboa Twilight, by Gerry Szymanski

MLA Visits San Diego, Part II

First things first – our thoughts and prayers go to everyone in the Nashville area who are undoubtedly still dealing with the aftermath of Spring’s flooding.  As the rains have been falling pretty much non-stop here in Eastern Iowa for the last few weeks, I’m reminded of post-flood life and I’m sure everyone joins me in sending only best wishes for a successful restoration to life-as-normal, or close to it at least.

As always, there is a lot going on with MLA.  First of all, it’s renewal time!  If you haven’t done so, get to the online membership directory and renew your dues.  While you’re there, take time to look over the revamped form that includes expanded opportunities for giving to the association, through our new Orpheus Society or Ostinato Club, as well as through one-time donations, rechristened “MLA Soloist.”  

The Executive Board met at our Business Office in Middleton in late May where we approved a more stringent budget than in past years, cutting Association-related travel by 10% and reducing projected spending in other areas (phase 2 web design, Presidential discretionary funds, for example).  On a brighter note, we voted to increase the Freeman Award pot from $3000 to $3750 in order to share the wealth of that vital fund with more future music librarians.  Of course, Pat Wall and Jim Zychowicz were wonderful hosts and my thanks go to them and their staff at A-R for sharing their office space and their refrigerator with us for a few days.

Our Convention Manager Bonna Boettcher and her “posse”, Laura Gayle Green, incoming Assistant CM and Paula Hickner, nearly-retired CM, have been hard at work negotiating with conference hotels in the immediate and distant future.  Bonna pointed out a very pleasant trend that I want to share:  room rates are lower and lower over the next three years!   The CMs and the board are also planning on taking a very close look at our meeting footprint at the upcoming September board meeting here in Iowa City and will be targeting the Nashville meeting as a possible starting point for that reduced footprint for meeting spaces.  The Annual Meeting Survey in which so many of you provided extremely useful data is going to inform us about all aspects of the meeting, so thanks to those of you who took the time to participate.  Sincere thanks, too, to Beth Christensen and her Task Force for the herculean work they did putting that survey together and then gathering and assessing the data so quickly.

You are aware by now that there is a Task Force working towards the draft of a new Strategic Plan for MLA, chaired by David Gilbert.  I encourage everyone to offer input to the task force when asked.  MLA is at a real turning point and your participation in this endeavor will help to “steer the ship.”  Another new task force getting to work soon will examine options for virtual meeting/VLE options and yet another soon to be organized will begin to explore methods for archiving our electronic data.

On the horizon:  As previously mentioned, the Executive Board will meet in Iowa City 15-17 September.  Joining us for part of the meeting will be members of the IAML-US board as we continue to chart the possible affiliation with IAML and merger with IAML-US.  Also, we will welcome David Gilbert, the “stratplan man” who will deliver the draft of the MLA Strategic Plan to the board for discussion.

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Plenary II:
Wish They All Could Be California...Women

Contributed by Lydia Welhan (Missouri Southern State Univ.) and Scott Stone (Chapman Univ.)

Tuesday was kicked off by the second Plenary Session, “Wish They All Could Be California… Women.”  Consisting of four different presenters and topics, this session highlighted four incredible and influential women in music from California. Hosted by Caitlin Miller (LC), the four presenters included Ana Dubnjakovic (Virginia Tech), Mac Nelson (Univ. of North Carolina at Greensboro), Therese Dickman (Southern Illinois Univ. Edwardsville), and Beth Fleming (Kent State Univ.).

Dubnjakovic began the morning with her paper, “Mildred Couper & Her Quarter-Tone Compositions.”  While Couper was not a Californian by birth (having been born in Buenos Aires), the bulk of her work comes from her time spent in Santa Barbara.  Prior to moving to California, Couper spent time in New York and was exposed to the experimental music of composers including Charles Ives and Henry Cowell.  Ives’ use of quarter-tones in some of his compositions directly influenced Couper’s piece, “Dirge for Two Pianos Tuned ¼ Tone Apart,” which was warmly received at its premiere in New York City.  Dubnjakovic walked the audience through this interesting work, at times both jarring and hauntingly beautiful, with sounds blending together to create a wash of color. The piece represents Couper’s own unique style of quarter-tone music, which Henry Cowell described as being very accessible. Couper stands along with Ives and Cowell in pioneering experimental music in America, and pushing quarter-tone music into the  mainstream.

Switching gears from experimental music to the plectral world, Nelson discussed the career of guitarist Vahdah Olcott-Bickford.  A major proponent of the BMG (Banjo, Mandolin, Guitar) Movement, Olcott-Bickford was an influential publisher, arranger, and performer of guitar music in the first half of twentieth century.  While there were others doing this at the same time, Olcott-Bickford stood out from her peers because she advocated all finely crafted music, not just Western art music.  Throughout her life, she published over 160 works for guitar, over 500 arrangements for plucked instruments, and performed on early radio broadcasts and motion pictures. She also attempted to collect all printed music for guitars and plucked instruments. Other accomplishments include founding the American Guitar Society and Zarvah records, creating a major collection of plectral instruments, and subsequently donating this collection to Cal State, Northridge after part of it had been devastated by a serious California earthquake.

Sticking with names that are difficult to pronounce, the life of Ruth Slenczynska, child piano prodigy, was discussed by Dickman.  Pushed from a very young age by her father, Slenczynska earned a full scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of five.  She was so small at this time that she had to use a special apparatus constructed by her father to help her use the piano’s pedals.  For the next decade, Slenczynska traveled the world and studied with famous teachers including Nadia Boulanger, Alfred Cortot, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, all the time playing concerts for packed audiences.  Yet, by the time she was thirteen, critics were labeling her interpretations as immature. So, she took time off from the public stage, attended college without any financial support from her father, and eloped (which resulted in a permanent rift with her father). Slenczynska taught piano for several years, but after seeing the destruction of Cologne during World War II, she found her purpose in life: to bring something beautiful into people’s lives through the public performance of music. She began to perform again, giving hundreds of concerts a year. In 1964 she accepted a position at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, where she remained for 34 years.

The session was wrapped up by Beth Fleming (Kent State University) and her talk on “Betty Freeman’s ‘Wonderful World’: The Music Scene in California.”  Freeman, based in Beverly Hills, began as a concert pianist, but she was too nervous on stage to be a successful performer.  As a result, Freeman decided to dedicate her life to financially helping other artists, especially composers.  As of 2002, Freeman was responsible for distributing 432 grants to composers; the names of those she supported reads as a “who’s who” of American music: John Cage, Virgil Thompson, Lou Harrison, Steve Reich, John Adams, Pierre Boulez, and many more. She was not categorical about choosing which composers to support; she simply supported those whose music she liked.   As a result of her generosity, many pieces, such as Adams’ Nixon in China, have been dedicated to her.  Because of her communications with so many important composers, Freeman’s personal papers are now kept at University of California, San Diego.

