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MUSIC LIBRARY, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ANNUAL REPORT, 1 July 2001-30 June 2002
Prepared by: Richard Griscom, music librarian,
with assistance from
Richard Burbank, catalog coordinator,
William Buss, library technical assistant,
Esther Gillie, digital services coordinator,
Marlys Scarbrough, operations manager, and
Leslie Troutman, user services coordinator
I. Narrative Summary of the Year's Activities
I.A. Core Processes
I.A.1. Services and Access
Administration
Temporary assignment of music librarian to Slavic Library. In January 2002, Richard Griscom, at the request of the university librarian, accepted an appointment as acting head of the Slavic and East European Library through 21 August 2002. Leslie Troutman agreed to serve as acting music librarian during this time. In April 2002, Troutman began a medical leave, and at that point Griscom began dividing his time between the two libraries until returning full time to the Music Library in August. Troutman was back part time in May 2002 and had returned to a full-time schedule by the beginning of fall semester.
Circulation and shelf preparation
Voyager implementation. The major activity of the year was preparing for and implementing the Voyager circulation module. Marlys Scarbrough coordinated the Music Library's work on the migration from DRA to Voyager and was active in groups that planned and provided training for the entire library system. Considerable time was spent working on lists of location codes, loan periods, and staff authorization levels. All staff except Troutman went through circulation training.
Music cataloging
Voyager implementation. Kevin Medows coordinated the transition from DRA to Voyager for our cataloging department and served on the system-wide Voyager Cataloging Team, which made policy decisions related to the transition and provided staff training. The transition from DRA to Voyager involved a four-month "gap" period between March, when the DRA database was frozen, and July, when Voyager was brought online. During these months, cataloging staff searched materials in the backlog-as well as some incoming materials-on OCLC and assigned call numbers so that they could be processed more quickly once Voyager was up and running.
Retroconversion and reclassification of reference music scores. The staff continued the recon/reclass project for reference music scores (begun in spring 2001) until Paul Keith left the department in September 2002. At that point, work on the project had been completed through the middle of the alphabet. Work will not resume until the backlog is back to a manageable size.
Accommodated a medical leave in the department. Richard Burbank, the cataloging coordinator, was on a medical leave of absence for nine months of the year. The leave, which had begun on 2 April 2001, ended on 1 April 2002. The absence required changes in assignments to cover the administration of music cataloging. Andy Bendel, who had assumed responsibility for the day-to-day coordination of the work of the department beginning in April 2001, continued that work until September 2001, when Kevin Medows assumed responsibility for managing the department, including the supervision of staff.
Special collections
Database of King LPs. Graduate assistant Erin Mullen continued work on the Microsoft Access database of the 15,000 vinyl recordings donated by Lawrence King in 1995. The database now includes 5,800 entries, representing over one third of the recordings.
Preservation
Protective containers for materials in the Fraenkel Collection. Erin Mullen constructed protective acid-free containers for forty scores in the Gottfried Fraenkel Collection.
Electronic resources
Pilot project for print reserves. John Seguin completed a pilot project for print reserves in spring 2002 by preparing scanned PDF images for Music 110 reserve readings.
I.A.2. Collection Development
Budget
For fiscal year 2001/2002, the library received no increase to its permanent budget, which remained at $141,301. The library received a one-time budget increase of $5,518, resulting in a total budget of $146,819. This amount was distributed as follows:
Budgeted Expended
Music dissertations $1,100 598
Music media 20,000 8,647
Scores (Harrassowitz approval plan) 6,000 3,799
Scores (Pepper approval plan) 6,000 5,943
Scores (firm orders) 15,951 34,345
Books 44,065 50,291
Monographic continuations 22,000 21,896
Continuations 15,450 9,963
Periodicals 16,253 15,865
TOTAL 146,819 151,347
NEH Challenge Grant competition. In fall 2001, a facsimile edition of Mozart's letters was acquired for our Special Collections.
Friends Supplementary Fund. In spring 2002, the library acquired an additional installment in Music Manuscripts from the Great English Collections (part 7, English Music Manuscripts, sec. A & B) through funding from the Library Friends.
