MLA Meets in Philadelphia:
Part II

Although it has only been a few months since the meeting in Philadelphia, the work of MLA's committees and officers is well under way. Following the conference, almost 100 appointments were made for various positions in the association, clearly an indication of the vitality of the organization and the high rate of participation in its activities. In the same vein, the Nominating committee, chaired by Linda Fairtile, is now looking to receive your suggestions for three new members of the Board, the Vice-President/President-Elect, and the MLA Citation for next year. The awards committees can also use your input for the various publications awards and proposals for the research and travel grants.

Soon it will be time to renew your membership in MLA. Over the past few years we have seen a steady decline in membership. Perhaps this year that trend can be reversed. The most effective means for recruiting new members is personal contact. Do you know a librarian, musician, professor or teacher who might like to receive Notes and find membership in MLA to be useful in their work? Letting people know about MLA and what we do help us to build the membership and be a more effective organization for you. In addition to renewing your membership, please consider the opportunity to help MLA achieve its goals by becoming a Sustaining member, becoming a member of the Orpheus Society or the Ostinato Club, or by making a donation to one of MLA's funds. But whether or not you are able to make a donation to MLA, your membership and participation in the association's activities is valued highly.

As you may know, on June 30, MLA and IAML-US will join forces under the name of MLA. When you renew your membership, you will also have the opportunity to join or renew your membership in IAML. I have been a member of both IAML and MLA my entire career. It has enriched my outlook on music librarianship to receive and to regularly read IAML's journal, FontesArtisMusicae. Even though I have been able to attend the international conferences only in recent years, IAML membership has given me a valuable perspective on music librarianship throughout the world that has affected my approach to daily work.This global perspective is now vital to achieving MLA's goals and mission in today's world. So please consider joining IAML. It will be one of the best investments you can make in your career along with membership in MLA.

I am writing this one week before the Executive Board will be meeting. Aside from setting the annual budget, we will be working on combining the functions of MLA and IAML-US, reviewing the strategic plan, planning for the 2012 and future conventions, and other business brought by the various committees. The minutes of that meeting will announced on MLA-L and will appear on the Web site in the summer. Please feel free to send me any comments about the business of the Association or decisions of the Board.

Best wishes for the summer months,

Jerry L. McBride

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Plenary II:
Licensing and Digital Media: Our Musical Heritage at a Crossroads

Lindy Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The second plenary session sparked another episode in the ongoing discussion of licensing of digital media and the problems it continues to cause for libraries.  The panel, sponsored by the Legislation Committee, was moderated by D. J. Hoek (Northwestern) and populated by three lawyers:  Corynne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Kevin L. Smith of the Duke University Libraries, and Wallace Collins, a last minute fill-in and New York City-based entertainment attorney.

Hoek opened the session with a discussion of end user agreements. He pointed out the problems that arise for libraries when only individuals can buy and use downloaded sound files. The same issues that were discussed at the meeting two years ago in Chicago still exist and the situation continues to deteriorate as streaming surpasses downloads and people give up even more control of their entertainment. This is not a problem only for music libraries; it also rears its ugly head in the context of e-books, and everyone is affected. The latest court cases about the first sale doctrine (which gives certain rights of lending and reselling to entities that purchase an item and is the legal basis for the services libraries provide to their patrons) have resulted in mixed decisions leading to an uncertain future. What is certain is that as licensing calls the rights of first sale into question, so too are the rights of libraries to circulate digital material in jeopardy.

Corynne McSherry did not sugarcoat the situation as she took to the podium. The problem is bad and it is not just music downloads or libraries that are being hit. It is a full-scale assault on first sale across the board. As consumers spend more money on licensed content, they are losing ownership of the things they buy. She then went on to describe three recent court cases that set the outer limits for the future. The first, Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc., involved the resaleability of licensed software. The court ruled that the license precluded Vernor from claiming ownership and ruled in favor of the software company. The second, MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., involved the right of MDY to create and distribute a software program known as Glider, which automatically plays World of Warcraft, a computer game created and distributed by Blizzard. In this case, the court gave a more favorable decision in terms of precedent set for libraries when it ruled in favor of MDY, stating that the license involved was just an agreement and not copyright infringement. In making a distinction between a covenant, which this was, and conditions, which would involve copyright infringement, this decision opened up a little space for future wiggle room.  The third and final case discussed was UMG v. Augusto, which involved the resale on the part of Mr. Augusto of promotional copies of CDs originally distributed by UMG for purposes of publicity. The court decided in favor of Mr. Augusto because the CDs were given as gifts and because they felt a sticker on the jewel case wasn't enough to create a license agreement. She concluded by stating that a world full of licenses is bad, not only for libraries, but for all consumers who will no longer own the things they purchase.

Next up was Kevin L. Smith, who laid out three main aspects of the problem and then proposed a couple of solutions. The first aspect is that music is sometimes distributed as a file with a license that restricts use. Second, even when music is sold as physical media, there are sometimes licenses that restrict redistribution and forbid rights of first sale. Third, there is an increasing amount of material available only through downloads or streaming, resulting in the need for libraries to rely more and more on services like Naxos, which restrict the library's ability to provide digital preservation and make collection development decisions. As a response to these issues, Smith recommends libraries build relationships. Relationships with other libraries could lead to a media equivalent of LOCKSS or other measures to ensure preservation. Along with this, libraries should be more proactive about considering their involvement in the research process. Specialized libraries often have strong relationships with vendors and can be influential in changing policies. For example, vendors often forget the need to address patrons (composers and performers), and libraries should remind them that if they release their works in digital formats, it will not be as easy for libraries to provide access and preservation for them. He also recommends advocacy. Copyright is federal law and libraries should be advocating on a federal level because contracts fall under state law and contracts not subject to negotiation should be pre-empted by copyright law. Fair use and library exceptions should be preserved.

