Hello from the Chair!

I apologize for not being at the Fall Meeting at the NAMM Museum of Music Making on November 17th. As circumstances dictated my absence, I would like to express my thanks to Eunice Schroeder and Nanette Schneir of the Executive Board for so gracefully and capably taking on the planning responsibilities that I threw onto them at the last minute. Thanks go also to Daniel Del Fiorentino and Kristen Jaskar of NAMM for being such wonderful hosts (while you may not have met Kristen, she was working hard behind the scenes to make sure everything ran smoothly).

And while it seems like just yesterday that we were able to announce that Kevin McLaughlin was elected to the position of vice-chair/chair-elect, it is time to think about positions in MLA/SCC for the 2001/2002 year. We will have several positions open, including vice-chair, and you'll be hearing about them soon. Please start thinking about your role in the organization, and any interest you may have in participating as a board member--we need you!

Please have a safe and happy holiday, and enjoy!

Kristina Shanton (Music & Theatre Arts Librarian, CSU Long Beach)

Kudos to Kristina!

MLA/SCC Fall Meeting at NAMM

Dan Del Fiorentino, Director of NAMM's Library/Resource Center and Museum of Making Music, explained that NAMM, a private non-profit company, has been representing the business interests of music publishing companies since 1901. Developing and maintaining the one-year old Museum is a major responsibility of Dan's. The Museum reflects the history of the company and the history of music manufacturing and retailing. To this end, Dan is trying to acquire as many music archives that reach back to 1901 as possible. Outreach is another of NAMM's objectives, and Dan related how he has been involved in programs for children, musicians, and the public. NAMM also supports special projects such as studies of music and the brain.

Accompanied by Dan, our group then experienced music through the years as we were led on a tour by one of the Museum's forty volunteer docents. We explored exhibits that featured music from turn-of-the-century Tin Pan Alley tunes to the 1970's and 1980's MTV, FM radio, and electronic instruments. Throughout the Museum were 450 vintage instruments, as well as listening stations where we could hear tunes that have shaped and continue to shape our collective musical experience.

Audio delivery via streaming for course reserves was the topic of discussion during the afternoon. Dave Kesner and Peter Mueller from UC San Diego's Music Library began by describing and playing examples from the school's Digital Audio Reserves Project (DARP). DARP provides UCSD students and faculty with digital music course reserves via the web nearly twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Students can listen to high-quality music reserves from computers with access to the campus network. Music can be encoded from CD's, audiocassettes, and records. Workstations need to have a sound card, speakers or headphones, and Liquid Audio, which provides near CD quality sound. Digital sound files are mounted for UCSD course reserve support only. DARP files are passworded and accessible only to students and faculty of specific courses, and are available only during the quarter a specific course is taught. The University has embraced DARP, and students love it. During 1999-2000 there were half a million hits on DARP sites!

Stephen Davison spoke about the digital reserve program used to assist students at UCLA. Real Audio 5 encodes music (from CD's only) that is on reserve for classes. With the use of Cold Fusion and Access, images can be linked to Real Audio for display during playback, thereby enabling students to listen and, for example, read a libretto simultaneously.

Eunice said that at UCSB there is one course, Music and Politics, which is part of a trial audio project using Quicktime files encoded with Media Cleaner Pro. She said that faculty are beginning to expect more, and that high quality audio delivery is a concern.

Highlights follow of the short business meeting that concluded the day:

• Eunice congratulated Kevin McLaughlin on becoming the new Chair Elect and Steve Fry on his retirement.

• Nanette Schneir gave a Treasurer's report and stated that we had $2,767.40 in our checking account, $50 in Savings, and a total of $2,817.40. A motion was passed to put $2,000 in a CD account that will earn approximately 5% interest.

• Joan LoPear and Nanette gave an update on the outreach workshop. Allie Goudie, MLA Education Outreach Committee Chair, has been contacted for information about grant opportunities. A workshop committee meeting is planned for December; committee members will keep the membership informed.

• Steve proposed with regard to Chapter publications that we consider publishing or creating a digital index to articles in old California music journals. The proposal was enthusiastically received. Eunice, who is Publications Chair, will study this proposal, and next year she will contact members interested in participating in the project.

The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv was founded in September 1900 and soon became an important center of Comparative Musicology. To celebrate this important anniversary an international conference titled "100 Years Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv: Retrospective, Perspective and Interdisciplinary Approaches of the Sound Archives of the World" was held from September 27-October 1, 2000, at the Ethnologisches Museum (formerly known as the Völkerkundemuseum) in Berlin, Germany. More than 60 papers were presented by archivists and ethnomusicologists from over 30 countries. Louise Spear read a paper titled "Moving from the Analog to Digital Millennium: Discovery and Rediscovery among the Field Recordings in the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive."