Established an approval plan for videorecordings. In June, the library established an approval plan for video recordings (primarily DVDs) with Theodore Front.
Score selection. In Richard Burbank's absence, Troutman, Medows, and Griscom shared responsibility for score selection.
I.A.3. Support/Ancillary Activities
Instruction of music librarianship students. The professional staff provided instruction and supervision for Jane Cronkhite's practicum in music librarianship in spring 2002.
I.B. Training and Staff Development
Revision of operations manuals. Scarbrough completed revision of the Station 1 manual, and finished some work on the Special Collections manual.
Circulation student orientation/training sessions. Scarbrough conducted training sessions for new and returning students in the fall and spring semesters. She revised her call-number lecture.
Reference graduate assistants. Troutman trained graduate assistants Jane Cronkhite, Erin Mullen, Jason Schultz, John Seguin, and Jennifer Sweaney for service at the Information Desk.
I.C. Innovative Ideas, New Initiatives and Successful/Failed Examples
Because of the disruptions of Richard Burbank's and Leslie Troutman's successive medical leaves and Griscom's temporary reassignment to the Slavic Library, it was difficult to maintain existing levels of service, and creativity and innovation were necessary to achieve what, in other years, would have been routine. We consider it a major accomplishment that our staff was able to accommodate significant absences in the unit without seriously affecting our service to users or our work on the acquisition and processing of materials for our collection.
VI. Goals and Planning
VI.A. Last Year's Plans
Staffing
Search and fill librarian position. Completed with the appointment of Esther Gillie in August 2002.
Cover extended leave of absence of cataloging coordinator. Griscom and Medows continued to assume administrative responsibilities for music cataloging until Burbank's return in April 2002.
Staffing for audio encoding. Additional student wages were requested but not funded, so this work was assigned to higher-level staff.
Make more efficient use of the library's clerical employees. Additional student wages were requested but not funded, so library clerks continued to be scheduled for desk duty.
Circulation
Planning for remote storage. Troutman and Griscom identified large sections of Main Stacks that were suitable for transfer to the Oak Street Facility (OSF). Our retired volunteers have begun an ongoing project to identify duplicate LPs suitable for transfer to OSF, but because the transfer of materials from the Music Library will require processing by our own staff, we will postpone this work until OSF is open, and it will be done over time.
Shelfreading. Completed shelfreading of the compact discs, scores, books, and LPs.
Shelf maintenance for periodicals. Completed.
Revision of circulation manuals. Scarbrough revised her call-number training manual and the Station 1 manual. Some work was done on the revision of the Special Collections manual.
Shift music stacks. Carry over to FY03.
Circulate keys and equipment on DRA. No longer applicable, since Voyager does not easily accommodate the circulation of equipment.
Review items in the collection that are no longer represented in the catalog. Some progress made.
Cataloging
Continue work on recon/reclass. Progress was made on converting and reclassing the collection of monuments and collected editions until September 2001, when Paul Keith accepted a transfer to Rapid Cataloging. Further work will probably be suspended until the position is filled.
Reduce backlog of unprocessed microfilm. In June 2001, Mortenson fellow Silke Breslau prepared a list of the 100+ unprocessed microfilms of primary sources in our backlog. In fall 2001, graduate assistant Dan Boomhower cataloged several dozen of the microfilms, representing early printed editions.
Special Collections
Review backlog materials held in cabinets. Completed by Jean Geil.
Shift Special Collections stacks. Carry over to FY03.
Continue conversion of manual finding aids. With the conversion of the Choral Reference File, all card-based finding aids but two have been converted to an electronic format. The exceptions are the indexes to School of Music programs and the School of Music archive tapes, neither of which is complete enough to yield a useful online database.
Collection Development
Search compact disc holdings against "A Basic Music Library." Minimal progress. Carry over to FY03.
Replace LPs on reserve with compact discs. Carry over to FY03.
Replacement procedures document. Carry over to FY03.
Information delivery
Begin providing web-based access to print reserves. A pilot project was completed in spring 2002.
Investigate the possibility of providing listening workstations in the Music Library. Budget request submitted but not funded.
Mount Choral Reference File database on the web. Carry over to FY03.