Finally, Wallace Collins took the opportunity to share some of his views on the situation. He pointed out that there are fewer (and larger) record labels now, which gives those remaining few more power. It will eventually boil down to either legislation or litigation and he predicts that fair use will pre-empt licensing. He then speculated on what the future might hold. As evidenced by their increasing popularity, the younger generation prefers downloads. Things like Microsoft's Cloud are increasing the problem of access-not-ownership. He also brought up Spotify, which is a digital music service that offers streaming for a fee but no downloads or possibility of hard copies. This is hurting the music industry as well as libraries, because payment is based on a set rate instead of a per-use model.  He concluded by observing that fair use will probably allow for preservation through the creation of archived copies.

These three presentations were followed by a panel discussion. The first topic that was presented to the panel was the ideal case to take to the Supreme Court to get a favorable decision for libraries. They generally agreed that libraries are valuable resources and generate a sympathetic audience but precedents are not in our favor. The best situation would involve two conflicting cases, as the Supreme Court would be more likely to take the case. Next, the panel was presented with a recent situation involving the refusal of Audible, a website selling downloadable audio books, to sell e-books without licenses. The panel agreed that more prominent figures like Doctorow need to be willing to stand up like this to set precedents.

This session made clear the fact that the licensing of digital media is and will continue to be a serious problem for libraries, but there is some hope that if the right case is taken to the Supreme Court, it might set a precedent that favors libraries. In the meantime, there are things we as librarians can and should do to advocate for ourselves, our patrons, and the future.

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BCC Town Hall Meeting in Philadelphia

Rya Martin, University of Virginia

Kathy Glennan, BCC Chair, welcomed about 105 attendees to the BCC Town Hall, sponsored by the BCC. 

SACO Music Funnel Update (Michael Colby)
Through the SACO Music Funnel, a new addition to the BCC, one can propose subject headings or classifications to LC without being a direct SACO member. Interested parties should contact Michael, who can help with crafting proposals. More information will be available on the SACO homepage.

Task Force to Create an RDA Score Complete Example (Daniel Paradis)
The Task Force included Janet Bradford, David Guion, Tracey Snyder, and Daniel Paradis. RDA examples were created for a score and parts of a Mozart symphony, using a standard array of elements, and for a vocal score of a Verdi opera, illustrating scenarios that are different in RDA. The Task Force identified some problematic areas: the MARC mapping for form of musical notation; some redundancy between the physical description field and general notes for the format of notated music; and discrepancies in the rules governing the creation of access points for expressions. The examples were forwarded to ALA's JSC representative in November after approval by BCC, with the goal of adding them to the RDA exemplars.

Task Force to Create an RDA Musical Expression Record (Damian Iseminger)
Damian Iseminger, Neil Hughes, Casey Mullin, and Raymond Schmidt made up this Task Force, which grappled with the question of whether the authorities format can support the conception of an expression in RDA. While they concluded that nothing in RDA precludes creating records for individual expressions, they deemed that attempting to represent these in the MARC format is not feasible. The Task Force's work highlighted the limitations of using RDA in a MARC environment.

Task Force on RDA Best Practice Guidelines for MARC 38X Fields (Hermine Vermeij)
Hermine Vermeij, Bruce Evans, Damian Iseminger, Beth Iseminger, and Joe Bartl were Task Force members. The 38X fields convey information on form of work, other distinguishing characteristics of a work or expression, medium of performance, numeric designation of a musical work, and key. The task force recommends using the authority record for this data. For non-distinctive titles, medium of performance, number and key are core elements and should be recorded. For distinctive titles, medium of performance, though not core, should be recorded as an identifying element. In some cases, use of 38X fields in the bibliographic record is warranted. The full report is available on the BCC web page.

Update on RDA (Mark Scharff)
Between June 23, when the RDA Toolkit went live, and December 31, three national libraries and 24 formal test partners, including the MLA/OLAC Funnel, took part in training and testing. After data analysis, LC's Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate will forward a recommendation on implementation to the national libraries. A decision is expected before ALA Annual, where an RDA Preconference will be held. ALA's RDA Implementation Task Force is developing training materials and the JSC is developing revision guidelines, as is ALA's cataloging policy arm, CC:DA. BCC hopes to have several proposals to present at ALA Annual.

Report from MARBI (Bruce Evans)
Proposal no. 2011-01, adding new subfields for field 041 to disambiguate language information, has been approved by MARBI and should be implemented within the next year. Of special interest for music catalogers is a new subfield for language of libretto. Several LC-sponsored discussion papers were presented at ALA Midwinter proposing changes in the bibliographic format to support RDA in the MARC21 format. Details on these will be available in the Music Cataloging Bulletin and on the BCC website.

Music Metadata Survey (Jenn Riley)
The Metadata Subcommittee is conducting a survey to help them decide what type of information to include in a proposed music metadata clearinghouse. Examples might include sample workflow documentation, decision trees for standards adoption, and information on software to support various standards. They're interested in knowing about internal project documentation that members would be willing to share.

BCC Genre/Form Task Force Update (Beth Iseminger)
Since 2009, the Task Force has been working with LC to build their vocabulary for genre/form and medium of performance terms. Next steps include plotting the relationships between existing LCSH genre/form terms by extracting the structure present in authority records, adding relationships as needed, and developing a visualization tool. Then, the task force will take their list of new terms (not in LCSH), search them in OCLC for literary warrant, and create SACO proposals or compile a list of recommended additions. The Subject Access Subcommittee has taken on this work for medium of performance terms.

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Two Presentations Represent Best of Chapters

Janelle West, Awards Committee

Each year, the Best of Chapters committee reviews presentation submissions from the regional chapter meetings, with the privilegeof selecting a choice few to receive a wider audience at MLA.The winners of this year's competition were Gary R. Boye (Appalachian State, SEMLA), and Anita Breckbill (Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln, MP-MLA). 

