IAML International Association of Music Libraries

Minutes of the IAML General Assembly held at the Conservatorium of Music, Sydney, Australia. Friday, 6 July 2007

1. President's opening comments

Massimo Gentili-Tedeschi welcomed members of IAML to the General Assembly. Under the new procedures, in which a General Assembly is held each year, there will be no triennial reports from the President, Secretary General and Treasurer.

2. Secretary General's report and election results

The Secretary General presented a summary of the two Council meetings held during the week. The full minutes of these meetings will be distributed to Council members, and will also be available on the IAML website.

The Secretary General announced the results of the elections for President and Vice-presidents. Martie Severt was elected President, and Jim Cassaro was re-elected Vice-President for a second term. Three new Vice-Presidents were appointed - Jon Bagüés (Spain), Aurika Gergeleziu (Estonia), and Jutta Lambrecht (Germany). The retiring Board members were John Roberts (Past-President), and Vice-presidents Dominique Hausfater, Ruth Hellen and Federica Riva.

3. Treasurer's report

Following discussions at Council, the General Assembly was asked to approve a small increase in membership fees from 2009. Martie Severt proposed that the fees increase to € 59 (institutional) and € 35.50 (individual). This was seconded by Pam Thompson and passed unanimously.

4. Tributes

Brigitte Berenbruch
Head of the music library "Schumannhaus" Bonn from 1965 to1996.

On Monday July 2nd, 2007 Brigitte Berenbruch died at the age of 74. She was born and studied musicology in Eastern Germany. Before starting to work in Bonn in 1965 she had worked with Anthony Hoboken and several music publishers.

She was the second head of the Bonn public music library that was, and is still, situated in the building in which Schumann died in 1856. Having to share the building at first with a catholic home for the elderly and the Max-Reger-Institut she managed to claim and receive the whole building for the library. Without her dedication neither the two commemorative Robert-Schumann-rooms on the first floor would exist nor would the initiative for securing the existence of the house itself have been successful. The foundation of the Schumannhaus Bonn Association was based on her initiative and work. Thanks to her personal achievement several Schumanniana made their way from the former housekeeper of Schumann's daughters Marie & Eugenie to Bonn, Zwickau and Düsseldorf.

Opening the library's upper reference department and reading room she established a long tradition in presenting successful concerts in music libraries and insisted that the Bonn library be equipped with a grand piano. With her passion she was able to convince renowned artists to perform at the Schumannhaus.

As a sociable person she found networking easy and made contact with the other Schumann-institutions and researchers, such as the American musicologist Nancy Reich. The centenary of Clara Schumann's death in 1996 was her final year of service in which she still managed to present a wide range of concerts and other presentations to the public.

In Brigitte Berenbruch we lose a Schumann-passionate, valued colleague and friend who never hesitated to speak frankly. In former times she was present at international IAML conferences, and used to attend and enrich our German national IAML-conferences even after having retired.

Dr. Ingrid Bodsch (Head of the City Museum of Bonn).
Read by Thomas Kalk.

Brian Redfern
I should like to pay tribute to Brian Redfern, a former President of this Association, who died aged 84 on 12th December 2006, after battling gamely with ill-health for several years. It was typical of Brian that despite this he remained alert and involved with life right to the last.

Brian began his career in town and county libraries both before and after the Second World War, and after studying part-time for his library qualification he moved to Southall Public Library in London, first as Mobile Librarian and then as Deputy Librarian. In 1961 he became a lecturer in the School of Librarianship at the London North-West Polytechnic, teaching particularly courses in cataloguing and classification and library management. He progressed to Principal Lecturer, and finally Acting Head of the School before retiring in 1981. That was the day job, and you'll notice there's no mention of music in there – in fact he never was a music librarian as such. But from his earliest days in the profession he had been developing the idea of music librarianship, in public libraries particularly, as something much more than just looking after the gramophone records, and it's a little ironic that Southall appointed its first music librarian just as he left to take up lecturing.

Once at library school he designed a specific module on the Bibliography and Librarianship of Music, building a collection of books and recordings to support it, not to mention a piano which he had delivered from the makers next door. This module is what attracted to me to study librarianship at the Poly, where I first met Brian when he interviewed me, coming away with a first impression of a thoughtful and kindly man. Among other music initiatives he also initiated a research project into music library services which was published as an invaluable directory used by us all for many years, and another into orchestral sets provision. And in retirement – for 16 years – he edited the UK Music Publishers' Association's Music in Print catalogue, making it an infinitely better research tool in the process.Brian began his career in town and county libraries both before and after the Second World War, and after studying part-time for his library qualification he moved to Southall Public Library in London, first as Mobile Librarian and then as Deputy Librarian. In 1961 he became a lecturer in the School of Librarianship at the London North-West Polytechnic, teaching particularly courses in cataloguing and classification and library management. He progressed to Principal Lecturer, and finally Acting Head of the School before retiring in 1981. That was the day job, and youll notice theres no mention of music in there  in fact he never was a music librarian as such. But from his earliest days in the profession he had been developing the idea of music librarianship, in public libraries particularly, as something much more than just looking after the gramophone records, and its a little ironic that Southall appointed its first music librarian just as he left to take up lecturing.