The Plenary Session II brought some needed attention to some of California’s great women in music and their impressive personal collections. It was an engaging session that provided a perfect start to the second day of MLA’s 79th annual meeting.

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Joint Session Provides Presentations on
Collection Development for World Music

Scott Landvatter, University of Chicago

A joint session of the World Music Roundtable and the Resource Sharing and Collection Development Committee convened in San Diego on March 22nd  to hear three speakers discuss matters related to the building and development of world music collections.  Attendees heard Aaron Bittel (UCLA) speak of world music archives, Liza Vick (Harvard) cover the ethnomusicology portions of the fourth edition of A Basic Music Library, and Alec McLane (Wesleyan) discuss three issues to consider when regarding the actual scope of world music.

Aaron M. Bittel, Archivist-Librarian and Head of Digital Projects for the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, began by reviewing how the term “archive” has evolved through the years to include not only special print materials, but also very large collections of media.  The UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, for example, consists almost exclusively of audio and audiovisual recordings in numerous physical formats.  A few photographs, musical instruments, and other items constitute only a small percentage of the archive’s holdings.  After explaining that numerous music archives contain mainly media, especially archives composed of ethnological items, Bittel proceeded to discuss how an archivist approaches collection development and how a media archive is expanded over time. 

It may come as no surprise that a media archive grows largely through donations of research and field recordings, both audio and video.  In particular, field-recorded videos have increased in recent years, as technology has advanced and video equipment has become more compact and practical for use in varied geographic settings.  If growth of an archive is greatly dependent upon gifts, then an important collection development role of the archivist is that of liaison with potential donors.  Personal collectors have often devoted many years to obtaining items characterizing the music, dance, and culture of a particular geographic region, a specific ethnic group, or ethnic genre.  To know of such collectors and to build an institutional relationship with them may well lead to a future gift of significant research value.  Bittel concluded his presentation by touching upon some of the additional duties connected to the receiving of donations, including various deeds of gift, donor, or “depositor” forms, advising the donor on obtaining appraisals and related tax deductions, and also working with donors who choose to give funds or monetary bequests rather physical items.

Presenting next was Liza Vick, Music Reference and Research Services Librarian at the Loeb Music Library at Harvard.  As Associate Editor for the World Music portion of the fourth edition of A Basic Music Library, Vick gave the audience an overview of how this section is organized and what methods were used to obtain the citations included.  First, taxonomy and terminology had to be decided upon.  On one level, these decisions resulted in geographically focused portions such as the “Americas and the Caribbean,” “Asia and Oceania,” and so forth.  These geographic portions were then further divided into smaller geographic areas, specific genres, and even performing artists and composers.  As can be observed from this careful organization, the fourth edition will include many more geographic and genre subcategories than present in the third edition of 1997.  Vick also stressed that many more citations reflecting the diaspora of ethnic groups and the spread of world music genres will be included in the new edition.  To obtain citations, several types of sources were consulted.  First was the third edition  A Basic Music Library, which offers many citations of continued value, and also guides the editors in considering which areas require greater emphasis and rebalancing in the new edition.  Additional sources for citations included World Music: the Rough Guide, 1999-2000, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, 1998-2002, WorldCat, and other sources. Vick closed her presentation by mentioning the impact of emerging formats, such as subscription audio databases and MP3 download sites.  She also emphasized that a certain imbalance, especially regarding citations of sound recordings, was inevitable, since ethnic recordings so often became quickly unavailable.

Presenting last was Alec McLane, Music Librarian and Director of the World Music Archives at Wesleyan University.  In McLane’s discussion on the collection of world music, particularly sound recordings, three issues were addressed that a selector may consider when making new acquisitions choices.  The first issue approached the question of what might qualify as an “authentic” recorded example of a particular category of world music.  Here, McLane used three recordings meant to represent music from the rainforests of Central Africa.  The first example was a field recording released on LP in the 1970s, demonstrating the fact that, for many years, recordings accepted as authentic were almost exclusively those made in the field. 

The second example, from 2004, is “intentionally” performed and recorded by African musicians who have created their own arrangement of what they identify as music of the Baka people of Central Africa.  The third recording was performed by a French techno-dance group, who merely “referenced” the music of the Baka people in their program notes.  Which of these recordings is “authentic?”  McLane makes a good case that, with ever-changing definitions and approaches to ethnomusicology, all these recordings are authentic in their own fashion and that a selector should consider obtaining access to all three.  The second main issue examined was “where” world music may be found.  Years ago it was easier to associate world music with a geographic region or a particular cultural group.  The enormous increase in global diaspora, however, has extended research far beyond the confines of such categorizations. 

McLane offers the example of South Asians, relocating first to Trinidad and then to New York City, now forming musical groups performing Indian music, very likely including both Caribbean and American influences.  Also, the “where” of world music is no longer necessarily located in an exotic “over there.”  This is made clear by the monograph, Community of music: an ethnographic seminar in Champaign-Urbana, 1993, which contains ethnographic studies of the music in this Illinois region.  The third and final issue tackled was the matter of how recordings of world music should “sound.”  Once again, ethnomusicology research conducted in the past would stress the authentic sound of field recordings.  But this, too, has changed.  Much world music is now recorded in studios using sophisticated technology, producing a sound that may be quite different from what might be heard on site in the field.  In conclusion, studies in ethnomusicology have expanded greatly over the years, making selection decisions more complex, but also allowing the selector to build a far more multifaceted and rich collection than would have been justified in the past.

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Two Presentations Representing Best of Chapters

Linda Blair, Awards Committee

Two presentations were selected this year to represent the best of programming from our regional chapters. This year’s winners were Holling Smith-Borne (Vanderbilt University, SEMLA Chapter), for his presentation “Collecting on the Edge Redux: Recording the Traditional Music of Uganda,” and Jane Subramanian (State University of New York at Potsdam, NYS/O Chapter) for “The Norwood Brass Firemen Band’s Strong Beat Since the 1870s”.

