IAML International Association of Music Libraries

Tuesday 20 June 2006, 14.00
Thursday 22 June 2006, 9.00

Following the decision to revise the title of the Working Group, some discussion surrounding the use of the word ‘ephemera’ took place at the final IAML Council Session in Warsaw in 2005. The Working Group was instructed to reconsider the title and formulate an alternative, if possible. Members of the group felt, however, that it would be more useful to explain what was meant by the word ‘ephemera’, which is a recognised category of material in the English-speaking world. Use of the term to describe material produced for a particular musical event in no way suggests a pejorative commentary on the significance of the material. Rather, it reflects the fact that events are by definition ephemeral, in that they take place in time; the various documents produced in connection with an event (or a series of events) lose their practical utility once that event (or series of events) has passed. Sets of performance parts may also have been produced for a particular event, but they can be used again and again. A concert programme or poster, however, refers to a particular event (or series of events) and may not be readily reused once the event has concluded. Therefore the term ‘ephemera’ usefully distinguishes between documents that are date-specific and documents that are ‘timeless’.

A page has now been added to the IAML website with an introduction to the Working Group and reports of previous sessions. This can now act as a point of contact between members of the group and may be expanded further to include the following:

1. A classified series of links to related projects and online resources, especially digital resources and sites pertaining to the history of concerts and concert venues. This will be partially derived from the existing survive of holding institutions.
2. Guidance notes for finding material in different countries and / or practical notes on methodologies for using and citing performance ephemera.
3. A forum to allow members of the group (and others) to post information, comments or questions of general interest.

Work has been undertaken over the past year on producing a set of guidelines for describing collections of performance ephemera. This has so far been based mainly on the experience gained in the Concert Programmes Project in the UK and Ireland. We are now looking to continue broadening the scope of the guidelines to make them more generally applicable to people working in different countries. Kathy Adamson and Jon Bagüés have agreed to review the draft notes in conjunction with Rupert Ridgewell and Deborah Lee to further refine and supplement the document with examples of best practice, a select bibliography, and definitions/illustrations of the various types of material that fall in the category of performance ephemera. It was also suggested that the document should either be supplemented with translations of relevant terms or translated in its entirety into the various IAML languages. Volunteers would therefore need to be sought in at least three of the following IAML countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Denmark. The final document would then be circulated and made available via the group's page on the IAML website.

The desirability of producing guidance notes for describing items of performance ephemera was discussed. The notes could focus on the practical problems of catalogue ephemera in MARC, or they could offer a more comprehensive standard for describing the material. More work on this is needed over the coming year: Katherine Hogg and Deborah Lee offered to assist in outlining the scope and content of this document. To close the first session, Rupert Ridgewell showed an illustration of a major collection of international concert programmes known as the ‘Konzert-Programm Austausch’. Distributed by Breitkopf & Härtel from Leipzig, Germany, between 1892 and ca.1941, the Austausch scheme was issued rather like a periodical, with multiple instalments every year each consisting of 75 or more programmes. The geographic coverage is thought to encompass several European counties (notably Germany, Austria, Italy, France, and the UK), the US, Argentina and Russia. It is not clear precisely how the scheme operated and whether it was primarily conceived as a service for the publishing trade or for libraries. Paul Banks suggested that the Breitkopf catalogue for 1892 (the year the scheme is thought to have started) may offer relevant information. It was suggested that this might form the basis of a collaborative cataloguing / research or digitisation project in the future. Sets are currently known to exist at the following libraries in Europe and America:

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München: 1922 (issue 4)
British Library: 1901-1914
Newberry Library, Chicago: 1919/20 (issue 3); 1927-1941 (35  48 Jahrgang)
Öffentliche Bibliothek der Universität Basel: 1906/07 (issue 36 only); 1907/08 (issues 1-12, 22-24, 26); 1909/10 (issues 30-36); 1910/11 (issue 10-12, 16-21, 31-33)
Sächsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden: 1909-?

In the second session, Paul Banks presented a proposal for creating an online international thesaurus of concert venues. Data gathered during the course of the Concert Programmes Project could form the basis of a collaborative project to gather information relating to venues, including details regarding ownership, architecture, contractors, decorators, seating capacities, dimensions, etc. Discussion ensued on the pros and cons of creating a separate record for each physical structure (given that venues sometimes burn to the ground), or for each performance space within a performance complex, or for each new name applied to a building on a particular site. The scope of the project was also discussed, and it was noted that it potentially crossed several professional / disciplinary boundaries, notably the music library and musicological communities, but also theatre historians. The group agreed that the first step towards achieving this goal, to be delivered in the coming year, is to compile an extensive bibliography of scholarly listings of concert venues, hopefully in collaboration with RILM.