Brian was very active in the United Kingdom Branch of IAML, particularly in the nineteen sixties and seventies, guiding its development and shaping its future, and he was awarded honorary membership for his outstanding contribution to the Branch. He was its President from 1972 - 1976, and as Branch Secretary at that time I greatly valued his support and encouragement. Indeed Brian was very generous in spotting potential in his students and younger colleagues, and there are many among us who remember with gratitude the opportunities he gave us at the beginnings of our careers. At the same time he was becoming a prominent figure in IAML itself, culminating in his being elected President – a position he held from 1980 - 1983. Despite an unassuming manner he had a quiet authority about him, and this combined with a very practical and pragmatic approach to problem solving ensured that IAML was in safe and productive hands.

Some of that authority came from his wide range of knowledge and abilities. In music his great love was Haydn, but he also had a passion for jazz. At our Branch's Annual Conference in 1979 he presented a session on staff training in the morning, and a talk on Duke Ellington in the evening! Outside music he was among other things a member of the counseling organisation The Samaritans, a Methodist lay-preacher and a wood carver. His publications reflect this diversity, among them Organising Music in Libraries, a seminal work dealing with arrangement, classification and cataloguing which was published in two volumes between 1966 & 1979, and Haydn: a bibliography, with a survey of books, editions and recordings published in 1970. He also developed considerable language skills, and a nice demonstration of this combined with his ready sense of humour occurred at the Stockholm Conference farewell dinner where he gave a personal interpretation of the French acronym for IAML –A.I.B.M. – to which we might all relate today: Ach, ich bin müde!

When people pass away after many years in retirement (25 years in Brian's case), they are of course still remembered by many, and only yesterday I was talking to a distinguished member of IAML who recalled how when he was a timid first-timer at a conference it was Brian who took the trouble to come over and introduce himself. To others however they are just a name from the past. But also in “retirement”, Brian edited our journal Fontes from 1987 - 1992, and his editorials carried messages that are still relevant today. While gentle in personal manner, he could be – often was – forthright in print. In his editorial to the July to September 1991 issue he notes how libraries are having to provide services on restricted funds, while some have their services closed or are battling against such a possibility. “Most people enjoy music”, he says, “and expect it to be instantly available, quite often without too much thought for the many who contribute to that provision. Research, bibliography, cataloguing etc. are all important, but so too is the battle against the Philistines”.

Finally come these words from his last editorial in the New Zealand special issue of 1992, illustrating his forward-thinking nature and appreciation of the work of others: “It is a pity that we cannot arrange international conferences in both New Zealand and Australia. They both have so much to offer”. Well Brian, it has taken respectively 7 years and 15 years, but you were right, would have known it was happening, and we're here!

Liz Hart
President, IAML (UK & Irl)

5. Reports from "R" projects

a) Répertoire international d'iconographie musicale (RIdIM)

On behalf of Antonio Baldassarre, President of the RidIM Commission Mixte, Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie reported that the RIdIM database is now online at http://www.ridim.org/

b) Répertoire international de littérature musicale (RILM)

Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie presented the following report:

RILM's year has been characterized by the pursuit of innovation and new ideas, with the primary goal of improving and enhancing the users' experience of RILM online. Along with the usual core tasks of abstracting, editing, and indexing current and retrospective publications, RILM has been working hard to exploit the richness embedded in the data so that more powerful and intuitive searches of RILM online are possible. To that end, the staff have been working on the construction of an interactive online thesaurus, an online index browse, storage of data in Unicode for full diacritical and non-roman character display, delivery of the complete data in XML format, expanding the classification system, and much more.

The contributions of national committees this year exceeded recent years. A total of 14,146 citations were added to the database by committees, as well as 10,819 abstracts. (Last year, these respective figures were 10,498 and 7,719). The RILM committees are at the very core of the RILM project. Without them, RILM's ever-daunting but worthy mission of global coverage would be utterly impossible.

RILM's global coverage has expanded, most notably with the establishment of new groups of abstractors in China in October 2006, and, beginning in the fall, Thailand as well. The new Chinese group have submitted over 2000 records to date, which include non-roman, transliterated, and English bibliographic information and abstracts.