Boye opened the session with his presentation "Microtonality in the Mountains: The Story of Tui St. George Tucker and Camp Catawba." Boye'ss interest in Tui St. George Tucker began at the news of her death, when he realized that an eccentric, avant-garde composer, of whom he had been completely unaware, had lived and died nearby in the mountains of North Carolina. His initial research led him to Camp Catawba, where he encountered Robert Jurgrau, executor of Tui's estate, and Chuck Miller, executor for Vera Lachmann and Camp Catawba. Jurgrau and Miller were already sorting through the papers of the camp for Fred Hay, head of the Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State University, and they offered to include Tui's materials in the donation. They also told Boyethe the background story connecting Tui, Vera Lachmann, and Camp Catawba.

Vera Lachmann, a German-Jewish poet who had fled to the United States just before World War II, founded Camp Catawba in 1944 as a boys camp for children of refugees. Along with the standard camp activities, special emphasis was placed on the creative arts and on music in particular. The director for music at the camp from the 1940s until it closed in 1971 was Tui St. George Tucker, a composer and virtuoso recorder player. Tui and Vera were lovers, and when Vera died in 1985, her will stipulated that Tui should be allowed to live out the rest of her life at the camp. Recollections of faculty and community members who knew Tui painted a picture of an eccentric, strong-willed and opinionated woman who brought out both positive and negative reactions in people. Her music elicited similar reactions.

Boye and Hay continued to sort through what was left of the camp papers, looking for anything of historical interest. Though Tui's LP collection contained little of real value, and though many of the materials were ravaged by mold, there remained a few reel-to-reel tapes from Tui'ss New York period, containing concerts of works by Tui and her friends. In addition, there were manuscripts and scores, as well as LPs and CDs of her works. These items were brought to Appalachian State's Music Library, where they were sorted and held temporarily until they could be moved permanently to the Special Collections area of the new library, where they await the examination of future scholars.

Anita Breckbill'ss presentation, "Music Publishing by Subscription in 1820s France," explored the subscription publishing model. While music publishing recently experienced an extended period of stability, current changes in technology have left the industry in flux. The same may be said of music publishing in the eighteenth century, and one of the trends during this period of instability was subscription publishing.

Subscription publishing was based on a form of patronage in which several donors pledged to buy one or more copies of a score in advance of publication, thus ensuring a certain level of income from the publication. Lists of the subscribers were generally released along with the publication, providing subscribers with a degree of public acknowledgment and recognition.

A literature review explains the roots of the nineteenth-century French subscription model. Early on, composers such as C.P.E. Bach were frequently self-published. The advent of the movable type required a solid estimate of the number of copies needed in each printing, and subscriptions yielded fairly reliable estimates. Subscription publishing also provided a network of distributors who acted as middlemen between composers and patrons. By the 1820s in France, composers relied more heavily on the publishing houses to pursue subscriptions. Breckbill presented five examples of scores published by subscription, through which she attempted to answer five questions regarding subscription publishing: Who pays? Who profits? Who subscribes? Is the publishing model working? Is it making money or losing money?

The scores include an engraved vocal score of Zémireet Azor by Louis Spohr, an engraved full score of Il flautomagico by Mozart, engraved full scores of Grétry's operas La Caravane du Caire and Elisca, and an engraved vocal score of Mozart's Requiem. All were from French publishers and includ lists of between 19 and 172 subscribers, arranged alphabetically or by city. Analysis of the subscriber lists suggests the breakdown of subscribers. Of the 455 names listed in the five scores, 61 (13%) were women, 85 (19%) were of nobility or royalty, 72 (16%) were foreigners, 188 (41%) were musicians, and 148 (33%) were from non-music professions. The debate on how publishers found their subscribers is ongoing, but likely possibilities include musical journals, flier distribution, and advertisements in publisher catalogs.

As for who pays and who profits, both the risk and the profit clearly belonged to the publishers. The questions of whether or not the model worked and whether it made or lost money are more complicated. The subscription model of publishing produced lovely, engraved large editions, so in that respect it was successful, but none of the publishers involved in the five example scores survived past 1850, so one could assume that their publishing model was not monetarily successful.

Breckbill brought the presentation to a close with speculation on a modern return to subscription publishing. In 2007, jazz musician Maria Schneider released a new CD using a marketing strategy that included solicitation of donations from "participants" and offering various gift packages for escalating levels of financial investment. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come. As artists strive to succeed in this era of complexity in music publishing, it may be that their efforts will increasingly resemble subscription publishing.

Details about the Best of Chapters Competition are available at http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/about.aspx?id=561 .

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Sheet Music Consortium:
Metadata Tools and Participation
Sponsored by the Bibliographic Control Committee

Rya Martin, University of Virginia

Sheet Music Consortium: History and Services
(Stephen Davison, UCLA)
The Sheet Music Consortium (http://digital.library.ucla.edu/sheetmusic/) was developed as a community-based shared metadata resource for sheet music employing Open Archives Initiative (OAI) technology for metadata harvesting. Initial collaboration by UCLA, Indiana University, Duke, and Johns Hopkins led to the launch of version 1 of the SMC site in 2003, which provided search and browsing options for half a dozen sheet music collections. To further develop the community and services, the consortium sponsored planning meetings, supported by an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Planning Grant for 2007-2008, where discussions focused on matters such as appropriate metadata for music collections, guidelines for cataloging sheet music, the definition of sheet music, and handling legacy data. An IMLS Leadership Grant for 2009-2011 aims to transform the service to a 2.0 model, enabling richer and user-contributed metadata, and to widen the circle of potential contributors.

Stephen Davison previewed the new development Web site (http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/sheetmusic/), which went live in March 2011. In addition to data normalization, planned developments include: defining the content scope; developing resource pages; providing advanced searching, usage stats, downloadable XML, and citation export; and enabling RSS feeds and other communication strategies. Usability assessment and functional testing of the Web site are also slated for the coming year.

