Miscellaneous
Saturday, June 24th
Today I did a some background reading on cataloging and the history of music publishing and looked at some sheet music collections online. I looked through the chapter in Smiraglia's book on cataloging published music, and I looked through Cataloging sheet music: guidelines for use with AACR2 and the MARC format, ed. by Lois Schultz and Sarah Shaw, Scarecrow/MLA, 2003. I thought chapter 2 of this was particularly interesting, about access points and authority control. Particular access points were suggested, but the statement was made that "the needs of the local user community must always take precedence." The part about uniform titles was interesting - they aren't often needed with sheet music unless the piece is a part of a larger work or is an arrangement of another work. This book has lots of great examples (they, in fact, make up a good part of the book). A helpful glossary is also included.
Another thing I learned from the Schultz/Shaw book is that publishers often saved money by creating one all-purpose "list title page" for a group of pieces (usually related somehow, but not necessarily?), and the title for the work in hand was either underlined or starred or somehow or other marked on the list. I noticed a lot of these while sorting through the box.
If the title information is missing from a piece because a page is missing or mutilated, the cataloger must supply the information from any source at hand, or from whatever knowledge the cataloger has about the piece. It might be possible to identify it by the plate number or it might be possible to compare it with a complete work in another library.
Helpful information I learned from Smiraglia's book included the fact that covers, especially decorative ones, don't always have the best title information (I had also noticed this in sorting). Caption titles, those on top of the 1st p. of music, often give the best title and statement of responsiblity information. Also, I learned that a decorative title page is not the same as a cover - a cover is usually made from different material than the pages the music is printed on. A colorful title page is not necessarily a cover. Another thing I learned is that a printing date can sometimes be used in lieu of a publication date if a publication date is not specifically stated (though this can be tricky since it's not always clear whether a date is the printing date, the date of completion of the work, date of composition, date of the printing of the staff paper, etc.).
These books pointed me to some other publications on the history of music publishing which I glanced at briefly but didn't spend a lot of time with. I can imagine that the more one knows about the history of sheet music publishing, the easier it is to deal with sheet music collections (to know what might be more important than something else, to know how the collection might be used, to know the best access points to include when cataloging, etc.).
Today I also starting gathering information about scanning standards and procedures from other online sheet music collections. I started to try to find out which collections have their holdings in OCLC or RLIN (though the two will be merged at some point), though this can be tricky information to find. I will post my findings on these topics when I've finished the research.
I set out a plan for checking whether or not titles that are cataloged in OCLC are findable in Google (Yahoo, etc.) through the Open WorldCat system. I'll try to find out which collections (particularly those in the Sheet Music Consortium) have holdings in OCLC, double-check a few titles in OCLC to make sure they're there, and then search them in Google (is it just the Google Book search?) and/or Yahoo to see if it gets me to the titles in the collection.
I also looked through some of the bound volumes to see if I could find one that looked interesting to start cataloging. I chose v. 38 which looked like it would be both interesting and do-able in the amount of time that I have. It looked like it included some that might require uniform titles which will be good practice. In terms of choosing the part of the collection to start scanning, I really think the best option would be to continue with the Balmer & Weber boxes (all of which should fall in the public domain since I'm pretty sure the dates of the publisher fall between 1848 and 1907), since they are of local interest and importance. I'm still considering the possiblity of dealing with the uncataloged material that I've been sorting, including them in appropriate places in the collection (cataloging and possibly scanning if the rest of the what it's being merged with has already been scanned).
The presentation for the MLA national conference in Pittsburgh next spring (Sheet Music Roundtable) has fallen through, but there is still a possibility that I might be able to do a poster session.
In the process of doing some database critiques for another class, I came across a citation for an article I'd like to read (I'll need to request it through ILL): Dougan, Kirstin. "Online sheet music projects and metadata from a public service perspective." Music Reference Services Quarterly 9, no. 1 (2005) 1-11.