As ever, RILM would like to establish new committees in countries that do not actively participate at present and could use the help of our colleagues. If you would like to become involved or know someone who would, let me know!

RILM is now publishing non-English abstracts as sent to the International Center in New York. These abstracts are published as is, without any editorial revision. It is hoped that these abstracts will be useful to non-English speakers. They will also significantly enrich the searchable vocabulary of RILM online.

RILM has been working for several years on cleaning up the old data and getting everything into the same format. None of these improvements have been seen online yet. RILM is delighted to report that, earlier this summer, all the data in our database has been delivered to our online vendors in its spanking new XML format. Improvements that will be apparent online include more uniform data, better linking to full-text and other resources, full diacritical display, new data fields, and more. The fruition of many years of work is finally at hand.

RILM is developing a new website that will be primarily oriented towards its users. As part of the effort to improve the search experience, tutorials are being planned that address the individual features of each vendor interface. These tutorials will be made available both as text and in video (Flash) formats. RILM is also developing an enhanced contact section for the website to increase communications with users. Users will be able to report errors, ask for help, and make suggestions regarding scope and coverage. A development that has already been implemented on the website is a browsable journals section.The database grew this year by 31,472 new main records and 4309 review records, which is a record for RILM.

In addition to current work, we are in the midst of an NEH-sponsored project to abstract and index Festschriften published before 1967. This project will be done in February 2008.

RILM will publish the proceedings of 65 papers from our 2005 historiography conference around the end of 2007 or early 2008.

c) Répertoire international de la presse musicale (RIPM)

Robert Cohen, the Founder and Director of RIPM was unable to attend conference. His report was read by Benjamin Knysak:

RIPM in Print, Online and on CD-ROM: New Titles
Over the past twelve months twenty volumes dealing with the following music periodicals have been published: The New Musical Magazine, Review and Register (London, 1809-1810); The English Musical Gazette, or, Monthly Intelligencer (London, 1819); Fliegende Blätter für Musik (Leipzig, 1855-1857); Schlesische Theater-Zeitung (Breslau, 1863-1864); The Musical Monthly and Repertoire of Literature, the Drama and the Arts (London, 1864-1865); Harvard Musical Review (Cambridge, 1912-1916); Musica d'oggi (Milan, 1919-1942); Melos (Berlin, 1920-1934); Musica Viva (Brussels, 1936); The Musical World (London, 1866-1878); Penguin Music Magazine & Music (respectively Harmondsworth, 1946-1949 & 1950-1952); La Cultura Musicale (Bologna, 1922-1923) [online/CD-ROM only]; Revue Pleyel (Paris, 1923-1927); 23. Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift (Vienna, 1932-1937). In all over 20,000 new annotated records were added to RIPM Online and RIPM on CD-ROM.

RIPM: Online Archive of Music Periodicals (full-text)
A model of the RIPM full-text Archive – which will be searchable and browsable through RIPM Online – has been created. And, with support from the software firm Image Access (www.imageaccess.com ) and most recently from the National Endowment for the Humanities (see below), work has begun (i) on the User Interface and (ii) on the software to capture, delineate and highlight the zones on a page or parts thereof that corresponds to RIPM's annotated records.

RIPM's Americas Initiative
RIPM's new Americas Initiative has two goals: (i) to extend RIPM activities to Latin America, and (ii) to expand RIPM's treatment of U.S. music journals (including those focusing on jazz). The recent creation of a RIPM group in Mexico is one reflection of this initiative. Another is the addition of numerous Latin American music journals in a microfilm or digitized format to the RIPM Archive housed at the International Center. Mary Wallace Davison, Linda Solow Blotner and John Shepard are coordinating this new initiative in the United States; Esperanza Berrocal is doing so in Latin America.

Other News:
1. Four New RIPM Groups. RIPM activities have been newly undertaken in Italy, at the Università di Torino (Dipartimento di discipline artistiche, musicali e dello spettacolo) on the initiative of Professor Alberto Rizzuti, and, at the Sezione di Musicologia of the Dipartimento di Scienze Linguistiche, Università di Perugia on the initiative of Professor Biancamaria Brumana, A new group has also been created in Spain at the Universidad de Granada organized by Dr. Franciso J. Giménez. In Bulgaria, a new RIPM group is now functioning in Sofia at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, with the collaboration of the Bulgarian Institute of Art Studies, both Institutes being part of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. And, RIPM's first Latin American group has been established in Mexico at, and with the support of, the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical "Carlos Chávez" (Cenidim) del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA).
2. Grants. This year RIPM received two major grants, one from the National Endowment for the Humanities to provide initial funding for the creation of the RIPM: Online Archive of Music Periodicals (full-text); and the other, a two-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue work on nineteenth-century music journals.
3. New Website. (www.ripm.org ). Containing much new content including all annual IAML reports and issues of Periodica Musica (in a searchable PDF format), the website will soon offer a model of the RIPM Online Archive of Music Periodicals (full-text).
4. New Publisher. With the recent addition of Ovid/SilverPlatter, RIPM is now available on four platforms, with the others being those of EBSCO, NISC, and OCLC.