User instruction/Reference
Expand our schedule of tours. Not pursued. Expanding bibliographic instruction in classes now seems to be more effective approach.
Explore real-time reference. Carry over to FY03.
Expand list of electronic journals. Completed.
Public information
Exhibit commemorating the centenary of Harry Partch's birth. Exhibit was mounted in fall 2001.
Physical plant
Carpeting and signage. Griscom discussed these problems with Wendy Shelburne, but no action was taken. Carry over to FY03.
VI.B. Next Year's Plans and Goals.
Staffing
Fill the LTS vacancy in Music Cataloging. The position vacated by Paul Keith has been recast as an LTA position and funding was requested in September 2002.
Staffing for audio encoding. The library received grant funding to launch its digital audio reserves project. Now that the grant funding has expired, we will request that $2,000 be added to our student wages budget to cover work on audio encoding.
Make more efficient use of the library's clerical employees. Because the library's student wage budget is not sufficient to staff our two service desks during our hours of operation, we have had to assign library clerks to desk duty. We will request an increase to our student wage budget so that our clerks will be able to devote more time to the important work they were hired to do.
Staff development
Reference refresher sessions. Troutman will schedule regular meetings of the reference staff to review searching techniques on databases, introduce the staff to valuable print resources, and share information on challenging reference questions.
Training sessions for cataloging staff. Burbank will conduct weekly training sessions for the cataloging staff.
Circulation
Revision of circulation manuals. Scarbrough will continue revising the series of circulation manuals. Many changes are necessary as a result of the migration to Voyager.
Shift and weed music stacks. Some sections of the music stacks are becoming crowded, and a general redistribution is needed. Space can also be freed up by weeding multiple copies of outdated editions.
Review items in the collection that are no longer represented in the catalog. Scarbrough has assembled a significant number of library materials that are represented in neither the online nor the card catalog. Selectors will review these items and decide whether they will be retained; if so, they will be routed to cataloging for processing.
Cleanup related to the OCLC card project. During the past year, Scarbrough has supervised students in a project to weed OCLC cards from the card catalog. The students have been searching the cards against the Voyager catalog and discovering that some have fallen off the database. Scarbrough will supervise followup work to confirm that the items are in the collection and then graduate students will create new bibliographic records as needed.
Investigate the possibility of transferring part of the cassette-recording collection to the Oak Street Facility. The library's collection of cassette recordings essentially lies dormant, and these materials are prime candidates for transfer to the Oak Street storage facility.
Cataloging
Add records to Voyager for materials in the backlog. For many years, selectors have had to rely on acquisitions-system reports and order files to determine whether a particular item might be in the backlog. These methods often fail, and as a result duplicate materials have been ordered on occasion. The shift in workflow in Acquisitions with the implementation of III last year resulted in full bibliographic records being created for materials at the point of order, so once they are received they are accessible by selectors and library users. We plan to build on this practice by creating bibliographic records for all newly received materials. This will not only help selectors; it also provides a means for users to identify materials in the backlog that are needed for their research and study and allows us to give those needs top priority.
Special Collections
Shift and weed Special Collections stacks. The stacks are becoming crowded and are in need of weeding and shifting.
Resume processing of sheet music. Since the retirement of Pat Foster in September 2000, no sheet music has been processed and added to the collection. Scarbrough will work with David Butler on resuming work on incoming sheet music as well as maintenance of the sheet-music database.
Collection Development
Compact disc holdings. We will check our compact-disc holdings against A Basic Music Library to make sure that we have recordings in our collection of all the standard repertory represented in the volume.
Replace LPs on reserve with compact discs. A fairly large number of long-playing records are used for class reserves. We will search for compact-disc reissues of these titles (or the repertory contained on them) and acquire them.
Replacement procedures document. The professional staff will review our procedures for replacing lost/missing materials and make sure that orders are processed on a regular basis.
Information delivery
Begin providing web-based access to print reserves. Griscom and Gillie will work with Mary Laskowski (Undergraduate Library) to investigate the possibility of offering electronic reserves for at least one or two classes offered in spring 2003.
