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Libraries in Music Teaching Institutions branch sessions at 1998 conference in San Sebastian

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Session 1. Monday June 22

Teaching reform and preservation of historical heritage: perspectives from Spain, Italy and United States

Music Conservatory Libraries in Spain: an overview after the teaching reform

Koldo Bravo (Conservatorio de Música, San Sebastian, Spain)
Conservatories libraries and music school libraries in Spain live in a difficult environment: libraries in music teaching institution are not much, with few persons working in them; beyond these cases several schools have no library but only few music documents. Therefore not many people are fully aware of the importance of this problem.
Music teaching institutions recently changed their organization since a new law was approved in 1990 (LOGSE, Ley de Ordenación General del Sistema Educativo).
Starting from this background situation the paper explains positive features which are developing at present to improve library services and how music teaching reform affects music libraries.

Balancing traditions and innovations: collection development strategies for university/conservatory music libraries when music teaching agendas evolve

Thomas F. Heck (The Ohio State University, USA)
Music libraries in colleges and conservatories, unlike the music departments of most national libraries and public libraries, exist to support the study of music at their own institutions.
Their acquisitions budgets, fixed perhaps years ago to maintain a classic music program, are generally not adequate to fund such new and fashionable fields of study as world music, jazz and popular musics, the urban musics of ethnic minorities, and the new audiovisual formats for all of the above.
Ten suggestions are offered: ideas to enlarge one's own acquisitions budget as a function of new course offerings, and/or to identify other, non-traditional sources of support.

The Role of Conservatory Libraries in Italy

Agostina Zecca Laterza (Conservatorio di musica "G. Verdi", Milano, Italy)
Which is the role of a conservatory library in Italy? Going towards a virtual library is still up-to-date the distinction between "school" and "research" library? Do we have good grounds to break up historical collections from the institutions in which they are born or in which they have been preserved for centuries? Which is the difference between a music school orchestra and a professional one in their need for scores?
The shameful condition of the Naples conservatory library has been the standing point to let Italian actual administrators consider themselves answerable for the fifty years old unsolved problem to give a new 'status' to conservatory libraries.
The question is at present under discussion: bills are in progress, and efforts are being done to provide money to fund them.

 

Session 2. Tuesday June 23

Networking and access to music collections in the libraries of Music Teaching Institutions

Roundtable discussion with national reports.

Comment at reply from Japan

Yasuko Todo (Toho Gakuen School of Music, Tokyo, Japan)
The questionnaire was sent to 13 music teaching institutions, all of whom are members in the IAML Japanese Branch. Ten libraries replied, resulting in a 77% reply rate. The following is a summary of their completed questionnaires.

1. Networking

  • Three libraries participate in OCLC, but because Japanese publications (i. e. books on music and audio-visual materials in Japanese) can not be catalogued to OCLC in Japanese, they are only partial participants.
    The libraries make original catalogues for Japanese books and audio-visual materials in their library system, and offer online public access catalogues (OPAC).
    Three libraries participates in NACSIS (National Center for Science Information system). Those libraries have not yet implemented an on line public access catalogue (OPAC) for music materials.
    Paralleling that, although not an online network, most music libraries are members of the Music Library Association of Japan. This includes the libraries in music teaching institutions. Further on one college participates in an academic consortium in their local area.
  • All libraries participating in networking have a common purpose of resource sharing and shared cataloging.
  • NACSIS has no specific file for music materials (i.e. musical scores and audio visual materials). Because all materials are catalogued in the file for books, it may be difficult to access and to develop the library system.
  • All libraries starting up a computerized catalogue, are in the process of retrospecting from a card catalogue.
    Because of this, the numbers of bibliographical records are progressively changing.
    The numbers of bibliographical records which are catalogued in OCLC are a part of numbers of OPAC in house. All bibliographical records numbers are entered in as the denominator and the numbers of the OCLC are entered in as the numerator.
    There is exceptionally a union catalogue for PERIODICALS OF ALL academic libraries in the NACSIS database. It is accessible by NACSIS Web-cat, CD-ROM and book materials. The libraries not participating in any networks on-line still maintain an original card catalogue or have computerized data in the library.
    Many libraries of music teaching institutions in Japan are only in the process of considering of computerized catalogues. This is because many of the institutions do not have a big budgets, and the libraries may be hesitating, withholding, or waiting to select a better situation.
    As I reported last year, one of the main problems is that we are progressing with two systems. One is the LS/1system for music developed by the Kunitachi College of Music. This system uses OCLC as a bibliographical utility. The second system has plans to use NACSIS as a bibliographical utility.
  • The libraries participating in computer-networking use LCC, LC-subject heading and Dewey Classification.
    Then we ensure the access by the medium of performance and musical form. Furthermore, we still have an increasing interest in the possibilities of the computer. However, unfortunately, we do not yet have complete access to individual compositions of musical works that the users who study practical skills for music want directly and quickly. Each library is trying to find a solution for this problem, but has not yet succeed. What do you think about this problems?

2. Internet

At present, Showa Academia Musicae and Doshisha Women's College are the only institutions with home pages. Their home page addresses are as follows, but it should be noted that the libraries have not yet opened their catalogues to the public:

Kunitachi College of Music has plans to open their catalogue to the public, on their web site, in 1999. Furthermore, the Music Library Association of Japan (MLAJ) and the IAML Japanese branch also have their own web pages. Those addresses are listed below. If a library starts a new home page, you can find out and link to the URL addresses from these sites. Unfortunately, the Japanese home pages are set up mostly in Japanese. The IAML Japanese branch is the exception with a simple version in English.

Anyway now we can partly access the catalogues of libraries in the network system, OCLC, World-cat in The First Search and NACSIS Web-Cat. The NACSIS Web-cat address is as follows:


3. CD-ROM

  • There seem to be no CD-ROM catalogues available on commercial basis. At Toho-Gakuen School of Music where I work, we currently use a CD-ROM catalogue downloaded from NACSIS. This CD-ROM holds only data for Toho-Gakuen School of Music and is only a temporary solution until an online public access catalogue (OPAC) is developed. This is not available on a commercial basis.
  • I have to say that many libraries depend on CD-ROM not only for the researchers, but for catalogers as well. The libraries have many CD-ROM for music bibliographical data, which are provided by OCLC, European National Libraries, R-projects of IAML and others.

4. Assessment

Three-fifths of the libraries which use computer networking responded that there has been an increased number of inter-library loan requests, both from other libraries and from their own users.
All things considered, Japanese researchers and catalogers (including those not responding to the questionnaire) are eager to get bibliographical information on European music. However, the systemization of the music libraries-network is still in the first steps of development, because most music institutions have not a big budget.
Without getting into too many details, let me tell you that as a private school in Japan, it is difficult to cooperate. The private school has a strong independent policy about management and the budget. The structures surrounding libraries are complicated. Librarians must at all times explain the meaning of networking to the administrative board at the schools.

Holdings with significant digital data %

Institution Holdings Digital %
Kunitachi College of Music 138,000 books, 104,000 score, 74,000 audiovisual, 2,300 periodicals 51%
Toho Gakuen School of Music 45,500 books, 60,000 score, 33,300 Audiovisual, 514 periodicals 8%
Tokyo College of Music 51,368 book, 42584 score, 32575 audiovisual, 1,006 periodicals 57%

 

Comment at reply from U.S.A.

Jane Gottlieb (The Juilliard School, New York City, USA).
(no abstract)