d) Répertoire international des sources musicales (RISM)

Klaus Keil, Director of the RISM Zentralredaktion, presented the following report:

RISM is in a phase of reconstruction. This reconstruction will be based on the newly developed program, Kallisto, which enables us to strengthen the work-flow and makes the collaboration with our working groups closer and a free-of-charge access to our data via the German Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Musikwissenschaft. We hope this will make it much more attractive to collaborate with RISM-Zentralredaktion.

The reconstruction is also forced by our financer who wants to reduce our budget perceptibly from 2009 on. From this time on the Zentralredaktion will act just as an agency or clearinghouse. Nevertheless we will support all activities of working groups and other parties concerning source studies as much as possible. We thank you very much for every contribution and help. Let us hope that RISM will grow up in the future in the same way as it did in the last 15 years.

For former information please subscribe our Newsletter: http://rism.ub.uni-frankfurt.de

6. Reports from Chairs of Committees and Working Groups

IT Committee

Antony Gordon, Chair of the IT Committee reported that the IT Committee held a single working meeting in Sydney. A working membership was established with the intention of conducting business by means of a closed list as well as face to face at annual conferences. Most of the subsequent discussion concerned the IAML website including mechanisms for keeping content current, and encouraging broader usage of the site.

The IT Committee membership was Antony Gordon (British Library Sound Archive, London) (Chair), Michael Fingerhut (Ircam, Paris), Gabriele Gamba (IAML webmaster, Milan), Massimo Gentili-Tedeschi (Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Ufficio Ricerca Fondi Musicali, Milan), Elizabeth Giuliani (Bibliothèque national de France, Paris), and Julia Mitford (ExploreMusic, Gateshead, UK).

Working Group on Access to Music Archives

Inger Enquist, co-Chair of WAMA, reported that it had been a very busy week in Sydney. The project is basically about getting access to music archives – where are these important research materials kept? – the papers of composers, performers, opera companies, music publishers, instrument makers and so on.

There is information about this in various databases and the Working Group wants to harvest them via a one-stop-search to make the search easy. They also want to provide a database for registering music archives for countries and institutions that do not yet have that.

The group held three sessions in Sydney. They have been polishing the database; making small changes to it. They have also hammered out questions for a survey with the intention of finding out what is out there, i.e. which archival databases do you have that include music?

If you receive the survey, please help WAMA and fill it out. In December they will send in an application for money to the Mellon Foundation. It will include the costs for programming but also a request for networking money.

Working Group on Access to Performance Ephemera

Rupert Ridgewell, Chair of the Working Group reported that the Working Group has produced draft guidelines for describing collections of concert ephemera and planned to make these available for wider consultation over the coming year.

A priority for this year is to outline the conceptual framework for an international thesaurus of concert venues.

The UK & Ireland's online database of programme collections will be launched at the end of 2007 and will contain some 5000 new descriptions of collections held by major libraries, archives and performance venues.

7. Other reports

Fontes Artis Musicae

The Editor reported that the Publications Committee was giving consideration to the idea of introducing peer review of articles from 2008 onwards. However, it is proposed that this would only be sought on request from the author.

8. Any other business

Massimo Gentili-Tedeschi commented that this was his last moment as President. He thanked all IAML members for their support, and paid tribute to those Board members who would be retiring after this meeting – John Roberts, Dominique Hausfater, Ruth Hellen and Federica Riva. He doubted that he would fill the role of Past-President as effectively as John Roberts had done over the past three years, and was saddened that there had been a suggestion that the role be removed from the IAML structure.

Martie Severt, as incoming President, emphasized the human element of IAML. We need to be open-minded and open to change. He commented on the special location of Sydney for this year's conference and was pleased to see so many Australian members present.

The year ahead sees IAML represented at IFLA and IMC conferences. There are new ad-hoc committees formed and there is more thought given to young professionals. IAML today is the result of 56 years of development.

9. Presentation for Naples 2008

Agostina Zecca-Laterza reported that plans were well in hand for the Naples conference. An introductory DVD was show highlighting some of the cultural attractions of the city and the conference venue.

The meeting adjourned.