Tools for Data Providers (Jenn Riley, Univ of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Jenn Riley, Co-Principal Investigator on the IMLS grant in her previous tenure at Indiana University, described the data provider tools that IU has been developing to make it easier to contribute data to the SMC. The first is a set of format-neutral metadata guidelines, intended to provide a non-prescriptive, functionality-based set of guidelines to help users assess the impact of their decisions.

The second tool, the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) static repository gateway, grew out of a need for a more user-friendly method of contributing metadata. Until recently, records could only be harvested through a system with an integrated OAI-PMH data provider module, such as ContentDM, or through an institution's existing standalone metadata creation system, which requires an OAI-PMH data provider and in-house technical expertise.

To lower this technical barrier, the OAI-PMH static repository gateway was developed, allowing a user to upload an Excel spreadsheet, map its fields into the required formats for SMC, using an online data mapping tool based on Emory University's Metadata Migrator, and output an XML file. After the user puts this on a web server and registers it, the gateway takes care of all the technical work of harvesting the metadata. Riley mentioned the In Harmony Sheet Music metadata creation tool as an open-source alternative for producing the XML file.

Now in development is a Report Card tool, which will assess how closely data conforms to SMC metadata guidelines. Among other things, it would check for core elements such as title, name, date, and subject and verify the use of controlled vocabulary, if applicable.

Analyzing and Documenting the Stitt-Harper Sheet Music Collection: Butler University's Experience (Sheri Stormes and Scott Pfitzinger, Butler University)
Performing and Fine Arts Librarian Sheri Stormes presented a history of the collection, which consists of popular ballads donated by Asel Spellman Stitt, a local musician active in the early twentieth century, and popular sheet music collected by broadcasting pioneer Ann Wagner Harper. Stormes described earlier attempts to describe the collection, one of which used a homegrown data system that failed midway through the project. By 2009, they'd decided to enter data into Excel spreadsheets, and while this was underway, Stormes responded to Riley's call for volunteers to help evaluate the new SMC tools. Soon thereafter, the Stitt-Harper collection was chosen as the beta test for the new OAI-PMH gateway.

Scott Pfitzinger, Information Commons and Technology Librarian, provided the support technologist's view of the project. Butler's IT department had salvaged the original data from the failed homegrown system, but a lot of manual clean-up was required. To facilitate data entry on the remainder of the collection, Scott customized the form function in Excel. He shared some examples from the collection, pointing out idiosyncrasies in the sheet music format that present challenges for bibliographic description. In early February 2011, using the metadata mapping tool and the OAI-PMH static repository gateway, 2,222 records for the Stitt-Harper collection were incorporated into the Sheet Music Consortium and the beta test was declared a success. 
 
For more information on becoming an SMC contributor, or to send feedback, contact Stephen Davison at sdavison@library.ucla.edu. Michelle Dalmau (mailto:mcdalmau@indiana.edu) is the new SMC co-director at Indiana University and will oversee the continuing development of data provider tools.

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BCC-Sponsored Program on Technical Metadata for Music
Stresses Importance of Embedded Metadata

Felicia Piscitelli, Texas A&M University

Jenn Riley introduced the program on Technical Metadata for Music on February 10th in Philadelphia. In the first presentation, Technical Metadata for Audio Preservation: a Brief Introduction, Kimmy Szeto (SUNY Maritime College) described how technical metadata and specifications enable successful playback, track technical processing history, and ensure authenticity and integrity of digital audio files.  This metadata can be created automatically and works well when embedded.  Two factors to take into account are whether it is readable by humans and whether it is sustainable.  Szeto referred to LC's requirements for a sustainable audio file format: disclosure, adoption, transparency, self-documentation, external dependencies, impact of patents, and technical protection mechanisms.  He went on to discuss how the Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) adheres to these requirements.  Specifications for the BWF are disclosed in the European Broadcast Union document, EBU Tech 3285. This format has been adopted by such organizations as the Audio Engineering Society (AES), National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) and Sound Directions. The BWF allows embedded metadata, which fulfills the self-documentation factor, and there are no hardware, software, patent or licensing requirements for it.

Getting to more technical aspects, Szeto explained that the BWF is an extension of Microsoft’s WAV format, and that both BWF and WAV formats contain metadata embedded as XML in "chunks." Certain metadata are mandatory for some WAV chunks. For example, in the  WAV Format Chunk  the encoding format, number of bits per sample (bit depth), average number of samples per second (sample rate), data length/duration of file, and number of mono or stereo channels are necessary, whereas metadata about the location of the archival and copyright information may be incorporated into optional chunks. In BWF, on the other hand, only one chunk is mandatory, and the others optional. The mandatory chunk includes Description, Originator, Originator reference number (which can include checksum), Origination Date, and BWF version. Having additional metadata in optional chunks allows for greater flexibility.
 
The second speaker was Chris Lacinak of AudioVisual Preservation Solutions, a company which has helped preserve music for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who talked about Embedded Metadata (in WAV files). Lacinak asked the question, "Why embed?" Besides the fact that everyone else is doing it, embedding metadata within the file itself is essential for audio archives in maintaining authenticity and integrity of the files, in identifying, describing, and managing them, and in avoiding unnecessary redundancies.  It is also important to end users, creators, rights holders and legal entities. Embedded metadata can give users more information about a document, picture, or recording.  Embedding also helps prevent problems in data recovery and in inadvertent changes across operating systems.  As Lacinak put it in one of his slides, "to ignore it is to effectively de-catalog." He describes situations wherein an archivist or librarian receives a hard drive with thousands of files on it, but no clue as to what those files are, or who created them.  He even cited a legal case, in which a judge for the state of Arizona argued that metadata embedded in public records in electronic format was subject to disclosure under public records laws. In short, embedded metadata increases interoperability, or the ability to move audio data like text.