Hours today: 4
Total hours completed: 19
Today I did a some background reading on cataloging and the history of music publishing and looked at some sheet music collections online. I looked through the chapter in Smiraglia's book on cataloging published music, and I looked through Cataloging sheet music: guidelines for use with AACR2 and the MARC format, ed. by Lois Schultz and Sarah Shaw, Scarecrow/MLA, 2003. I thought chapter 2 of this was particularly interesting, about access points and authority control. Particular access points were suggested, but the statement was made that "the needs of the local user community must always take precedence." The part about uniform titles was interesting - they aren't often needed with sheet music unless the piece is a part of a larger work or is an arrangement of another work. This book has lots of great examples (they, in fact, make up a good part of the book). A helpful glossary is also included.
Another thing I learned from the Schultz/Shaw book is that publishers often saved money by creating one all-purpose "list title page" for a group of pieces (usually related somehow, but not necessarily?), and the title for the work in hand was either underlined or starred or somehow or other marked on the list. I noticed a lot of these while sorting through the box.
If the title information is missing from a piece because a page is missing or mutilated, the cataloger must supply the information from any source at hand, or from whatever knowledge the cataloger has about the piece. It might be possible to identify it by the plate number or it might be possible to compare it with a complete work in another library.
Helpful information I learned from Smiraglia's book included the fact that covers, especially decorative ones, don't always have the best title information (I had also noticed this in sorting). Caption titles, those on top of the 1st p. of music, often give the best title and statement of responsiblity information. Also, I learned that a decorative title page is not the same as a cover - a cover is usually made from different material than the pages the music is printed on. A colorful title page is not necessarily a cover. Another thing I learned is that a printing date can sometimes be used in lieu of a publication date if a publication date is not specifically stated (though this can be tricky since it's not always clear whether a date is the printing date, the date of completion of the work, date of composition, date of the printing of the staff paper, etc.).
These books pointed me to some other publications on the history of music publishing which I glanced at briefly but didn't spend a lot of time with. I can imagine that the more one knows about the history of sheet music publishing, the easier it is to deal with sheet music collections (to know what might be more important than something else, to know how the collection might be used, to know the best access points to include when cataloging, etc.).
Today I also starting gathering information about scanning standards and procedures from other online sheet music collections. I started to try to find out which collections have their holdings in OCLC or RLIN (though the two will be merged at some point), though this can be tricky information to find. I will post my findings on these topics when I've finished the research.
I set out a plan for checking whether or not titles that are cataloged in OCLC are findable in Google (Yahoo, etc.) through the Open WorldCat system. I'll try to find out which collections (particularly those in the Sheet Music Consortium) have holdings in OCLC, double-check a few titles in OCLC to make sure they're there, and then search them in Google (is it just the Google Book search?) and/or Yahoo to see if it gets me to the titles in the collection.
I also looked through some of the bound volumes to see if I could find one that looked interesting to start cataloging. I chose v. 38 which looked like it would be both interesting and do-able in the amount of time that I have. It looked like it included some that might require uniform titles which will be good practice. In terms of choosing the part of the collection to start scanning, I really think the best option would be to continue with the Balmer & Weber boxes (all of which should fall in the public domain since I'm pretty sure the dates of the publisher fall between 1848 and 1907), since they are of local interest and importance. I'm still considering the possiblity of dealing with the uncataloged material that I've been sorting, including them in appropriate places in the collection (cataloging and possibly scanning if the rest of the what it's being merged with has already been scanned).
The presentation for the MLA national conference in Pittsburgh next spring (Sheet Music Roundtable) has fallen through, but there is still a possibility that I might be able to do a poster session.
In the process of doing some database critiques for another class, I came across a citation for an article I'd like to read (I'll need to request it through ILL): Dougan, Kirstin. "Online sheet music projects and metadata from a public service perspective." Music Reference Services Quarterly 9, no. 1 (2005) 1-11.
Hours today: 4
Total hours completed: 19
posted by Amy | 6:17 PM
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