In the first presentation, Smith-Borne recalled a spring 2008 visit to Uganda, in which he assisted the founder of the Global Music Archive (GMA), ethnomusicology professor, Gregory Barz,  in the gathering and organization of information and recordings for the project,. The GMA, first introduced to MLA audiences in an earlier presentation by Dennis Clark and Catherine Gick, was created to collect and provide access to sound recordings and images of indigenous music performances from Africa and the Americas. In Uganda, recording is conducted on site in local villages by a highly regarded local musician, Centurio Balikoowa, and is accomplished with a relatively small and portable complement of equipment. A one-page licensing agreement is signed by all individuals before recording and a simple hand-written form is used to collect the metadata for each session, which will then be sorted into categories using a controlled vocabulary to form the basis of the retrieval system. Finally, all materials are sent to Vanderbilt University, where media files are created for streaming audio, digital audio files are stored on the server, and all original CDs and paperwork are retained for possible future reference and back-up. At this time, the Digital Collection of East African Recordings holds more than 1700 recordings, with plans to continue to add more recordings from Uganda, as well as to add additional databases from other geographic regions. The Global Music Archive, a free internet resource, can be found at: http://www.globalmusicarchive.org/.

In the second presentation, Subramanian presented a historical portrait of the Norwood Brass Fireman’s Band, a community band based in a town just north of Potsdam, New York, that has been continuously active in various incarnations since 1870. After the end of World War II, the band was reorganized as an all-brass band, and it has continued in this configuration to the present day. The group members, who vary widely in age and level of musical training, use no printed music, employing instead a sort of Dixieland band technique in which all music is improvised and learned by rote in a limited number of keys. Through the many years of the band’s history, they have often travelled long distances to performances, but by far the longest was to Sarajevo to perform at the Winter Olympic Games in 1984. As a reflection of the townspeople’s high regard for their band, the Norwood Museum has created an exhibit of artifacts, scrapbooks, and photographs documenting the Band’s long and illustrious history.

The Best of Chapters Competition “was created to honor presenters at chapter conferences for their excellent research and to allow a broader sharing of that valuable work.” Additional details about the competition are available at   http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/about.aspx?id=561.

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BCC Sponsors Program RDA: Approaching Implementation

James Mason, University of Toronto

This timely and well-received presentation outlined issues associated with RDA that have a particular impact on the musical community. Damian Iseminger (New England Conservatory), Chair of BCC’s Authorities Subcommittee, and participant in the MLA/OLAC RDA testing funnel, quickly brought us up to speed on the implementation plans for RDA. Next, Kathy Glennan (Univ. of Maryland), BCC chair and member of the RDA/MARC Working Group, spoke about the changes made to MARC in order to accommodate RDA. Daniel Paradis (Concordia Univ.) spoke next about the significant changes for cataloging music under RDA versus AACR2. Last on the program was Mark Scharff (Washington Univ.), chair of BCC’s Subcommittee on Descriptive Cataloging, who spoke about deferred issues of interest to the musical community.

Iseminger first listed institutions and organizations involved in the RDA testing process set to begin later this year.  Along with the US national libraries (LC, National Library of Medicine, and the National Agricultural Library), test libraries include academic and public libraries, library-related service providers, museums, school districts, and of course, the MLA/OLAC funnel.

The first stage of the test period, beginning July 2010, will offer testers an opportunity to gain familiarity with RDA, and allow for local policy decisions on implementation.  Formal testing will begin in October, running for three months. During this phase, catalogers will work with a “common set” of twenty-five titles, representing textual monographs, audio-visual material, serials, and integrating resources.  These records will be cataloged by each participating institution using both AACR2 and RDA; however, only bibliographic records will be created. In addition to the “common set,” participants will catalog items from their regular work flow.  This work will conform to local cataloging practices; authority work and subject analysis is included. The final stage of the test project will begin in January of 2011, when the national libraries will analyze the submitted records and individual catalogers’ reports.

Iseminger also discussed the publication of RDA, which is envisioned as an online product (see http://www.RDAonline.org) with no plans for a print counterpart. The base price for U.S. subscribers is $325 annually for a single user at a time with unlimited user profiles, although there is pricing for additional users.

Glennan discussed changes in MARC21, intended to accommodate the granularity offered by RDA. Some of the changes were required for implementation, some were created more for experimentation (e.g. for those working toward more FRBRized displays), and some resulted from earlier attempts to apply RDA. All of the changes she discussed have been incorporated into the online MARC documentation at: http://www.loc.gov/marc/ and will be available for use in May 2010.

Glennan also spoke about attributes of names and resources. New fields have been defined for names (authority format only) and works/expressions (bibliographic and authority formats). Glennan noted that issues related to encoding, relationships between other fields, what to do with the information, and how to display the data would need to be resolved at an institutional and national level.

A few of the new fields include “special coded dates” (046) for information such as birth and death dates as well as start and end periods, “associated place” (370) for information such as place of birth or place of origin of work, and the somewhat controversial “gender” field (375). Similarly, the attributes of works/expressions brings us a choice of new fields including “content type” (336), “other distinguishing characteristics of work/expression” (381), and “key” (384). MARC will also be able to represent the possibilities for defining relationships detailed in RDA Appendix I, J and K: name to resource, resource to resource, and name to name. Examples include the use of subfields for conductor, and relating a name with a “real identity.” Other changes that have been made to MARC include subfield specificity and repeatability, and additional codes in various 007 and 008 character positions.

Daniel Paradis spoke about changes to the glossary, rules for description, choice of access points, and uniform titles. Not all changes can be listed here; for a more complete description please contact Paradis or James Mason. Changes in the glossary section of AACR2 include terminology for describing printed music, such as definitions for chorus score, score, and vocal score. Modifications from AACR2 to RDA for rules of description include sources of information, the GMD, edition statements, physical description of notated music and sound recordings, place and date of capture, and publisher numbers.

Rules governing sources of information were generalized in three categories: those consisting of leaves, sheets, or cards; resources consisting of moving images; and other resources (including discs).  Physical description of notated music will be narrowed down.  Statements such as “v. of music,” “p. of music,” or “leaves of music” will be notated as “score.”  Physical description of sound recordings will change as well, with changes primarily focused around substituting the term “audio” for “sound.” Place and date of capture are two separate elements, providing more granularity.

The addition of “adaptations” as a choice for access points is new. Access points for librettos will be affected, as well as variant access points for cadenzas and librettos. With the “adaptations” option, a performer can now be notated as an adapter, in place of composer as creator, particularly affecting works where the performer substantially adapts or alters a piece, as is typical in jazz. Librettos will now list the author as the creator.  During discussion, concern was raised about composers of operas who also wrote the libretto, a known problem with the current RDA instructions. RDA contains new instructions on the variant access points for librettos and cadenzas.  The variant access points for librettos will be the musical work. Cadenzas will follow a similar pattern.