He then moved from the "whys" of embedding to "whats," specifically, to creating metadata for WAV files. Expanding on Szeto's earlier comments, he described file structure in terms of format chunks and data chunks.  Lacinak discussed the ARSC TC Metadata Study, which he conducted with Walter Forsberg, Tom Endres, Tommy Sjöberg, and Preston McCabe.  They tested and compared seven end-user audio applications used for recording, editing and playback for interoperability related to embedded metadata and for persistence and integrity within and across applications. They found that some applications append extra metadata to certain chunks. The investigators also analyzed persistence and integrity in derivative creation in WAV, MP3, and FLAC.  They discovered that there was no consistent display and management across or even within systems, and recommended that concerned people should advocate for change.  

Lacinak ended his presentation with an overview of BWF MetaEdit, an open-source tool developed by AudioVisual Preservation Solutions and freely available from the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI), that enables one to create and standardize embedded metadata .  It is CSV or XML based, and may be downloaded from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bwfmetaedit/

The slides to Lacinak's presentation may be accessed at:
 http://www.avpreserve.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/embedded_metadata_lacinak.pdf

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RDA: Kicking the Tires

Patty Falk, Bowling Green State University

The RDA session on February 12th was shared by a panel of five representatives from the RDA test conducted October through December of 2010.  Kathy Glennan (Univ. of Maryland) was the moderator.  The five panelists included Sharon McKinley (LC), Janet Bradford (Brigham Young), Jean Harden (Univ. of North Texas), Mary Huismann (Univ. of Minnesota), and Casey Mullin (Stanford).  After presenting a brief summary of the RDA test and introductions of the panelists, Glennan began the session with the first of seven questions asked of each panelist:

1. How did you approach training, and what was the philosophy toward testing?
   


2. Did you create any specific documentation? If not, what type of documentation would be useful in moving forward now?


3. How did your local system accommodate RDA records? What display decisions did you make?


4. If you created authority records during the test period, what was your experience?


5. What are the two things you liked best about RDA?


6. What are the top two things that need fixing in RDA?


7. Based on your experiences, what would you recommend to others when they start using RDA?

Due to the unusual format for this panel, the answers to the questions above will be addressed below by the same number as the question.

1) All of the panelists conducted training using webinars and Powerpoint presentations from LC.  Most panelists also had time to look at RDA test records and time to experiment with the RDA Toolkit.

2) Most participants did not create any specific documentation for training with the exception of LC.  Brigham Young also created a wiki.  Some of the panelists used LC's training documents as their own.

3) All of the panelists were able to have the new 3xx fields available in the local systems.  Some had these fields displayed, others did not.

4) Three of the five panelists did create and/or edit authority records.  There are still some issues that will need to be looked at in the new 3xx fields in authority records.

5) There were a variety of answers to question five in regards to the two things panelists liked best about RDA.  The answers range from more rich data, flexibility in transcribing materials, efficiency in searching the Toolkit, and ease of use for new people to learn.

6) Again, there were also a variety of answers about two things that need fixing in RDA.  Some of the issues that were raised include: difficulty in collocating, creating relational records in a flat file, lack of guidance in some cases, name authority for non-descriptive titles, cataloger's judgment is more difficult, and the need for more direction in the role of the container for collective titles.  Filing of librettos under author, rather than composer, is another complication.

7) The responses for the final question were helpful.  Some of the tips given by panelists are: be patient; don't be afraid of it; try to have a plan and include public service areas in discussions; embrace the changes; and make sure people are on the same page.

The session ended with questions from the audience. 

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Jim Cassaro
MLA Development Officer

Greetings again, my generous MLA members! I hope that by now all of you have seen MLA's first foray into the video medium “Why I Donate to MLA,” now on the MLA Web site at http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/sub.aspx?id=951. It seems we have made a splash as our sister organization, ARLIS-NA (Art Libraries Society of North America) is considering a similar project for its members. Can you say “Oscar-worthy”? (Not to worry, there will not be another new award fund initiative for quite some time!)

As you know, MLA member dues renewals for FY 2011–2012 will be coming shortly, and I wanted to alert you to the availability of some new funds for your consideration. Well, not exactly new. With the recent merger of MLA with the IAML-US Branch (quite a historic moment, actually; Richard S. Hill, first IAML President in 1951 had hoped that MLA would become the US Branch of the organization, and some sixty years later that dream has become a reality!), two former IAML-US Branch grants and initiatives have now come under MLA’s prevue: the Lenore Coral Travel Fund and the Neil Ratliff Outreach Fund. The Coral fund supplies the revenue to fund a travel grant for MLA members who are also members of IAML to attend that organization’s annual conference. Grants are made in even years, so the next availability of the travel grant will be in 2012 for the Montreal meeting of IAML. Watch for notice of the grant’s availability and application procedures in the near future. The Lenore Coral Travel Grant Fund Committee (Linda Solow Blotner; Geraldine Ostrove; Don Roberts; Dan Zager, and Jim Cassaro) have planned a concert for the MLA meeting in Dallas next year to honor Lenore’s memory, and to introduce the fund and campaign to our membership. This concert will feature the Denton Bach Players, an early-music ensemble of which our very own Andrew Justice is director. The Neil Ratliff Fund supplies the funds to reimburse shipments of materials sent through the Donated Music Project. Through the Donated Music Materials Program, the IAML Branch facilitates the donation of music, books, journals, and recordings to libraries in East-Central and Southeast Europe, republics of the former Soviet Union, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Pacific Ocean countries. Inaugurated in 1995, the program solicits lists of available materials in good condition that will be circulated to libraries abroad. 

