Overindulgence at the Music Library Association Annual Meeting, Vancouver, 2005

Citation

(2005), "Overindulgence at the Music Library Association Annual Meeting, Vancouver, 2005", New Library World, Vol. 106 No. 9/10. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2005.072106iac.001

Overindulgence at the Music Library Association Annual Meeting, Vancouver, 2005

The richly complex field of music encompasses composers, performers, listeners, and researchers. Music librarians, themselves practitioners of this art, serve this diverse group by illuminating the intersection of musicians and the provision of their information needs.

The Music Library Association's (MLA) Annual Meeting, held from 14 to 20 February 2005, in Vancouver, British Columbia, offered a plethora of events that spoke to this diversity. As at past conferences, I was confronted with the daunting prospects of making choices among concurrent activities, and feeling regretful about what I had to miss. I reveled in the sumptuous banquet of information and camaraderie! Papers, round table discussions, chats with colleagues, poster sessions, committee meetings, and conversations with vendors whetted my appetite.

Music librarianship is often regarded as a “special” discipline, so peculiar that we and our collections often occupy different locations (or even buildings!) than our generalist colleagues. In fact, we share similar issues with librarians in other fields. The events that I attended emphasized four of these issues:

1. 1.

   user focus;

2. 2.

   reorganization;

3. 3.

   information literacy; and

4. 4.

   preservation.

Of course, many events were pertinent to multiple issues. What follows is a mere sampling of the array this conference offered.

User focus

The Music Online User's Group (MOUG) pre-conference workshop focused on the impending implementation of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). Deb Bending of OCLC described this “Conceptual Model for the Bibliographic Universe” (Tillet, 2004) in a presentation entitled “FRBR and Its Implications for Public and Technical Services”. In the customary “Ask MOUG” session attendees expressed concerns about how the complexities of music cataloging could be effectively expressed within the FRBR framework. An irony became apparent: FRBR's intended efforts to ease user accessibility may in fact frustrate the user's meaningful retrieval of music scores and recordings. Other valuable sessions included Stephen Luttman's Understanding MARC Bibliographic Records (For Reference Librarians) and Su Ellen Stancu's Understanding MARC Authority Records (For Catalogers).

The first plenary session, Libraries and Commercial Online Music, examined the timely issue of the digitization and delivery of recorded music materials. Alec McLane moderated presentations delivered by the industry's two predominant vendors and a librarian describing a particular application of streaming audio at her institution. Tim Lloyd of Alexander Street Press (Classical.com) and Justyn Baker of Naxos Music Library have impressive backgrounds in the digitization process. Rather than merely pitching company products, both representatives examined the process and progress of music digitization as well as its impact on libraries and their users. They projected an optimistic future consisting of a continually expanding variety and quality of resources in their individual collections, a reduction in customer costs, and the eventual simplification of licensing and copyright procedures. Both companies have instituted boards of advising librarians. Complementing the sales-based perspective of these talks with the customers' needs, Amanda Maple contributed a practical view from the trenches in Online Music at Penn State: Integrating Audio from Commercial Online Vendors into Teaching and Learning. Her paper described the alliance between Penn State and Napster with the purpose of exploring Napster as a music reserves provider in a curriculum with a strong distance-learning component.

The Best of Chapters featured Gary Boye's Online Pathfinders for World Music: New Directions in Bibliographic Instruction and Collection Development. Boye noticed that users had difficulty accessing locally held world music resources. He remedied this situation by making local changes in subject headings and re-educating users in appropriate searching techniques. Observation of his users' habits ultimately inspired a creative solution: Boye developed a database organized by world maps, constructed to present a more user-friendly approach to searching for world music. (Boye, n.d.)

Reorganization

The second plenary session addressed Reorganization and the Music Librarian. Brenda Muir presented the Transformation of Library and Archives Canada – Impacts and Challenges for the Music Areas – An Unfinished Symphony. She described the process and partial results of the incorporation of two distinct collections: the National Library of Canada and the National Archives of Canada. The transformation, based on the two institution's similar goals, the impact of digitization, and the opportunity for enhanced reference service, is about half-way completed. In spite of some positive effects, the current impact on the music collection remains somewhat negative. In Library Organization: A Failure, Ned Quist documented Brown University Libraries' attempt to reorganize in order to provide a user-centered, collaborative environment. He identified several reasons for the failure and provided useful methods for coping and surviving such a difficult process. Paula Elliot reviewed the history of reorganization in the library literature and reminded us that we must be Embracing Change in our participation in the “music of management, the dance of change”.

