Update on SMC from MLA conference

I had the pleasure of hearing a presentation by Jenn Riley at the MLA conference in Pgh a few weeks ago. She spoke about some of the studies and projects they've been working on at Indiana. She also gave an update on the next steps for the SMC. They have made a proposal for a 1-year planning grant (to whom, I don't remember) starting in Oct. 2007. They want to do some user needs studies as well as data provided needs studies (very important - it was so nice to hear her say that "we need to make it easier for data providers to include their collections in the SMC"!!!).

The long term plan includes adding more collections (since the goal is really to make this THE place on the web for sheet music discovery and retrieval), making it easier to use (from the user standpoint as well as the data provider standpoint), and running the harvesting on a more regular schedule. They also are in need of a sustainability plan - not much is able to be done right now because the only people working on it are doing so on a volunteer basis. Funds and staffing are needed in order to make improvements. They also want to provide a de-duping service, which would be extremely useful.

I haven't been able to find the presentation online, but I emailed her and hope that she'll send me a link or the presentation slides themselves.
Update: Wow, that was a quick response! Here's the link to the .ppt:
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/~jenlrile/presentations/mla2007/mla.ppt

It was also very interesting to hear from researchers at the Sheet Music Roundtable session about how they use sheet music in their research and what kinds of information we can get from it. It really struck me that SO much more information is needed by researchers than what we typically provide access to. But since sheet music collections tend not to be a priority for music libraries, it will be difficult to ever be able to provide access to the extent that researchers will find useful. Cover art, illustrations, and advertisements were all brought up as being extremely important in many research endeavors.

Procedures, interesting article, etc.

Today I started working on bringing together all of the information I have about the SMC process into one document, but I got a bit stuck. DLS has really been doing most of the actual 'work.' Cassandra wrote down her steps in MarcEdit for me, which I was able to include, but after that I'm completely clueless as to what's going to happen on their end and how. So far in my procedure I have exporting (which is really a separate document) and converting the MARC records to MARCXML using MarcEdit. That's really about it. I know *vaguely* what's going to happen next - the records are somehow split apart and ingested into DLXS using some type of automated process. Then, eventually, broker20 will be used to transform the metadata into OAI-harvestable Dublin Core. I'm just not sure how much detail *I* can provide about all of this, since the real meat of the work is happening over there.

Today Cassandra asked if I'll be available once the records are ingested into DLXS, but I didn't really know how to answer that. One possibility is that I save my remaining hours to use once the rest of the process gets underway. I'm not sure how feasible this is or whether or not my various supervisors will be agreeable...
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I found an interesting article on firstmonday.org. I copied the Conclusion below. All I could think of after reading this was "well, duh!" But the problem is the lack of staffing to allow music libraries to get this stuff sorted, cataloged, digitized, etc. I completely agree that the visual components of sheet music (cover art, etc.) can be extremely useful to various types of researchers. The problem is getting the stuff digitized and also getting the stuff discovered. The article discussed the varied results in searching various keywords in Internet browsers. I don't think the Sheet Music Consortium was up and running at the time they did this study, but I think the authors would certainly think that was a step in the right direction. Again, the problem is getting participants since it takes so much time and energy to get this stuff harvestable. It's great that they make this recommendation, but can they make any recommendations about how music libraries can fund these "renewed efforts"?

Evaluation of Web access to historical sheet music collections and music–related iconography by Maurice B. Wheeler and Mary Jo Venetis.
First Monday, volume 10, number 10 (October 2005),URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_10/wheeler/index.html

"Conclusion
The value of popular songs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are significant in helping our understanding of the musical, social, and political times in which they were created. It is also clear that music–related imagery played an integral role in helping communicate the intent of the music and lyrics of a song.

This study highlights the significance of historical popular music and its accompanying iconography as a rich source of social commentary, reflecting societal norms and beliefs, opinions and perceptions of individuals at any given time in history. It also highlights the challenges that researchers face in attempting to access these resources and suggests the benefit of including music iconography or imagery as one of the access points within MIR.

