Thursday, February 10, 2011

Music Library Association conference

While this is a small conference, with about 500 attendees plus about 100 vendors, I am still at somewhat of a loss because I don't know anyone at anything more than an acquaintance level. However, that said, I am meeting a lot of people & learning quite a bit, so the conference comes at a "just in time" place of need. Here are some tidbits:
  • InstantEncore is a repository for live classical music & recordings of concerts & recitals. Note: added to Music LibGuide.
  • In the session "Born & Reincarnated Digital: One Course Management System-based Solution to Providing Copyright Compliant Streaming Audio Reserves," I learned that they use a CMS like Blackboard by creating a "Media.Reserves" instructor (who may add content but not access grades), & the librarian/CR staff use this to add listening modules to courses. They use mp3 files which are uploaded. They also use 2 different software programs to edit the metadata (PA Software ID3) and make it searchable (GEMM). Seems unnecessarily complicated, if ARES is working well enough for GVSU.
  • In "Educating Music Librarians in the Digital Age," I realized that what I most need right now is:
  1. instruction & exercises in using Grove via Oxford Music online to find music in our collected works,
  2. help with acquisitions of non-book materials--when to use which vendor and why
  3. what is a uniform title: tutorial from Indiana University
  4. Why doesn't Naxos index the titles on their CD covers (I have to go downstairs & ask them)
  5. to download Jing to use for screenshots
  6. get a mentor to guide me in the above quests.
I also learned about:
I toured the Free Library of Philadelphia's reading room in the Music Department, the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music (the world's largest lending library of orchestral performance material), and the Rare Book department (saw treasures like 5000-year-old cuneiform and cuneiform seal, the first hymnals printed in this country, Beatrix Potter original paintings, illuminated medieval manuscripts). I've been all over Reading (pronounced "redding") Market (oh those soft, buttery, hot pretzels!), and saw City Hall (with the statue of William Penn atop it) and many sculptures & murals on the way to the Free Library. And I've successfully ridden the SEPTA train. It is sunny & very windy, but warmer than Michigan.

1 comment:

Choice said...

lovely! So glad to see in print the things that you are learning & experiencing. Good for you! Meanwhile, kitty & I miss you and anxiously await your return.

And I will be happy to assist you with the puzzle of uniform titles... from your personal librarian....