Some changes will appear with uniform titles. Abbreviations will be removed, modifications to titles, rules governing notation of medium of performance, and notation of “key” will be changed. In addition, medium of performance has changed in some important ways.  For example, the limit of three elements has been removed. Terms for groups of instruments or solo voices are used only for standard combinations in chamber music such as string quartet, piano, strings, accompanying ensembles, and cases where composer did not indicate instrumentation. And, instructions on indeterminate medium have been developed.

Scharff summarized the JSC’s “Deferred issues,” items from the review of RDA which elicited objections, yet could not be resolved prior to publication.  Some of these issues resulted from the shift in emphasis from the creation of AACR3 to the creation of RDA, some from compatibility with AACR2, some from attempts to align with FRBR entities, and others deferred due to the need to get RDA published.

Working from the official “Deferred issues” document, ALA’s Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) prioritized concerns at the ALA 2010 Midwinter meeting. This incorporated feedback from CC:DA constituencies, including MLA. Scharff brought forth the following “big three” issues for resolution on MLA’s behalf: 1) remove confusion associated with balancing  the recording of data elements that name musical works with the creation of preferred access points; 2) resolve the ambiguity of containers being permitted as a preferred source of information; and 3) lessen the  Western bias in instructions about arrangements/adaptations to better represent world and folk musics and work on the problem of naming a libretto whose author is also the composer of the dramatic work.

Other deferred issues of high priority include: clarification on situations of music where the intention is for variation between performances; refining the language in relation to choosing preferred titles; expanding the terms available for large ensembles when recording medium of performance; determining if music-specific instructions are needed for devised titles; removing ambiguities in collective titles for composers who are literary authors, or vice versa; and improving the definition for “distinctive title.” The JSC will develop a procedure for consideration of proposed revisions; CC:DA will work on its own procedure to accept proposals from its various constituencies. BCC will determine which subcommittees should be involved in preparing revisions for CC:DA review.

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BCC Metadata Subcommittee Sponsors Program:
Workflow Design for Metadata Creation

Felicia Piscitelli, Texas A&M University

The Metadata Subcommittee is new, having been formed at the 2009 annual meeting in Chicago with Jenn Riley (Indiana University) as chair and nine other members.  On Wednesday, March 24, 2010, the subcommittee presented a program on “Workflow Design and Metadata Creation” in San Diego. In this program, the three presenters, Caitlin Hunter (Library of Congress), Amanda Harlan (Baylor Univ.), and Renée McBride (Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), described different metadata projects at their respective institutions and the problems and successes they encountered.

Caitlin Hunter began her presentation, “MAVIS Audio Collection Management Software and the National Jukebox Project,” with a description of the organization and staffing at the Recorded Sound Section of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress, where she is Processing Unit Head.  She then described how the Division uses MAVIS (Merged Audio Visual Information System), a collection management software program developed by ScreenSound in Australia, as an inventory control tool in the preservation and archiving of sound and moving image material.  At LC, a technician creates metadata records in MAVIS containing the title, component (copy) and carrier information, which the cataloger then reviews.  The system generates pull lists; recording engineers can also add metadata, since they must listen to the recordings in the process of digitizing them.  A workflow software that can “sit’ on top of MAVIS is still in development.
Hunter then gave a report on the National Jukebox Project, in which LC is partnering with the University of California-Santa Barbara and Sony Corporation to make thousands of sound recordings from the 78-rpm era available for listening online, particularly those on the Victor and Columbia labels.  This project thus requires coordination of participants on opposite coasts. On the LC side, a technician prepares a spreadsheet with representative samples.  Pull lists are created before the recordings are digitized; technicians compare copies of discs and select the one in the best condition for digitization. A similar workflow is followed at UC-Santa Barbara, which is contributing much discographical information.  The digitization on the West Coast is being done by a Seattle-based company, Reclaim Media.

Amanda Harlan, Metadata & Catalog Librarian at Baylor University, gave an overview of the Frances G. Spencer Collection of Popular Sheet Music and the Black Gospel Restoration Project and outlined the procedures used to create metadata for them.  The sheet music collection contains over 30,000 titles from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries; digitization began in 2000. Shelf cards and cover images are outsourced to the Flourish music cataloging service.  The gospel music collection, on the other hand, consists of sound recordings in various formats from the 1940s through the 1970s; a professor at Baylor collaborated with a businessman who wanted to help preserve this music. So far, 2,786 pieces of sheet music and 1,190 albums of black gospel music have been cataloged. 

When it comes to creating metadata for these collections, Harlan recommends moving from a standard one (having richer content, such as MARC or MODS) to a simpler one (such as Dublin Core), rather than the reverse. She begins with the MARC record and uses MARCEdit to extract Dublin Core (for CONTENTdm) and MODS records.  MODS is used for preservation metadata; Harlan mentioned that it is also used in other venues for “dark archives.” For technical metadata, she uses JHOVE (which is compliant with the NISO Z39.87 standard) for images and AES-X098B for audio. AES-0X098C is used for digital provenance and process history (administrative metadata), and METS for structural metadata.  Harlan noted that METS is more flexible than PREMIS.  Rights metadata schema for the Black Gospel Music Project is taken from several sources and combined into a single schema called the Baylor Copyright Metadata Schema (BCMS).  This is not needed for the sheet music, as most of that collection is in the public domain.  
These collections can be accessed at: http://contentdm.baylor.edu/

Renée McBride (Head, Special Formats & Metadata Section, Resource Description & Management Dept. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) addressed the all-too-common scenario of projects begun and left unfinished in “Look What We Got! How Inherited Data Drives Decision-Making.”  She began with a historical synopsis of the fortunes of a collection of 129 bound volumes of nineteenth-century sheet music at her library, consisting of nearly 3,500 pieces. Over the years, several attempts were made to catalog this collection, and later, to digitize it and put it online. However, each time the project was interrupted for one reason or other, usually as a result of lack of funding or staffing.  In 2008, library staff, along with students enrolled in the School of Information & Library Science, began transferring the collection from MySQL (an open-source database software) to CONTENTdm.  As a result of this on-and-off approach, there has been great inconsistency in the “legacy” metadata.  McBride detailed how she reduced the number of fields in the Dublin Core records, and created a “data dictionary” of controlled vocabulary and used CONTENTdm’s “find and replace” function to clean up the database. Internal consistency is the immediate goal; conformity with established LC authorities may be pursued later.   
    