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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
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
Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc
Broude Brothers Limited
G Schirmer Inc/Associated Music Publishers, Inc
Music Library Service Company
Preservation Technologies
Yesterday Service Sheet Music Inc

The session began with a very brief report from Scharff of the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) meeting at the 2011 ALA Midwinter meeting in San Diego. With the RDA Toolkit published, a print version of the code available, and the national RDA testing period over, CC:DA—and indeed the whole RDA enterprise—seemed to be catching its breath.  Only one session was held, and two proposals for revision from the American Association of Law Libraries were the only ones brought forth at this meeting.  More action can be expected at the annual meeting, including an RDA preconference and more decisions from the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC) about how the revision process will work.

The SDC took a breath, too, and was now returning to the list of priorities gleaned from the list of known issues deferred until after the publication of RDA.  While Scharff in his role as MLA liaison to CC:DA is concerned with all such proposals, work on some of them in fact belongs in whole or in part to other BCC subcommittees or groups within MLA.  He led a discussion of three questions for which SDC would do all or part of the work of drafting revision proposals.  Briefly, these are:

1. Resolving the ambiguous status of containers as being part of a resource being described.  The desired outcome is that a container providing a collective title for a resource be allowed to be the preferred source of information in lieu of sources that would normally be preferred, but which bear only titles of portions of the content of the resource.  This would provide continuity with AACR2 practice and provide a more meaningful title for a resource.


2. Reorganizing the instructions in RDA 6.14.-6.18 and 6.27-6.28 to more clearly distinguish the recording of data from formulating preferred access point.  The current instructions tailor how and when data is recorded to make it “access-point-ready,” and this constrains the cataloger. 


3. Extending the scope of RDA 7.24, Artistic/Technical Credits, beyond the stated limit of motion pictures and videorecordings, to at least allow such data to be recorded for sound recordings.

Scharff identified OLAC as working partners for the first and 3rd points, and the Authorities subcommittee and perhaps the Form/Genre task force as other interested parties to the 2nd point.  All subcommittee members present volunteered to work on one of the three questions, and the chair would provide work assignments to absent and incoming members.  Proposals that we intend to submit for ALA consideration this summer need to be BCC-approved by early May, so some issues may not be ready (in particular, no. 2). 

Other RDA-related topics that were discussed:

1. One of the testers expressed dissatisfaction that RDA requires an access point for only one creator, or for one work in a compilation.  While getting this changed in the RDA text is unlikely, it will probably be dealt with in any “best practices” guidelines that MLA produces for RDA.


2. Regardless of the RDA implementation decision by the national libraries, we appear to be in a multi-code environment for some time to come.  What will be SDC’s role?  The conclusion was that until we know if AACR2 will be “reactivated” as a code that can be revised, we can’t worry much about that.

Finally, the group looked at proposed changes to its charge.  Some of the changes serve to update the types of documents that the subcommittee would monitor to include RDA and the Library of Congress Policy statements.  The discussion brought forth some disagreement over characterizing the “descriptive cataloging of music materials” that is the subcommittee’s area of concern as being specifically contained in “machine-readable bibliographic records.”  Given the wider scope that RDA is meant to take in, some felt this might be too limited, but others felt the language was sufficient for the time being.  Further work will happen by email.

While not mentioned at the business meeting, it should be noted that SDC provided feedback during the past year for the draft version of Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Music).  This publication is being drafted by a task force of members of MLA and of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of ALA. 

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The BCC Metadata subcommittee held its meeting on February 12th in Philadelphia. Subcommittee members were in attendance, along with fifteen guests. Members James Mason, Reneé McBride, Felicia Piscitelli, and Becky Thompson completed their service and were warmly thanked for their valuable contributions. The subcommittee’s table at the MLA conference “speed dating” session was a great success, resulting in a number of subcommittee applicants. Following the MLA annual meeting, the Metadata Subcommittee welcomed new members Peter Hirsch (New York Public Library), Deb Kulczak (Univ. of Arkansas), Molly O’Brien (Binghamton Univ.), and Ann Shaffer (Univ. of Oregon).

The primary discussion topic related to specific plans for distributing a survey to the MLA membership and beyond regarding community needs for an online Music Metadata Clearinghouse. The survey was distributed soon after the close of the annual meeting; data analysis is expected to be performed in spring 2011, and the first parts of the Clearinghouse available online before the 2012 MLA annual meeting.

Placement Officer (Alisa Rata Stutzbach)
Stutzbach announced that seven music-related job posts were still open and were on the Placement Service table at the Meeting.  Stutzbach had contacted eighteen institutions regarding the status of recent posts, most of which were full-time and permanent (which is good news!)  She was informed that positions had either been filled or the institution was at a stage of the search that precluded conducting interviews in Philadelphia.  Stutzbach reported that that she is continuing the work begun by Susannah Cleveland to add the old job posts (pre-2006) to the MLA Archives.  This will be an on-going project for some time.

Résumé and Cover Letter Review Service (RCLRS) (Lisa Shiota, assistant coordinator reporting for herself and coordinator, Mike Duffy, who was unable to attend).

Shiota reported that twenty reviews were conducted at the 2010 Annual Meeting in San Diego.  Ten reviews were conducted online between March 25, 2010 and February 10, 2011.  For the 2011 Annual Meeting in Philly, three reviews were scheduled prior to the conference.  This year, five people volunteered to conduct reviews on site:  Beth Christensen, Joe Clark, Susannah Cleveland, Alan Ringwood, and Alisa Rata Stutzbach.  They offered thirty-eight review times. A total of twenty-five reviews were conducted during the Philadelphia meeting.  Nearly everyone who signed up for a review was a library student or first-time attendee.   Shiota expressed great appreciation for both the volunteers and the reviewers who made this very popular service possible.  She also expressed appreciation for the materials prepared by Alan Ringwood and Lisa Woznicki to facilitate the RCLRS process.
 
Following the Philly business meeting, Shiota will assume the role of RCLRS Coordinator.  Joe Clark graciously agreed to act as the RCLRS Assistant Coordinator for the coming year.