At one of the memorable conference events, the Phonogramm-Archiv's Edison Cylinder No. 1, a Siamese orchestra recorded by Carl Stumpf in 1900, was played over the auditorium's sound system for all to hear. The recording was followed by a live performance of the Das Prasit Thawon Ensemble, which can be traced back to the Siamese theater group recorded in 1900. Twelve musicians and ten dancers traveled from Thailand to celebrate the Phonogramm-Archiv's anniversary.

Also of interest were presentations about the Phonogramm-Archiv's efforts to make digital audio tape copies of 27,000 cylinder recordings, once thought lost to the world. At the end of World War II, the Phonogramm-Archiv's cylinders were packed up and sent to other locations, mostly in East Germany. In 1950 approximately 9,000 cylinders were confiscated by the Russians and sent to Leningrad. That same year a significant number of 78-rpm disc recordings were smashed by Russian soldiers in the courtyard of the museum that housed the Phonogramm-Archiv. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many of the missing cylinders were found in the basement of a building in East Berlin and returned to the Phonogramm-Archiv in West Berlin.

Lists of the cylinders and other valuable information about the Phonogramm-Archiv can be found in a newly published book titled The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv 1900-2000: Collections of Traditional Music of the World (Berlin: VWB-Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 2000). Also published for the 100th anniversary is a set of four compact discs titled Music! 1900-2000: 100 Recordings-100 Years of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv (WERGO, 2000).

The California Academic Research Libraries (CARL) Conference was held October 5-7, 2000 at the Long Beach Hilton. The advertised theme, "Librarians aRe Us," sought to address the ways in which librarians are held in the public eye, i.e., the stereotypes perpetuated by television programs and movies such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Deskset, and others.

Thankfully, the two days of meetings I went to, including two plenary meetings on Friday and Saturday as well as two afternoon "breakout sessions," took a rather broad approach to this theme. What I worried would be an invitation for navel-gazing resulted instead in substantive discussions of issues facing librarians in the immediate future: the fate of physical collections, the changing roles and skills necessary to librarians, and the need for a broadening, and redefinition, of traditional library service. The Keynote Panel on Friday afternoon, featuring a spontaneous (?) but good-natured debate between and among speakers was particularly stimulating--sometimes startling--in this regard. Can we be seeing the end of intermediated searches, hard distinctions between savvy home searching and librarians-as-we-have-known-them, the preeminence of "bricks and books," etc. (Susan Curzon, Cal State Northridge, and Marcia Bates, UCLA)? Are traditional lines of librarian roles (between cataloger and reference librarian, for example) wearing away as skills become broadened and redefined in a brave new work place (Brian Schottlaender, UCSD)? Should current and future library school education reflect such changes (Bates, Curzon)? Perennial tensions between tradition and progress live on.

Dr. Kevin Starr, California State Librarian, also provoked thought and discussion with his keynote address on Saturday morning, "Democratization and Re-Elitizing: Two Paradoxical Library Trends." The questions following his thoughtful remarks again reflected a concerned and future-conscious membership. How are academic libraries going to respond to the ever-changing composition and needs of users? What will the library of the future look like? Are librarians significant to the ongoing cultural discourse, or are they merely onlookers and facilitators?

The two "breakout" sessions I attended included an interesting examination of collection development in the face of a fast-increasing digital divide, and a discussion of using computer classrooms for bibliographic instruction. The first provided food for thought about ways to include previously disenfranchised users through equipment and technology (screen readers, scan & read software, magnifying software, adjustable height tables, etc.), as well as through culturally and ethnically sensitive acquisition techniques. The second consisted of a series of practical demonstrations for would-be or current teachers of library methods and materials in the context of a computer laboratory.

Louise Spear from the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive and Barbara Sawka from the Stanford University Music Library and Archive of Recorded Sound attended the Folk Heritage Collections in Crisis Symposium held at the Library of Congress on December 1-2, 2000. Sponsored by the American Folklife Center and the American Folklore Society, and attended by a variety of librarians, archivists, folklorists, lawyers, audio engineers, and community members, the symposium's aim was to develop guidelines for action and plans for future collaborations that will ensure the health of audio collections everywhere.

The symposium began with three position papers: "Stating the Obvious: Lessons Learned Attempting Access to Archival Audio Collections" by Virginia Danielson from the Harvard University Music Library and Archive of World Music; "Intellectual Property and Audiovisual Archives and Collections" by Anthony Seeger, formerly Director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and currently Professor of Ethnomusicology at UCLA; and "Preservation of Audio" by Elizabeth Cohen of Cohen Acoustical, Inc. Respondents included Art Silverman, National Public Radio; John Suter, New York State Archives; Mark Roosa, Preservation Directorate, Library of Congress; John Simson, Recording Industry Association of America; and Rayna Green, Smithsonian Institution. The participants were divided into groups which discussed access, intellectual property rights, and preservation. Abby Smith from the Council on Library and Information Resources served as facilitator for the opening and closing sessions.