The 19th-Century American Sheet Music project can be found at:  http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/sheetmusic/
After the presentations followed a brief question/answer period.  One discussion concerned collaboration with public services and systems librarians in metadata creation. McBride commented that she kept end users in mind when cleaning up the database, and that CONTENTdm requires you to choose which fields are searchable and which ones are visible to the public. Responding to a question about the Black Gospel Music project, Harlan said that Baylor does not physically own all of the recordings, and that some of them are reproductions.

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Jim Cassaro
MLA Development Officer

How time flies! This is my one-year anniversary as Development Officer for MLA, and in that short time, we have accomplished great things. Of course, none of this would be possible without the generosity of the MLA membership. Your passion and dedication to the Association is what will ultimately make its development program successful. I hope you all know how grateful I am, and the Association is, for all you do.

As you know, this is our annual dues renewal cycle for fiscal year 2010–11. I encourage you all to renew your membership as soon as you can, and if possible to become a Sustaining Member. The additional revenue that is generated by this membership category helps the organization to partially cover the costs of some of our important functions: Web site redevelopment, directors’ insurance, audiovisual rentals for our annual conference, among others. I know these are difficult economic times, but if you can, please consider upgrading your membership.

With this dues renewal cycle, the membership now has the opportunity to join our newly implemented giving circles, the Orpheus Society and the Ostinato Club. The Orpheus Society is designed to accommodate significant gifts to MLA with donations made over a period of time (quarterly, biannually, annually), while the Ostinato Club makes possible a monthly donation to the organization ($10.00/month minimum). If either of these opportunities do not fit your giving ability, toot your own horn and become an “MLA Soloist” with a one-time gift to the Association. Any and all gifts are greatly appreciated.

There are a few other initiatives that I want to share with the membership. At its meeting in San Diego, the ML Board voted to reserve the first $1,000.00 of income generated by our annual Silent Auction, to fund the Carol June Bradley Award this year. This decision allows the award to be given, as well as increases the opportunity for additional items in the Silent Auction, as it now will support something concrete. Such usage will give us the time to plan for a campaign to endow the Bradley Award, and other worthy initiatives, without significant burden on the membership.

Stay tuned for more exciting news to come!

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Sacred Music
The group discussed and approved LC’s favored option for sacred music: to keep several genre/form terms which are currently pre-coordinated with the terms “Sacred” and “Secular”.  For a list of headings which will be retained, and those requiring further consideration, please contact Beth Iseminger.

Subdivisions
At the most basic, the direction members will go with subdivisions is to turn them into genre/form headings which can be post-coordinated with other headings. The idea has come up of incorporating additional terminology used in RDA for format of notated music and for type of musical notation into the thesaurus, in addition to the lengthy list of subdivision terms already being considered for inclusion.  In doing this, the genre/form thesaurus could be positioned as a source of additional vocabulary for RDA.

Things to consider when determining which subdivisions should become genre/form headings: Do these subdivision terms apply to expressions or manifestations?  If the genre/form thesaurus is meant for terms for works, where does this leave expression/manifestation terms? Do some subdivisions still need to remain for contextual clarity, or are there other parts of the record that take care of the concept?  Subdivisions that include medium (“Solo with piano”, etc.) imply something that could be made more explicit. By itself, there is no literary warrant for “Solo with piano”; the terms “Orchestral reduction” or “Arranged accompaniment” might be better.  “Solo…” implies one instrument with or without something else.  This concept could be conveyed in a medium statement.
 
Next Steps
The group discussed timeline issues, and a question arose about when the task force’s work ends.  If there are ongoing tasks, who will overtake them?  Should this become a separate BCC subcommittee, or would the Subject Access Subcommittee continue the work?  The conclusion was that the project will have a definite end with a tangible product: the completed music part of the genre/form thesaurus and the list of medium terms (probably in LCSH), both ready for use.  Introduction of new terminology will follow LC’s procedures for new vocabulary in the genre/form thesaurus and LCSH.  It is hoped that the task force’s work will be finished within the next two years.

Joint Meeting Report
The MLA-BCC Genre/Form Task Force and the LC Music Genre/Form Project Group held a closed working meeting in San Diego.  There is now enough agreed-upon thesaurus vocabulary to start creating hierarchies.  Starting with the first 1000 terms agreed on by the two groups will give both groups a sense of what it needs to do next.  If terms are too granular, they might be included as cross-references instead of established headings and scope notes may be transformed.  Working on the hierarchy will help illuminate where the holes are and which terms are too specific.  A benefit of establishing hierarchy is that there will be no more orphan terms in the thesaurus.  How geographic relationships are included in the thesaurus is not so much the issue, but including those relationships in some way is very important. 

While LC is not presently adding terminology that does not have literary warrant (in other words, terms that do not apply to some library-owned object), it is part of the MLA task force’s charge to create a list of new vocabulary.  The task force needs to know where this work fits into the project.  It could possibly search the list of terms for literary warrant in OCLC and submit them to PSD through some type of expedited SACO process.  The task force feels there would simply be too many terms to go through the SACO process as it stands now.  Another option might be to put the new terms into an organized list, possibly with references and/or scope notes, and to present this list to LC as a whole, similar to the way in which the MLA Working Group on 20th-Century Music Terminology went about its recommendations.

This thesaurus represents a great opportunity.  It is the time to ask what we want our terms, especially medium, to do for us.  What do we want our catalogs to do in relation to medium?  What are the principles of providing medium of performance through the catalog?

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Kathy Glennan reported on music-related MARBI Proposals presented at Midwinter. The first was MARC Proposal 2010-03 Recording Place and Date of Capture in the MARC21 Bibliographic Format (033/518): this was a discussion paper at Annual and then came as a proposal at Midwinter; discussion was lengthy regarding adding subfield coding for added granularity to the 518, and adding codes to the 033, since these fields have linked information.  In the end, changes were made to both fields and the proposal passed.  These changes will be part of an LC MARC update in May, which will in turn make it available to RDA testers in time to start their work in June. LC turned this around very quickly (dated March 5, 2010), as MARC updates usually only come out every October.

The second music-related proposal was MARC Proposal 2010-04: New data elements in the MARC21 Authority and Bibliographic Format for works and expressions: This proposal dealt with the addition of fields for both authority and bibliographic formats to enable experimentation with RDA elements within the constraints of MARC21. Another consideration for this proposal was to establish the same tags for new content in both bibliographic and authority records. The proposal focused on RDA chapter 6 and enables recording of this information even if not required.  Glennan went through some of the finer details of the codes including: 380 – form of work; new subfield codes in field 046 for date of work or expression; 382 – medium of performance; 383 – numeric designation of a musical work (specifically, make repeatable for multiple numeric/thematic catalog designations; think Vivaldi); and 384 for musical key. MARBI approved the proposal and these changes will be part of Update 11.  See www.loc.gov/marc for more details; changes will be marked in red.