Currently, digitized music iconography seems to be an ancillary benefit of accessing historical sheet music. The lack of a concerted effort in providing access to this important musicological and social science resource adds unnecessary steps to the research process, and potentially limits its effectiveness. It is recommended that visual components of musical works, including illustrated cover art and moving images, as in popular music videos, be considered for its transmission of cultural and societal values.

The research value and usage of digital musical collections will be greatly enhanced if additional descriptions are provided for all images associated with popular songs. It is highly recommended that renewed efforts should be made to include visual or image components in any future information of retrieval systems."
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I also did a little more looking around on the rights management statement issue and made a suggestion based on something Duke had posted on their Special Collections page. I'm assuming eventually there will be a general overarching statement on the Digital Library site (there already is, sort-of, but since this whole collection isn't on there yet we can't really use that).

Hours today: 2 (5-7pm)
Hours this week: 5
Total hours completed: 126

Linking pdfs to records, other stuff

Today I spent most of my time adding the links and 530 fields to the records for the bound volume. Unfortunately the links aren't working, so I emailed Brad and asked if maybe they hadn't updated from the weekend when he supposedly uploaded them. Or maybe he didn't get around to uploading them on Friday. Hopefully tomorrow they'll magically start working!

The 530 field (Also available as a digital file in PDF format) really started to bug me, since the'F' in PDF stands for 'format'! So, we're essentially saying 'Also available as a digital file in portable document format format'!). I realized that's the terminology we use in the general catalog as well. I probably won't make a big deal about it, and I know many other institutions use the same terminology. I think perhaps 'Also available as a PDF file' would be sufficient, but that would be a lot of records to change. It's probably not that big of a deal. I did some searching in WorldCat to see what people use and there's quite a variety.

I also emailed Cassandra today to see if I could get more detail on what she did with MarcEdit to transform the records into MARCXML (and whether the UTF conversion tool was part of MarcEdit or something separate). I really need to start writing all this stuff up. I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get farther, but I think the main problem at this point is that the records can't even be ingested in DLXS until a final installation is completed. So, no matter how much I might have dragged my feet on some parts of this, I don't think it really made a difference in the end.

Hours today: 3 (4:20-7:20pm)
Hours this week: 3
Total hours completed: 124

Scanning, Worldcat.org, Google Scholar, cataloging in general...

(Didn't get around to writing this last Thursday)
Thurs. Nov. 14

Today I finished scanning the bound volume and made sure everything was in the folder that was supposed to be there. Brad said he would upload them to the server tomorrow, so that next week I can put the links in the records.

Talked to Brad for a bit about various things.

Did some research with WorldCat.org and sheet music. Didn't really get very far. It was tricky. It's hard to find out who even has their sheet music holdings in WorldCat (and if so, which parts of which collections). In WorldCat.org, you can limit your results to musical score and then look for 'Internet Resource' which indicates that there's a link (probably to a scanned version of the item). But, I was getting different results if I limited to musical score and then looked for internet resource, or if I just looked for internet resource before limiting, or if I limited to internet resource. I'm not sure in what order it looks for those aspects of the record. Also, the link doesn't always click through to the actual record for the item in the holding institution's catalog - sometimes it just takes you to the main page of the catalog. Also, when looking for internet resource records, you can't tell which institution has the internet resource if there are multiple holdings (you have to look at each one). I know that OCLC is working on refining WorldCat.org - it will be interesting to see what happens in terms of being able to refine/limit results by format because it doesn't seem to be particularly useful right now for these types of materials. Overall, it probably has a lot of potential, but I think something like the Sheet Music Consortium has the best potential for mass, large-scale resource discovery of sheet music. The problem is that most institutions don't have the know-how or the staff to be able to get their sheet music records (if they're even to the point of being cataloged) in harvestable form. Brad and I talked about how complicated sheet music cataloging rules are (all cataloging, really) and how difficult it is for institutions to spend the staff time to do all this cataloging. Most just can't do it. Each institution is left to its own devices as to how much it can get done and to what degree. I wish that some simpler standards could be viewed as sufficient and "standard" for sheet music cataloging. Dublin Core isn't as robust as MARC, of course, but it has potential. I'm torn - I believe that if sheet music is going to get cataloged it should be done as thoroughly as possible so that the records are as helpful as possible, but if it's between getting some type of minimal record in and nothing at all, I think the preference is obvious. I really truly believe that cataloging, as it stands now, is far too complicated.