Investigate the possibility of providing listening workstations in the Music Library. We will request that a small number of listening workstations be installed so that students can complete their reserve listening in the library rather than having to make trips to computer labs outside the building.
Mount choral database on the web. Gillie will work with systems staff on converting and mounting the Microsoft Access database of our choral reference collection so that it is searchable on the web.
User instruction/Reference
Revised handouts on searching the public catalog. Searching music in the Voyager public catalog requires strategies that are quite different from those used to search the DRA catalog, and we need to prepare a guide to searching for our users.
Real-time reference. Gillie and Troutman will explore the feasibility of using an instant- messenger client as the basis of a real-time reference service.
Public information
Evaluate and make revisions to the library's website. Now that the existing version of the library's website has been in place for two years, it is time to step back and evaluate its effectiveness. Gillie will coordinate the professional staff's discussions of the purpose of the site, its intended audience, and how the current site can be improved to better fulfill its mission.
Physical plant
Review and revise the disaster-preparedness plan. The Disaster Preparedness Manual is dated 1993 and is need of revision. Griscom will work with the staff and Tom Teper on making the necessary changes to the manual.
Secure area in Special Collections. Two years ago, Griscom discussed with Wendy Shelburne the possibility of creating a locked caged area in Special Collections to make sure the more valuable materials in our collection are protected. He will follow up with her and make sure this project hasn't been forgotten.
Carpeting and signage. Griscom will work with Wendy Shelburne on plans to replace the worn and soiled carpeting on the first floor of the library. He will also pursue with her the request for signage for the library, which was initially made in 1998.
VI. C. Five Year Plans and Goals
The extent of our plans for the next five years-and our ability to meet the goals we set forth-will be dependent on the state of the budget during that period. The following forecasts and plans assume a modestly but steadily increasing budget.
Our patrons' needs for printed materials will continue undiminished, since there have been no significant changes in the way that music researchers go about their work. Researchers will continue to rely primarily on monographs, serials, printed editions, and microfilms of primary sources.
Our traditional activities (collection building, circulation, reference, user instruction, cataloging) will continue, and we don't anticipate a decrease in contact hours or in the demands placed on our traditional services. Although a growing number of reference resources are available remotely through the Internet, we have not seen a decrease in traffic at our reference desk, and it is important to maintain our tradition of excellence in this area. But while the need for such traditional services continues, we will need to devote larger amounts of time to enhancing our digital collections and services.
Music cataloging
We would hope that in five years a large part of the content of our card catalog will have been converted to electronic form and that most of the brief MARCette records will have been upgraded to full records. While we believe the Library's Mellon grant will upgrade a large majority of the library system's MARCette records through the proposed matching algorithms, we are concerned that a large number of our scores and recordings will remain unprocessed, because the scant, generic descriptions for most scores and sound recordings will make them impossible to match against the OCLC database. We anticipate having to upgrade a large part of the MARCettes for scores and sound recordings manually, and this is important work that should be planned for.
We plan to reduce the size of the backlog, which has grown considerably as a result of the downtime related to the Voyager implementation. Our work on recon/reclass for the reference scores will continue and should be completed by the end of five years.
Technology
We will continue to work with faculty on identifying the most effective ways to support their teaching through the application of technology in the library. Our digital audio reserves service has been well received, and within five years we should be offering all of our reserves electronically-both audio and print.
Media formats have had increasingly short lifetimes, and we predict that we will continue to see the introduction of new formats for commercial audio and video recordings. In order to provide users with the latest (and presumably best) formats for these recordings, we will need to devote a good part of our budget to purchasing existing repertory in the new formats, which will limit our ability to increase the scope of our collection.
There will be a greater focus on PC-related work as we migrate to a long-overdue integrated library system. This will require not only high-quality staff training but possibly an increase in staffing, particularly at the student-assistant level.
Education of music librarians
Over the past decade, several library schools have closed and those that have remained have increasingly shifted their focus to information science. The profession of librarianship is at risk, and we feel, as music librarians at one of the few institutions in the United States that offers coursework in music librarianship, some responsibility to make sure that Illinois continues to play an essential role in preparing library-school students for careers as music librarians. The music-librarianship program here has been the result of a loosely organized collaboration between Don Krummel (now professor emeritus of GSLIS) and our professional staff, who supervise practica and offer class sessions on how we go about our work in our library. Our two endowed King graduate assistantships also make Illinois an attractive choice for students seeking frontline experience in one of the major music libraries in the country.