Glennan also reported that there are some additional tasks that need to be accomplished to fully enable the adoption of the IAML codes for the 047 and 048; specifically, the creation of appropriate $2 source codes (i.e. $2 “iamlmf” is available for 047 and $2 “iamlmp” is available for 048). Last summer, Glennan wrote to LC requesting that these be created, and they were. OCLC implemented use of these codes in August 2009. 

Next, Jay Weitz reported on OCLC’s plans for implementing the various changes (in time for the US national libraries’ test of RDA) and any particular impact it anticipates. Weitz said that OCLC had been working on Update 10 when Update 11 appeared.  OCLC decided to implement all of Update 10 and those things in Update 11 that relate directly to RDA.  One thing not being implemented was the addition of the “Form of Item” (CF 008/23, 006/06) element to the computer file format. This will happen sometime in the next year with the next version of the Connexion Client.  RDA-related changes being implemented include: 38X fields in Authorities and Bibs; 046 field in Authorities; 336, 337, 338 and repeatable 041 $e in Bibs; and 336 and 37X fields in Authorities.  All should be implemented by May 16; some aspects may be implemented later due to indexing issues.  There should be a Technical Bulletin out probably in June with all the explanations.

Stephen Yusko then reported on LC-related news. LC is working with OCLC on the coordination and release of tag table information. Yusko discussed the RDA in MARC document issued in January 2010, found at http://www.loc.gov/marc/RDAinMARC29.html.  This document covers 5 broad areas: MARC21; Content, Media and Carrier Types; Attributes of Names and Resources; Relationships; and Miscellaneous other changes to MARC for RDA. He also talked about a second document on RDA training at LC.  The RDA test consists of training from the time of RDA publication/availability until the end of August and about three months of testing.  This will be followed by review and report.  Glennan mentioned that MLA is part of a test funnel in cooperation with OLAC.

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The BCC Metadata Subcommittee had its first in-person business meeting in San Diego.  Linda Barnhart announced her resignation from the subcommittee. Subcommittee members thanked Linda for her service.

The Metadata Subcommittee has completed a document describing metadata standards for audio, in collaboration with the ALA Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) Audio Metadata Task Force. This resource may be found linked from the PARS home page at <http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/mgrps/pars/index.cfm>.

The Subcommittee discussed possible session proposals for the 2011 MLA annual meeting. Ideas raised were focused on promoting awareness of issues related to metadata usage in practice, including non-descriptive metadata, music information retrieval, and audio in more generalized digital repositories. The Subcommittee will decide whether to put forward one of these session proposals after the official call is issued.

The meeting closed with brainstorming on committee activity priorities for 2010. A decision was reached to begin the process of building an online clearinghouse for information on music metadata. Such a resource would include basic introductions to some technical standards, citations to published articles, copies of relevant conference presentations, and white papers and other informal reports on standards. To begin planning the structure of this resource, members will survey the MLA membership on current metadata usage and needs. The Subcommittee plans to have results from the survey by the MLA 2011 annual meeting.

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A special “thank you” goes to outgoing members Stacey Allison-Cassin and John Wagstaff and to outgoing chair Beth Iseminger for their valuable contributions and time serving on the committee.  The Subject Access Subcommittee (SAS) welcomes Hermine Vermeij as the new chair.

ALA report (Beth Iseminger)
Several MARBI proposals passed that are for new fields used in work/expression identification.  Two of the approved fields are for form (MARC 380) and medium of performance (MARC 382).  These new fields introduce possibilities for where genre/form and medium of performance information might go in MARC records.

ALA’s Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) is beginning to study the nature of facets and how they have been used.  SAC has also discussed separate thesauri for facets which could complement genre/form access.  The SAC Genre/Form Implementation Subcommittee (SAC-SGFI) is working on statements regarding geography, language and ethnicity as facets within the context of the genre/form projects.

A small group from SAC-SGFI is analyzing existing subdivisions (authority field 185) to determine which should be made into genre/form terms.  The terms under consideration by this group are those that are not disciplinary specific.

LC is planning for the genre/form thesaurus to be a separate product, not linked to LCSH.  This brings up issues of how genre/form terms should be coded in 655 fields.  Should there be a new subfield code for the genre/form thesaurus?  Suggestions from the SAC-SGFI which PSD is discussing include defining a new indicator for the thesaurus or retaining current coding of indicator 7 + $2 with a new code for the thesaurus.

The development phase of the OCLC FAST project is complete, and the focus has now shifted to maintenance and enhancement of the FAST vocabulary.  A book on FAST by Ed O’Neill and Lois Chan is being published this spring by Libraries Unlimited.

The OLAC Best Practices Task Force is finished compiling its report, and members are looking at ways to make it public (online or otherwise).  Some revision may be necessary, depending on LC’s decisions regarding a proposed fiction/nonfiction revision to the hierarchy and a possible LC discussion paper on headings for performances.

A group from IFLA released the first draft of Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD).  This report dismissed genre/form completely and did not consider it in the realm of subject data.  It presented a conceptual model which offers little guidance for the RDA subject chapters that still need to be written.  Both the ALA-SAC response and the MLA response criticized the report, especially for its short-sightedness regarding form/genre.

Library of Congress report (Gerry Ostrove)
LC’s Policy and Standards Division (PSD) is considering a project for adding 072 fields to subject authority records.  The 072 field contains a code for the subject category associated with the heading.  Adding 072 fields and using them in conjunction with 073 fields (subdivision use field) might make possible better machine manipulation of headings with subdivisions.  For example, it could permit computers to provide lists of free-floating subdivisions allowable under an individual heading.

The LC Music Genre/Form Project Group and the MLA/BCC Genre/Form Task Force have been working together for the past year on the music portion of LC’s genre/form initiative.  So far, the groups have agreed on about 1000 genre/form headings to be included in the thesaurus.

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Poster Sessions
All of the ten applicants for the poster sessions were selected to present in San Diego. A wide range of topics included the following: a study of user-centered library instruction for music students, cataloging photographs of the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, digital signage in the library, digital bookplates, interdisciplinary involvement of a music library with an engineering school to design musical instruments, organizing concerts and performances in music libraries, providing access to broadcast transcription discs of the 1930s through the 1950s, an art exhibition of jazz photographs in a public library, collaborative composition through a Web site, and a study of users' needs when conducting music-related research in an online catalog. Thanks to the efforts of this year’s Local Arrangements Committee, a smoother process has been established for uploading poster session materials to the conference Web site. Diane Steinhaus has been instrumental in assisting with getting these materials on the site.