A more positive note was sounded by Kerri Scannell's poster session, Leaving Teams Behind: Reorganizing a Library Structure for the Future. This traces the abandonment of a team-based structure and the implementation of a new user-centered organization model. Anne Harlow envisioned a different type of reorganization (perhaps a reconceptualization); her paper effectively demonstrated the need for academia to create a different set of procedures and standards for Evaluating Scholarly Credentials in the Performing Arts.

Information literacy

Paul Cary, chair of the Bibliographic Instruction Subcommittee, commenced with a review of the soon-to-be published document, Information Literacy Instructional Objectives for Undergraduate Music Students. The Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) similar publication served as a framework for this report. Cary described this as a big document, with many discrete elements, and suggested that institutions pull out and modify sections to suit their particular needs. Beth Christensen, Laurie Sampsel, and Cheryl Taranto each presented differing approaches to fulfilling these instructional objectives by describing programs currently in use at their libraries.

Information literacy projects were also in evidence at the poster sessions. Michael Duffy developed an instructional web site, “Using the NIU Music Library”, to fill a much-needed gap in music library instruction (“Using the NIU Music Library: Delivering Basic Asynchronous Library Instruction via the Web”). Bonnie Hauser and Michael Dalby created MILT, an online tutorial that is now a required tool in their Freshman Colloquium (MILT – An Emerging Music Information Literacy Tutorial).

Preservation

The Jazz and Popular Music Roundtable considered The Role of Analog Recordings in the Digital Future: What do We Preserve and Why? Gary Boye moderated this discussion, which included the following issues:

• •

  what is lost or gained in the replacement of analog recordings by CDs?

• •

  the cost of accepting gifts;

• •

  the potential for loss of valuable archival material in poorly-run institutions;

• •

  catalogers' neglect to record an item's condition in MARC records;

• •

  the question of whether one is collecting the content or cover art of an analog recording.

This session was an expertly informed conversation among knowledgeable participants.

The MLA Preservation Committee is currently conducting a binding survey. This document was included in the conference information packet. The questions seek to discover information about the respondent's role in the binding process, technical and financial matters, and suggestions for ideal binding situations.

The above descriptions represent only a portion of the conference events. Those interested in detailed summaries of these events may visit MLA's web site and link to the most recent edition of the Music Library Association (2005). Very preliminary information for next year's annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee is also available at this site.

Canada's perfect surroundings

Vancouver and its environs provided a feast for the eyes. During our stay at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, we were graced with an amazingly unusual precipitation-free week that illuminated the light-capturing windowed architecture of the downtown area. Nearby Stanley Park and wilderness areas beckoned to those who love the outdoors. The Local Arrangements Committee had gathered a wealth of local sight-seeing information for our curious, itinerant group. Planned activities included tours of the Vancouver Public Library, the Vancouver City Tour, an organ crawl, and the First Nations Cultural Tour (Native American).

The time has come to drop the food metaphor and speak briefly of feasting, literally, in Vancouver. Its diverse population supports many cuisines: I had an excellent, inexpensive Middle Eastern meal and the best fish I have yet eaten. The conference banquet far outshone any meal I have had at any convention, anywhere. This is a city that seriously tempts even the most dedicated attendee to stray from conference proceedings.

Of course, the success of this conference was augmented by its spectacular physical surroundings. The real treat, however, is the body of collective wisdom that is graciously and liberally dispensed by colleagues in an environment of great possibility and optimism. In fact, the crucial dynamic of this experience in Vancouver, as in other past MLA conferences, is expressed within its title: “Annual Meeting”. The term meeting, defined as “the act or an instance of assembling or coming together for social, business, or other purposes”, (Oxford English Dictionary, 2005), exemplifies the singularly most valuable aspect of these conferences: an inherent sense of collaboration, borne of human interaction. MLA in Vancouver was an experience of overindulgence, but one that provides a satiety that will continue to inform its participants for days to come.

Daryll Stevens

MLS Candidate, Colorado Cohort, School of Library and Information Management, Emporia State University, and Library Coordinator, Albert Seay Library of Music and Art, Colorado College, USA