MLA First-Time Attendees Buffet (Pat Fisken and Suzanne Eggleston Lovejoy)
Fisken and Lovejoy reported that they identified sixty-nine student and first-time attendees for the Philly meeting.  Fifty-nine of them accepted the invitation to attend the buffet.  Overall, the event was a great success.

Music Library Student Group (MLSG) (Yi Hong Sim, Past-Chair, Sofía Becerra-Licha, Chair)
“Born-Digital Librarians: Research and Reflections from a New Generation”
The Music Library Student Group's first conference program of student speakers, “Born-Digital Librarians: Research and Reflections from a New Generation,” took place in Philadelphia on Friday, February 11. Three students—Jack Falk (Univ. Washington '12), Yi Hong Sim (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison '11), and Lindy Smith (Univ. Illinois Urbana-Champaign '11)—presented independent segments, each featuring a digitization project or current topic within digital information.  The program was well-attended by both professionals and students, and several librarians expressed an interest in seeing more student programs at future annual conference.

MLSG Business Meeting
The focus of this year’s MLSG business meeting was updating student conference attendees and MLA members on the group's activities and mission, and encouraging involvement with MLSG in the coming year.  The meeting drew sixteen attendees, including four MLSG officers and committee members, three MLA officers and regular members, and nine students, most of whom were not yet members.

MLSG Chair Yi Hong Sim gave an overview of group’s activities from the past year.  To support students' professional development, MLSG organized a variety of online activities: a résumé swap in June; a career event in October featuring MLSG co-founder and recent grad Veronica A. Wells discussing her job-searching experience; and the creation of a Delicious account to cull together resources for music library students.  In addition, MLSG undertook a trial run of virtual conferencing software for online career events, saw the growth of the group listserv to nearly 100 members, and organized the design and printing of promotional bookmarks for the group.  These lovely green bookmarks were designed by Lindy Smith (MLSG Programming Officer) and their printing was generously sponsored by Tom Caw (also at University of Wisconsin-Madison).

Those present expressed an interest in future student-related programming on issues such as mentorship or professional development.  The consensus was to dedicate MLSG's programming to the niche purpose of having a regular all-student program at MLA annual meetings, while investigating the possibility of creating partnerships with other MLA committees to support occasional programming related to other student interests.  Finally, Sim encouraged all students present to start thinking about program possibilities for MLA 2012 and to consider running for officer positions in MLSG for 2011-12.

MLSG Social Event  
On Friday night, MLSG met for a social dinner.  Ten attendees showed up for this event organized by the Programming Committee, and a good time was had by all.  Following dinner, the group continued discussion at Loews Hotel. Topics of discussion included everything from coursework to contract negotiations on the job market, along with musical interests, career aspirations, and life stories.  All in all, the inaugural MLSG-at-MLA social was deemed a great success. 

Elections for 2011-12
The structure of MLSG's governance served it well for an inaugural year, but as with most things, there is room for improvement.  Based on their first year's experience, the 2010-11 team of MLSG officers and committee officers worked long and hard after returning from Philadelphia to assess the effectiveness of MLSG's officer and committee structure.  From there, they drafted revised position descriptions for 2011-12.  The official positions and accompanying descriptions are still available online at https://sites.google.com/site/musiclibrarystudents/news/officercommitteepositionsfor2011-12-1.

An issue raised at the business meeting was the eligibility of recent graduates to serve as officers or committee officers.  The MLSG membership's majority vote shortly after San Diego determined that, going forward, recent graduates in MLSG will still be eligible to volunteer on committees, but only current students will be eligible for officership.  The membership voted to allow an exception for December graduates, so that students will be eligible to run for officership as long as they are graduating no sooner than December of the upcoming officer term.
 
The 2011-12 MLSG officers and committee members were announced in April:
Chair: Sofía Becerra-Licha (UNC-Chapel Hill); Membership Officer: Lisa VanHeldorf (Clarion University); Programming Officer: Amanda Pence (University of Missouri-Columbia); Publicity Officer: Nichole Maiman Waterman (University of Washington); Publicity committee: Hannah Co (University of Washington); Web Technologies Officer: Tim Cook (UNC-Chapel Hill).

Are you a new student interested in getting involved? Openings remain for both the programming and publicity committees – please email mlsgofficer1@gmail.com for more details!

Recommendations from the Outgoing Chair (Sheri Stormes)
Presiding over her final meeting as CDS Committee Chair, Sheri Stormes stated that there are still a few items of "unfinished business" that the committee may wish to address in the near future.  Stormes recommended:

• Review/update of MLA Web site statement:  "Music Librarianship:  Is It for You?" with consideration of how it relates to "Careers in Music Librarianship" (Andrew Justice, UNT; Renee McBride, UNC) and Core Competencies (currently under revision led by Sheri Stormes).
• Revisiting/reviving the Career Mentoring Program.  Begun under the leadership of Jeanette Casey and Laurel Whisler, this program involved a long-term (i.e. one year) pairing of an MLA member new to the profession with a more experienced MLA member.  The mentees indicated particular areas of interest and were paired with seasoned professionals with expertise or extensive experience in one or more of those areas.  Stormes suggested exploring opportunities for inviting retired MLA-member librarians to serve as mentors/career advisors. 
• Sheri mentioned that during the "Speed-Dating" event, she had extended conversations with some retired MLA-members.  They would appreciate not only having some "role" in the organization but also some sort of recognition (e.g., designation on nametags and/or recognition at the Business Meeting).
• Discussion of possible MLA position statement on "Faculty Status for Music Librarians." This also may involve construction and administration of a survey through MLA-L. (interest in this issue was originally raised byLinda Mack and Sheri Stormes)