Collection Development Workshop
Erin Mayhood (University of Virginia) and Darwin Scott (Princeton University) presented a music collection development workshop with a “twist”: the session was intended for both outreach and training trainers. Scott and Mayhood followed a three-part agenda consisting of separation into role-playing groups articulating different user needs, merging of groups to share results, and presentation of a model session. For example, Group A’s generalist public librarians discussed the importance of the community’s heritage and interests, and Group B’s liberal arts college librarians offered that faculty, course listings, and ILL are valuable resources. The title of the model presentation was “A few basic survival skills for finding music websites, acquiring CDs and scores, and coping with the complexities of music materials.” The tour that followed included marketing your presentation, keeping the MLA connection visible, discussion of tools, formats, editions’ quality, choosing vendors, lists of music, out-of-print resources, approval plans, and copyright. The final note from Mayhood and Scott brought the group back to the start: remember—thinking about your audience is the key to success.

Distance Learning Continuing Education Session
John Wagstaff presented an informative session on his experiences teaching music librarianship students through distance education. He began the session with a brief history of the Music Librarianship course at the University of Illinois including the transition from a face-to-face course to a distance education course starting in 2008. Using examples from music librarianship courses from Stuttgart and Aberystwyth, he demonstrated different online applications that can be used to teach this course. He described the advantages and disadvantages of using Moodle (a free Web application that educators can use to create online learning sites) and the challenges and successes of teaching students in an online environment.

In addition to citing increased enrollment when moving from a traditional face-to-face teaching situation to an online environment, Wagstaff mentioned the ability to “patch in” special speakers, the increase in student participation, and the ability to record and archive sessions. Instructors have advantages as well; they can travel and be able to teach on the road, they don’t have to be tidy, and can still maintain quality relationships with students.

Wagstaff recommended that students have at least one on-campus day to allow the students to bond and get to know each other in person. This could include tours of archives or libraries, and lunching together, resulting in an increase in student participation in the course. Instructors of distance education courses should be prepared to optimize participation by keeping activities going so students are not tempted to multi-task and begin checking their e-mail or Facebook while attending the course online. He recommended taking advantage of special features such as student voting, virtual hand-raising, and simultaneous chat.

Last, Wagstaff mentioned how his course is mapped to MLA’s 2002 core competencies for music librarians, and he is mindful of the question “Why turn out music librarians if there are no jobs?” Graduates of his courses have done very well in the profession. Even if a student does not ultimately become a music librarian, the knowledge of music librarianship can help in a variety of career paths, especially in administration.

Education Outreach Program
Task forces of EOP instructors and MOUG members are being established to create learning objectives for two new workshops: Scores cataloging and Video-recordings cataloging. This is particularly timely since a scores cataloging workshop was recently requested by Tufts University. David King has been actively working with the MLA Assistant Web Editor to revise and update the EOP web pages.

Other EOP activities since the last report to the board include two EOP workshop presentations. “Music is not my forte: Music Reference for the Non-specialist,” a collection development workshop, was presented to the Alabama Library Association by Liza Weisbrod (Auburn Univ.) on April 14. Christ Durman (Univ. Tennessee-Knoxville) and Grover Baker (Middle Tennesee State Univ.) gave the workshop “Music Reference: Just the Basics” on March 18.

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The Emerging Technologies and Services Committee rounded off its first full year of existence at the San Diego meeting. The first session was a business meeting on March 23rd; the agenda included a brief overview of the formation and work of the committee, discussions about the size of the committee (in transition), and the selection of new members (two this year). Gerry Szymanski (Co-chair) will be in charge of the program for next year. Verletta Kern is gathering updated information on the various music user groups for the MLA Web site. There was extended and enthusiastic discussion about an updated requirements document, with agreement that one was needed, and that it would be vendor-neutral and applicable to all types of systems. The first step will be to prepare a proposal for the Board, including information based on communication from the Board to the then Integrated Library Systems Subcommittee in 2005.

The committee-sponsored session, “A Match Made in Heaven: Merging Emerging Technical and Public Services,” consisted of a panel of speakers describing some of the new technologies available. Szymanski (Eastman, Univ. of Rochester) read Jenny Colvin’s (Furman Univ.) presentation “Music Information Retrieval Systems: Midomi and Shazam.” Next, Erin Mayhood (Univ. of Virginia) presented on the Music Encoding Initiative. Jon Haupt (Southern Methodist Univ.) gave a demonstration of Dropbox, and Alisa Rata Stutzbach (Southern Methodist Univ.) followed with a lively demonstration of Hiveminder.  Next, Nara Newcomer (East Carolina Univ.) gave a brief presentation about Googlewave, followed by Joy Pile (Middlebury College), who discussed Mosio.  Erin Conor (Reed College) presented on LibraryHelp, and Misti Shaw (DePauw Univ.) ended the session by discussing SMS (text) messaging from library online catalogs.

The committee’s second formal meeting was held on March 24, with much of the discussion centered on feedback about the session, and possibilities for a program proposal for 2011.

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Joe Clark, Head of the Performing Arts Library, Kent State University
Adam Crandell, Music and Languages Librarian, Haverford College
Laura Gayle Green, Assistant Convention Manager, MLA
Linda Blair, Assistant Treasurer and Executive Secretary, MLA
Michelle Oswell, Assistant Web Editor, MLA
Jane Gottlieb, Editor of Notes, MLA
Amy Strickland, Music Librarian, University of Miami
Richard C. Schwegel, Director of the Performing Arts Library, Roosevelt University

Jacqueline Frances Brellenthin, Mukwonago, WI
Sotos George Djiovanis, Oxford, FL
Tammy Dawn Dugan, Santa Barbara, CA
Mary Prichard Laverty, Liverpool, NY
Jeong Lee, Dublin, CA

Meghan Joanna Mazur, Rowlett, TX
Joan M. Reitz, Western Connecticut State University
Mary Wolcott, Blue Hill, ME
Lisa Wollenberg, Crawfordsville, IN

The San Diego meeting was attended by a small but dedicated group of librarians. Laurie Lake (Interlochen) will be taking over for Jennifer Hunt as the Roundtable coordinator after the San Diego meeting.  Members should be watching for an e-mail with information about the annual survey.  Information is gathered each year to conduct an informal comparison of conservatory libraries. Survey results remain anonymous to protect confidentiality.

