My proposed learning plan

I am proposing to work with a portion of Washington Univ. in St. Louis Gaylord Music Library’s sheet music collection. Site supervisors will be music cataloger Mark Scharff and music subject librarian Brad Short.

Specific activities will include initial orientation to the library and the collection, initial training on local cataloging and scanning procedures, choosing a portion of the collection to work with, developing a plan for cataloging and scanning of that portion of the collection, carrying out cataloging and scanning (including overseeing a graduate student assistant’s work), researching metadata standards with respect to sheet music, and exploring the possibility of exposing Gaylord’s sheet music metadata to the Sheet Music Consortium (an OAI-compliant metadata harvester).

Estimated breakdown of hours spent on various objectives (135 hours total):

1) Initial orientation to collection and evaluation of collection (with Brad) – 10 hours

2) Choose a reasonable portion of collection to work with and develop plan for cataloging and scanning – 10 hours

3) Initial cataloging (with Mark) and scanning (with Brad) training – 10 hours

4) Carry out cataloging and scanning (including overseeing/directing a graduate student assistant’s work) – 50 hours

5) Research on best practices for descriptive metadata standards for sheet music – 15 hours

6) Sheet Music Consortium exploration (including some consultation with Digital Library staff at Washington Univ. Libraries and Stephen Davison of the Sheet Music Consortium) – 40 hours

Other related issues I expect to learn about in the process of carrying out these activities include copyright, history and best practices of sheet music cataloging, advantages and disadvantages of submitting sheet music cataloging records to OCLC’s database, project management, and how to determine preservation and/or digitization priorities.