The Theatre Library Association meets twice per year: in the summer at the annual American Library Association (ALA) conference, and in the fall at the annual American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR)/Theatre Library Association (TLA) meeting. I attended the Summer program on July 10, 2000 at ALA in Chicago. The program was entitled "Their Championship Seasons: Joseph Papp, Lucille Lortel, and the Acquisition, Processing, and Use of Performing Arts Archives." Its intent, which the presentation successfully fulfilled, was to "... illustrate how performing arts archives are acquired, arranged, and described, and how they are used by researchers ...."

At the Fall meetings, TLA not only contributes sessions to the joint conference, but also meets separately from ASTR (not all TLA members are also ASTR members). At the Fall meetings, I have never ceased to mention/state/suggest that MLA and TLA would be ideal meeting groups, and this will come to pass in February 2001, when MLA, TLA and the Dance Librarians Committee of the Association of College and Research Libraries-Arts Section, Division of ALA meet jointly in New York City.

During the first five days in November, 14 different musical societies met for a mega-meeting in Toronto, occupying the entire conference facilities of two large hotels: the Sheraton Centre and the Toronto Hilton. You can amaze your friends with your knowledge of musical academia/trivia by learning and reciting the identities of the groups present: AMIS, AMS, ATMI, CAML, CSTM, CUMS, CMS, HBS, IASPM, LYRICA, SAM, SEM, SMPC and SMT. (This information might also serve you well on the Reference Desk one day.) Except for the CMS (College Music Society) the C's are all Canadian: Canadian Society of Music Libraries, Canadian Society for Traditional Music, and the Canadian University Music Society. The identities of the AMS (Musicology), SMT (Theory) and SEM (Ethnomusicology) were well known to me, but I was scratching my head over SAM until I realized that it was the Sonneck Society reborn as the Society for American Music. The other societies were mostly a closed book to me: American Musical Instrument Society, Association for Technology in Music Instruction, Historic Brass Society, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Lyrica Society for Word-Music Relationships, and the Society for Music Perception and Cognition. As you can see there was something for everyone. The program book was over 100 pages and the abstracts were printed in a large book (8 ½ by 11) of 326 pages! There were as many as 30 sessions running simultaneously and sessions were scheduled from 8 in the morning until 11 at night, including Saturday, when the AMS and SMT had sessions scheduled right up to 11pm even though the ball began at 10pm.

With such a vast schedule to choose from it was difficult to plan one's days, but I tried to sample a broad array of topics. I found myself jumping between papers on Turkish Gypsy Music, Copyright, Adorno, and Copland, to name some at random. Given the variety it would be impossible to do justice to everything I heard, so I will restrict my reporting to some personal highlights.

There were three full sessions devoted to Copland, entitled "Copland: A Centennial Retrospective," with 12 papers in all. With such heavyweights as Wiley Hitchcock, Carol Oja, Wayne Shirley, Larry Starr, David Schiff, Vivian Perlis and Mark DeVoto participating it couldn't help but be a fascinating experience. Most interesting was Vivian Perlis's discussion of previously unpublished material from tape recordings made with Copland while reviewing files of juvenilia with him. The papers were designed to survey Copland's wide-ranging achievements, including discussions of his relationship to the American West, his complex relationship with and influence on the development of film music, his choreographic scores and dance collaborations, his twelve-tone music and the Cold War, among others. It is rare to find such an impressive array of experts providing both breadth and insight into a specific topic. A treat indeed.

Two other specific sessions were particularly memorable. On Thursday night, from 8 to 11, Lydia Goehr, Susan McClary, Rose Subotnik and Rob Walser gathered for a panel (my fingers first typed "penal"!) discussion on Adorno. It was so popular that there was standing room only with many turned away! Who would have thought. Walser and McClary both claimed that their current work would not have been possible without Adorno's precedent. Richard Taruskin, speaking from the floor, wondered if Adorno wasn't a current fetish, or an albatross around our necks. Others obviously felt that Adorno's work was an inspiration for us to do like work, illustrating it seems to me the cyclic nature of research styles! The most vigorously debated point was whether or not the obvious lack of understanding Adorno had for certain musical styles (e.g. jazz) undermined his social and cultural analyses. For some this was a fatal flaw; for others, usually those more attuned to his role as a philosopher, it required some allowances but did not invalidate his contributions.

Another session that was almost impossible to get into was entitled "Pop Divas and the Homosexualization of America". Mitchell Morris's paper, "Cher's 'Dark Ladies', Seventies Liberationisms, and the Culture of Entertainment" explored the combination of politics and entertainment in the hit songs "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" (1971), "Half-Breed" (1973), and "Dark Lady" (1974), and in particular their power among Cher's core audience of gay men. I wondered if another layer of meaning couldn't be added to the presentation by examining the reaction of Morris's audience of conservatively dressed musicologists, rocking back and forth, tapping their feet, reliving their youth!