With a few libraries having just been through the accreditation process, members discussed whether any librarians had regular programs related to library assessment. One suggestion was to target small areas of interest, and using a vehicle such as Survey Monkey to solicit user opinions. Others have simply made small cards with questions that could be deposited in a drop-box, while one library has links on its Web site inviting users to make suggestions. Members also pondered whether anyone has implemented a comprehensive library instruction program. Should all students of an institution be required to take some sort of class or program related to the library? A few librarians have been able to work with their faculty to teach class sessions in the library, while others at least obtain syllabi of classes to be aware of class needs. More partnership with faculty will be a future theme that librarians should consider in their daily work.

Another topic of discussion centered upon what type of headphones members use in their libraries. Some staff purchase cheaper sets (under $20) since the quality does not matter with streamed sound, as it cannot be controlled by the user. One library sold cheaper headphones to users while some of us wondered why we supply headphones anymore when so many students come to the library with their own sets.

This lead to a discussion about digital reserves and the platforms being used by libraries. Some have streaming audio servers, and resources such as iTunes can stream music on campus. Others still use Blackboard while a few are experimenting with Sachi, an open-source tool. And then there is Indiana University’s Variations2 and Variations3 projects involving a few institutions.

Other topics discussed included one librarian’s idea for open-stacks audio collections, the ways in which staff choose student workers for employment in their libraries, and the progress of the chamber music wiki sharing project. 

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Film Music Roundtable participants enjoyed a presentation by George Gibbs (Univ. of Kansas) entitled “Piano Concertos for the Movies: The ‘Miniature Piano Concerto’ in British and American Films from the 1940s and 1950s.” Gibbs surveyed the use of this style of composition in movies of the time period by discussing and playing clips of about fifteen works. Participants heard excerpts of Richard Addinsell’s The Warsaw Concerto in the film Dangerous Moonlight, and Bernard Herrmann’s Concerto Macabre in the film Hangover Square. Gibbs provided commentary about how the music contributed to the mood or story of each film. He also made comparisons between piano concertos written for concert performance and the miniature form that appeared in film, and discussed why this style of music may have fallen out of use in movies of subsequent decades.

The Film Music Roundtable is seeking a volunteer for a new coordinator. Please write to Myrna Layton if you are interested; contact information may be viewed here: http://music.lib.byu.edu/servfac.html

Technical Services Roundtable attendees were treated to an excellent presentation by Marty Jenkins (Wright State Univ.) titled “MARCEdit: How Did I Ever Live Without It?”

MARCEdit is a freeware program developed by Terry Reese at Oregon State University. The primary purpose of the software is to facilitate batch processing of bibliographic records that sometimes cannot be done within many ILS systems. Marty presented several scenarios in which he uses MARCEdit at Wright State: addition of 949 fields to incoming and outgoing records, vendor-supplied e-book record files, and creating brief bibliographic records from Excel files.

The Roundtable session ended with a call for future meeting ideas, and for new Roundtable coordinators. Please contact the current Co-coordinators for further information.

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Southern California Chapter
Stephanie Bonjack, Chair

The Southern California Chapter of MLA met Saturday, February 13, 2010 at California State University, Long Beach, in a joint meeting with the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society.  Balmy weather, gracious hosts, and engaging presentations made for a truly enjoyable conference.

The morning program opened with a paper by USC doctoral candidate Seth Houston, whose paper, “Restoring Self through an Exotic Other: Orientalism and the Poetic in Robert Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri,” examined this particular oratorio within nineteenth-century Orientalist literature and its relationship to German culture. He was followed by Alejandro Planchart (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara), who gave a meticulously researched paper on prose repertory in southern Italy. 

The morning session concluded with Catherine Brown’s presentation, “Music in a Library!? The UCLA Powell Library as a Non-Traditional Performance Space.”  Ms. Brown coordinates and promotes a music series in Powell Library and gave the nitty-gritty on scheduling, acoustics, and the highlights and pitfalls of live music in study spaces.

Following lunch, attendees were treated to a tour of the automated storage and retrieval (ASR) facility at the CSU Long Beach Library. Supervisor Vicky Munda demonstrated the seamless process from requesting a book through the catalog, to the machine finding the container with the item, to its retrieval and delivery to the patron. The library is currently using the system (which they have named ORCA) for bound journals and low-use items.  After the tour, attendees were pleasantly surprised by free drinks at the in-house Starbucks, courtesy of Dean Roman Kochan.

Next, members convened for the business meeting and then rejoined AMS colleagues for the remainder of the afternoon.  Graduate student Stephen Penner from California State University, Northridge discussed hype in classical music. He examined hype in the history of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a tool to gauge the future success of Gustavo Dudamel’s massive ad campaign in Los Angeles.

The program concluded with an entertaining presentation by Roger Hickman (Cal State Long Beach) on “Miklós Rózsa’s March Madness.” This prolific film composer made use of the march in everything from comedies (Thunder in the City, 1937) to historical dramas (Ben-Hur, 1959). Hickman posited that Rózsa’s interest in marches followed his exposure to Honegger’s Les Misérables in 1935.

Thanks to everyone in both MLA and AMS who organized this event.

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We appreciate our Corporate Patrons and Corporate Members and their support of MLA.  

Corporate Patrons
American Institute of Musicology
A-R Editions Inc
ejazzlines/Jazz Lines Distribution
Harrassowitz
J W Pepper & Son Inc
OMI-Old Manuscripts & Incunabula
Theodore Front Musical Literature Inc

Corporate Members
aaa Music Hunter Distributing Company
Alexander Street Press
Broude Brothers Limited
Harmonie Park Press
G Schirmer Inc/Associated Music Publishers Inc
Music Library Service Company
New World Records
Preservation Technologies
Yesterday Service Sheet Music Inc

Dr. Lois Kuyper-Rushing, Associate Librarian and Head of Carter Music Resources Center (LSU Libraries), received one of five nationwide travel awards given by ARTstor in May, 2010. Kuyper-Rushing will receive $1500, which she will use to defray costs of traveling to Valenciennes, France, during the spring semester of 2011 to study manuscripts of composer Eugène Bozza and to interview his daughter. In addition, Lois has received the maximum $10,000 faculty research grant from LSU’s Office of Research & Economic Development to further assist in these research endeavors.


Lois’ award-winning essay, “Music Iconography and ARTstor,” and more information about the ARTstor award, can be viewed on the ARTstor Web page: http://www.artstor.org/index.shtml

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1 August 2010
Annual Reports due to MLA Board

15 August 2010
MLA Newsletter no. 162 submissions due

Renew your MLA membership if you haven’t yet!

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