"Core Competencies for Music Librarians" – Revisited and Revised (Sheri Stormes)
Prior to the business meeting, Sheri Stormes had distributed to the committee members a draft of a revised statement of core competencies for music librarians.  Many people have had input into the process.  Since the San Diego meeting, Stormes sent out a first draft.  The draft document is based on and reflects [still-relevant] points presented in several prior documents. The new revision also incorporates suggestions that came out of a discussion of the topic at the San Diego CDS business meeting.  Maurice Wheeler, Jeanette Casey, and Kirstin Dougan submitted substantial suggestions for revision prior to the Philadelphia meeting.  The iteration which Stormes sent to the committee included comments by both Casey and Dougan that had not yet been fully integrated into the document.  (Stormes had not had a chance to incorporate the suggestions before the meeting.)  The membership felt that it was too difficult to react to the changes as they had received them.  Stormes agreed to create a clean document and resubmit it to the membership for comment at a reasonable time following the Philadelphia meeting.  Before the discussion ended, however, a few suggestions were made to add statements relating to copyright knowledge, the ability to write for publication, facility with social networking, and experience in professional communication.  Stormes also suggested that future edits should address any relevant ADA concerns.

New Business
As a follow-up to Stormes’ suggestion that the Career Mentoring Program be revisited, Lisa Shiota suggested that it would be a good idea to offer on-site career advising at the MLA Meetings.  Committee members were receptive to this suggestion and further proposed that the committee should have one sign-up table (near the conference registration area) labeled "Career Services," at which interested attendees could sign up for an interview (through Placement Services), a Résumé and Cover Letter Review, or a Career Counseling session with an appropriate Career Advisory Service mentor.  The volunteers staffing this table could be cross-trained to guide those seeking services to the appropriate sign-up sheet.  The membership felt that this might alleviate some confusion about which service does what.  It would also provide for more efficient staffing of the services.  Stutzbach and Shiota agreed to pursue this idea and hope to effect the change by the Dallas Meeting, if possible.

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The first meeting of the newly formed Oral History committee met on February 10th in Philadelphia. Jenny Colvin opened the meeting with an excellent presentation of the Southeast Chapter (SEMLA) Oral History Project.

In business relating to the new committee, questions were posed about the proposed Web site: server administration, conformity, administration, and guidelines for site use. Several from the committee have expressed interest in working on the site, pending clarification. Following this, members reviewed and discussed the Mission Statement (by chair Therese Dickman) and the need for specific goals. The goals relate to the Web site, the logical place for procedural and historical information. Email communication among members during the coming year can clarify many points.

Anne Rhodes offered to present clips from Yale University’s Oral History of American Music Archives. This program may also feature “greatest hits”—interview excerpts from chapter projects. Relating to chapters—since not all MLA chapters are represented on the Oral History committee, it is important that equal representation of all chapters be sought. A letter soliciting membership may be sent to each chapter.

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The Women in Music round table met on February 12th in Philadelphia. Sabine Kemna, representative of the German publisher Furore, joined us at the meeting to promote the 25th anniversary of this publishing house, which specializes in works by past and contemporary women composers. Future topics for WMRT meetings were discussed, including: collecting of sound recordings or scores by women and presentations on women musicians representing the region where the MLA annual meeting is held. A suggestion was made to provide a bibliography or handout relevant to presentations. WMRT also discussed ways to keep interested members involved throughout the year; these included creating a wiki or Facebook page, posting to MLA-L, and communicating via email. WMRT put out a call for proposals or ideas women composers and musicians related to Texas music traditions for the 2012 MLA Meeting in Dallas. Please contact co-coordinators Anna Kijas (anna.kijas@uconn.edu) and Cait Miller (cmill@loc.gov) with relevant ideas and proposals.

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23-28 June 2011
American Library Association Annual Conference

1 July 2011
Application deadline for Dena Epstein Award

5 July 2011
Submissions due for Music Cataloging Bulletin

15 July 2011
Nominations deadline for MLA Publications Awards,
Walter Gerboth Award

30 July 2011
Applications due for Carol June Bradley Award

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Please send citations for items published or premiered in the past calendar year to the column editor, Mac Nelson, via e-mail or USPS mail at the address below. Please follow the citation style employed below. You must be a current MLA member to submit citations.

Mac Nelson
Cello Music Cataloger
Jackson Library
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
P.O. box 26170
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
wmnelson@uncg.edu

Books and Chapters

Beisswenger, Drew (Missouri State University)
North American Fiddle Music: A Research and Information Guide (New York: Routledge, 2011).

Rausch, Robin (Library of Congress)
“The Women who Built the MacDowell Colony,” in Women in the Arts: Eccentric Essays in Music, Visual Arts and Literature, edited by Barbara Harbach and Diane Touliatos-Miles (New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 57-67.

Articles

McBride, Renée (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
“Look What We Got! How Inherited Data Drives Decision-Making: UNC-Chapel Hill’s 19th-Century American Sheet Music Collection.” Code4Lib Journal 13. (April 2011).
http://journal.code4lib.org/issues/issue13

Moore, Tom (Durham, North Carolina)
“An Interview with LiduinoPitombeira.”MusicaBrasileira.(May 2011).
http://musicabrasileira.org/liduinopitombeira/lp2011.html

“Conversation with David A. Jaffe.”Sonograma, 10.(April 2011).
http://www.sonograma.org/2011/04/tom-moore-david-jaff/

“Sammartini Articulation, Part 3.”Flute Focus.(25 March 2011).
http://www.flutefocus.com/431-sammartini-articulation-part3.html

“An Interview with Ivan Elezovic.”21st Century Music.(January 2011).
http://21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com/2011/01/interview-with-ivan-elezovic-tom-moore.html

"An Interview with composer David Ludwig."Opus 16, no. 1 (June 2010).
http://www.anppom.com.br/opus/opus16/101/101-Moore-Ludwig.pdf

"Uma entrevista com o compositor David Ludwig."Opus 16, no. 1 (June 2010).
http://www.anppom.com.br/opus/opus16/101/101-Moore-Ludwig-pt.pdf

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