I also, just for the heck of it, decided to look up a few music topics in Google Scholar and see what types of things it spit back (nothing to do with sheet music) - lots of things from JSTOR, some from Academic Search Premier, Caliber, Cambridge journals, MUSE, and Highwire/Oxford. It would take a lot of in-depth research to really discover how useful Google Scholar could be for different areas of the music field. I wonder if anyone else is doing this type of research? I've seen similar studies in other fields, but not for music. Google isn't very forthcoming about what sources it draws from for its results in Google Scholar, so one must figure it out for oneself.

Hours today (Thurs. Nov. 16): 3 (4:20-7:20pm)
Hours this week: 6
Total hours completed: 121

Cataloging, scanning

Today I went over some questions with Mark and fixed up a few things. At some point he will look over my records and give me (many, I'm sure) more things to fix up.

I continued scanning the bound volume. Only have two pieces left!

Hours today: 3 (4:20-7:20pm)
Hours this week: 3
Total hours completed: 118

Successful scanning at last!

Thanks to Paul, who had the marvelous idea to try the plugs on the scanner end to make sure they were in tightly (which one of them wasn't, of course!), the computer finally recognized the scanner and I was able to work on more of the bound volume. It's not going to take as long as I had thought, so I should be able to finish the entire volume with no problem. It seems to be holding up pretty well physically.

Hours today: 3 (4:15-7:15pm)
Hours this week: 6
Total hours completed: 115

Cataloging, questions, tried to start scanning again...

Today I went over all of my cataloging records, cleaning some things up and organizing my final questions for Mark (we're meeting Monday to go over those). Most of the remaining questions deal with "parts of a whole" type of things, including main entry and necessary added entries. It's very confusing when people haven't been consistent or even in agreement about it in the past.

I was also going to pick up with the scanning again, but (of course) I discovered that the machine isn't recognizing the scanner! I'll have to email SOS tomorrow. Hopefully they can have it up and running by Wed. when I'll be back! I think when I pulled the machine out the other day, the scanner came unplugged. I plugged it back in, but I guess it needs to be "added" for it to be recognized, and I don't have the permissions to do that. It seems like it's just been one thing after another with this computer. I have developed a great thankfullness that my day job computer has been relatively problem-free!

Hopefully Wed. I'll be able to pick up again with the scanning. If not, I'll do some WorldCat.org searching for sheet music and see what I find.

Hours today: 2.75 (4:15-7:15pm)
Hours this week: 3
Total hours completed: 112

Messing with the machine (again), cleaning up, cataloging

The silly machine was messed up again today, so I took some time to make sure everything was there that was supposed to be and that any changes I made stuck when I rebooted. My documents were not the most recently saved ones, much to my chagrin. Not only that, but the machine won't read my jump drive which DOES have my most recently saved docs! I have no idea what's going on. I sent a message to SOS. Hopefully it's not my jump drive (I'll check it at home tonight).

I spent some time cleaning out my paper files since my folders were overflowing. Recycled a few things, was reminded of a few things (presentations I had found about the SMC, which I forwarded on to Andrew and Cassandra in the hopes they would find them helpful), and tried to get things organized into piles (SMC stuff, cataloging stuff, scanning stuff, exporting stuff, etc.). I feel better now.

I added the inferred publication dates to the last few cataloging records I worked on yesterday, and went over them one more time to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Hours today: 3 (4:15-7:15pm)
Hours this week: 6
Total hours completed: 109