Two Months Gone, Four To Go

One third of the way through this sabbatical deserves an update.  Especially since I haven't posted about anything here in a while.

Since my last update I am still working through the Composer column to research the names that were problems during the first pass.  I'm currently a little more than 30% done.  As expected it is taking a while to work on each name.  Some are easier than others.  The problem names are color coded four different ways.  Those that are in highlighted in yellow are names that are not in the authority file.  I've decided to leave those alone for now.  I am focusing instead on the other three problem types and for the most part I have been able to figure out either who in the authority file the person is or change the color coding to yellow because the name is not in the authority file.

Two weeks ago I attended the Music OCLC Users Group Meeting and the Music Library Association Annual Conference.  While at these meetings I chatted with several colleagues about my project and specifically about what they were each interested in knowing about how others manage their recital recordings.  I had some very interesting conversations with people from small institutions and large institutions.  It helped give me more perspective on how I would like to put together a survey and the kinds of questions I should ask.  I also received a lot of good ideas on questions to ask on the survey.  I am hoping to start putting together my questions soon based on my notes of my ideas and the notes I took while at the conference.  I even had someone volunteer to look over a draft of the survey questions.

After two months I do feel like I have accomplished something, although right now it doesn't feel like it as I work through the problem names.  But I have a much more organized spreadsheet and a plan for the the parts that are still to be dealt with.  Plus the survey is coming together even if it is currently in my notes and in my head.  There is still a lot to do in the next four months!

Progress Update

In the last update I gave I had completed about 70% of the "Name" column on the spreadsheet.  That column consisted of student performer names, ensemble names, faculty ensemble names, faculty names, guest performers, and a few other random names.  Mostly I was separating out the individual names from the ensemble names.  That is now done!

What is now left in that column and the columns that got created from it is to separate out multiple names.  Some cells have two or more performers' names or two or more ensemble names.  I also haven't gone through those columns for authorized names.  So that is all still to be done.

I have also just completed my first pass through the column labeled "Composer."  This column had been worked on previously.  So I sorted the spreadsheet so it was in order according to this column and started going through it again.  I created four new columns to go along with this one:

• Composer: name only (existing column)
• Composer#$b: any sort of number associated with a name
• ComposerOther$c: any sort of title (for example, Sir) associated with a name
• ComposerFuller: for the fuller version of a name (when a name is commonly used with initials and we know what the initials stand for, we often put the fuller form of the name in parenthesis in another subfield in the name field).
• ComposerDates: Birth and/or death dates associated with a name

Since this field was already checked against the authority file, I was just moving the info around.  It went pretty quickly.  It's not 100% done, but the good majority of it is done.  The remainder cells have some sort of issue associated with them: multiple names, just a last name, two or more possible authorized headings, problems with diacritics in Excel, unauthorized names, and a few other minor problems.  Those are all highlighted in different colors to let me know what the problem is.

My next step is to go through the Composer column again and work on those highlighted cells.  I expect this to take a little longer since I'll have to go into the authority file for each one and try to determine the correct form of name.  I'll also have to move the additional names to a different column.  I currently have three additional columns for "Other name."  

I'll get started on this this week, but then I'm leaving early next week to attend the Music OCLC Users Group Meeting and the Music Library Association's annual conference in Dallas, TX.  While there I'll probably take the opportunity to try and talk to other librarians about the cataloging and management of the recital recordings at their institutions.  I'm looking forward to the trip!

Midwest, MLA Meeting, 2011

This weekend, Oct. 27-29, 2011, I attended the Midwest chapter meeting of the Music Library Association.  It’s always such a fun meeting.  It’s like attending a mini-MLA national meeting.  While attending this meeting I started talking to my colleagues about my upcoming sabbatical project.

When I started asking questions it was at the very end of the Cataloging Committee meeting on Thursday afternoon.  Surveys are on my mind but I’m a bit hesitant about how to do a survey.  While I had a bunch of music catalogers in a room, I figured I’d toss out my project idea and ask for input, suggestions, questions, etc.  I didn’t want to take up time at this particular meeting at this particular time (mostly because I still have too many thoughts swirling around my head that haven’t coagulated into much of anything yet), so I just asked that people find me over the next two days and we’ll talk. 

An interesting thing happened though.  As I approached people and started asking questions about their recital and concert performance recordings, I not only got several ideas, but it also raised more questions for me.  This is the great thing about conferences!!

 
A few things I now have written down include:

• Question: In our Archives department: 
• Do they already hold anything related to recitals and concerts performed by School of Music students and faculty??  If so, what formats are they in?
• Can Archives store/house anything we currently have in the Fine Arts Library?  For example, recordings older than a certain date?  How about the programs, particularly after we get them all digitized?
• Question: Where are the masters of the concerts/recitals?  The School of Music?
•  Template: Someone told me that they have a template; it is a constant data file in OCLC.  My idea was always to create a template in Voyager (our local ILS), but this sounded like a better idea.
• Pro: original record is added to OCLC directly (no importing records from Voyager)
• Pro: by using constant data, we wouldn’t have to redo or change a template if we were  to move to a different ILS system
• Con: someone with access to OCLC would have to do the cataloging (this could also be a pro, depending on your perspective; for me, this wasn’t the plan, but plans can be changed)
• Question: Will we catalog recordings that no longer work?  Cassettes that have deteriorated, CDs that no longer work, etc.
• Reminder: take pictures!!  This came to mind as I talked with some people about how items are housed currently, the condition and preservation needs of items, and other preservation and archival issues I had not thought of yet.  Some pictures of the current set up might be good to have if we end up changing some things for preservations reasons sometime down the road.

I was surprised at the number of people that told me they wanted to know more about what I was doing or how my project goes and what I did, etc.  Several others have a variety of issues and levels of cataloging (or non-cataloging) of their recital and concert recordings and are curious to hear more about this project.

I think my next step is really to figure out what I want to know from other institutions.  I could ask a bazillion questions, but that probably wouldn’t help me out much.  I really need to focus my thoughts and figure out what 2-3 issues I want to learn more about so I can create an appropriate survey. 

It has been a while, but at one time I had done a search on the MLA-L archives and found posts from others who had queried the list with questions about cataloging their recital and concert recordings.  Those questions would be helpful to pull up again.  That’s really what I need to ask about and put together all the answers into one place: one article or something that would be useful for the next person who has the same questions.

This project seems to get bigger and bigger every time I start thinking about it.