Professor Krummel continues to teach his course in music bibliography each year, and we're sure that he will continue to teach so long as he is able. Once he has finished his teaching career, the music librarianship program at Illinois will be at a crossroads: if the curricular offerings in music librarianship aren't assumed by the professional staff of the music library, Illinois will lose much of its appeal to library school students looking for specialization in music librarianship. We feel some commitment-to the library and to the profession-to make sure that the Illinois continues to fill its important role in the education of music librarians.
Distribution between print and electronic resources
We estimate that the current ratio between print and electronic resources is about 9 to 1, and we do not anticipate that ratio changing significantly during the next five years. Our users rely most heavily on printed music and monographs, neither of which is likely to be available in electronic form for some time.
Some possible areas of development in electronic access include subscription services for sound recordings and print-on-demand services for scores. The library world has seen extraordinary growth in subscription-based full-text periodical services over the past decade, and we anticipate that a similar model will be developed for the distribution of sound recordings. Several subscription-based "radio stations" already exist on the Internet that provide programs drawing off large libraries of sound recordings. If the recording industry can develop a model that would provide access to individually selected recordings from a comprehensive library of commercial recordings, much of the work we devote to encoding our CDs and LPs for reserve listening would no longer be necessary.
Because of the expense of publishing music and the relatively low sales figures, some music publishers are moving toward an on-demand publication model, and with advances in online technology, it is possible that music publishers will also move toward an electronic-access model for low-demand titles.
Regardless of what technological advances are made during the next five years, any shifts that we make from print to electronic-based formats will be driven exclusively by changes in the music industry's delivery of content as well as the perceived need of our patrons to access the content in electronic form.
Training and user education
During the next five years, we hope to see increased use of technology in providing training and user education. Some existing technology, such as presentation software, can be applied to some of the lectures that Marlys Scarbrough delivers to student workers. It might also be possible to use course software-such as Blackboard or WebCT to the introductory instruction given to these workers.
User community
We do not foresee changes in our user community during the next five years. The School of Music has a new director, and it is not yet clear whether he will be taking the school's curriculum into new directions, which might require changes in our collecting patterns and our services.
New program offerings by the School of Music could also change the face of our user community. For example, a movement toward offering distance education programs in the School of Music would place considerable demands on our services to off-campus users.
VI. D. Budgetary Impacts
|
|
Personnel |
Collections |
|
Base budget |
$547,479 |
$143,456 |
|
4% |
$21,900 |
$5,738 |
|
6% |
$32,848 |
$8,607 |
Personnel
In the event of a budget cut, we would prefer to avoid the layoff of permanent employees. For this reason, given the choice, we would target vacancies as the source for funding for a cut. For example, an LTA vacancy would cover a 4 percent reduction in our personnel budget. The added funding needed to meet the 6 percent cut would be taken from student wages, which in turn would require full-time employees to devote increased hours to staffing service desks and force us to consider scaling back our services.
In the event that a vacant position is not available, we would prefer to cut student wages, assuming that the budget cut will be a temporary one. If the cut is likely to be long term, then we would have to identify an existing staff position to cut. At this point, since we are outlining our plans in the abstract, it is difficult to predict which position that might be, particularly since all of our positions are important to the effective operation of the library. Again, a reduction in staffing-particularly student wages-would lead us to considering the possibility of reducing services.
In the event of a 4 percent increase, we would earmark $15,000 for student wages and the remaining $7,000 would be used for a part-time graduate assistant for Music Cataloging.
Collections
Our approach to cutting the collections budget would largely depend on whether the cuts were anticipated to be permanent or temporary. If permanent, then we would divide the amount equally between monographs and serials. If temporary (lasting no more than two or three years), then the monographs budget would receive the full cut, since we believe it important to maintain the integrity of our serials runs if at all possible, and gaps are difficult to fill retrospectively.
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