There was much, much more, of course. I also attended a number of ethnomusicology sessions, some sessions on using the web for instruction, papers on voice leading in atonal music and the music of Berg and Britten, as well as a roundtable session on Plainchant Studies. This last one was quite a treat as Michel Huglo was there and was prevailed upon to speak briefly. It was reassuring to attend this session, on Saturday night no less, and find younger scholars in attendance. This most traditional of musicological areas of study still attracts new blood and provides problems to solve.

There were of course numerous musical performances, keynote addresses (for the various societies), parties, etc. And of course there was Toronto to discover. I regret that we had to leave most of Toronto for another time, but did get up to the University to explore their most impressive library, built like a fortress, but an attractive and functional one. Of note was the position of the Rare Books and Manuscript Collections; in a wing right at the front of the building, where they belong!

What's Up?

Mark Harryman (MLIS Student, San Jose State University (SJSU)) is our newest member. After earning a degree in music and completing coursework in Music Education at San Diego State University (SDSU), Mark has just completed his second semester in the SJSU MLIS program. His main instrument is guitar, and he plays both classical and jazz. He has played with the SDSU jazz guitar ensemble and the classical guitar ensemble. Mark enjoys playing music of all kinds, and is also a songwriter. He is interested in gardening, reading and walking, and he enjoys libraries very much, having worked as a student worker at the SDSU library. Welcome to MLA/SCC, Mark!

UCSB: Eduardo "Lalo" Guerrero, the eighty-four-year-old singer and composer known as the "Father of Chicano Music," has donated his papers to the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) in the Davidson Library at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Guerrero claims many accolades, including awards from the Mexican Cultural Institute and United Farm Workers. In December 1996, he was awarded a National Medal of the Arts from President Clinton at a White House ceremony. Born in Tucson on Christmas Eve 1916 to Mexican immigrant parents, he had five songs in the top ten on the Latin music charts in the U.S. in the fifties and sixties. In 1978, four of his songs were featured in the Luis Valdez hit film and musical Zoot Suit. Guerrero's love and concern for Chicanos had him traveling to farming areas where he was active on behalf of agricultural laborers, calling for equitable working conditions and writing songs about Cesar Chavez.

The acquisition of the Guerrero Collection is part of a new initiative of the UCSB library's Performing Arts Collections and CEMA to document the legacy of Mexican American music in California. The collection is rich in photographs, sound recordings, videos, interviews, correspondence, scrapbooks, and ephemera. It includes music and lyrics sheets for Guerrero's comedic Elvis Perez and his El Hustle de las Ardillitas (The Chipmunks' Hustle), as well as "La Canción Mexicana," the unofficial Mexican national anthem, written when he was seventeen.

We'll Miss You, Ol' Steve

Marsha Berman, UCLA Music Librarian Emeritus

Steve’s arrival in 1975 was a breath of fresh air to the UCLA Music Library. He came with enthusiasm and high-minded goals and wanted to inspire the staff to high achievement and fulfillment, and for the most part he did. We also managed to teach him a few things, and his tolerance for taking flak from the rest of us was truly impressive and endearing. Though congenitally a hard worker, Steve was (and is) innovative and receptive to new ideas. It was fun to work with him, always stimulating and gratifying.

Steve’s impact on the UCLA Music Library has been profound. Of course the library reflects many influences, those who have worked here (and we’ve been blessed with wonderful staff members), the faculty interests, the curricular programs and research. The Library presently enjoys a well-deserved reputation for having a superb collection of books and scores as well as remarkable archives. Steve can be largely credited for the depth and breadth of the collection and consequently for the esteem with which the collection is presently held. The research collections developed under Steve’s aegis have benefited an enormous number of students and faculty, as well as visiting scholars.

We all have stories about Steve and most of them can be told in public! This one hails from the time we actually answered telephone reference questions from the public. One morning I fielded a call from Morning Edition: they wanted to know if anybody could sing the state song. They said they would call back to hear it. Well, all of us hams wanted to be on NPR, so we practiced the song (I think to this day Gordon and I can still sing it) and eagerly anticipated the call back. But when the call came the only one with enough aplomb to actually perform for the nation was Steve. And of course he was so good that he was one of the few that the program chose to include in their broadcast. Librarians all over the country called to say they heard him singing "I love you, California." We were proud.

It’s hard to imagine Steve not in the library, as he has been such an integral part of it for the last 25 years. But I wish him well as he continues his gigs, learns the banjo, farms in Idaho, explores Los Angeles neighborhoods and environs, and writes a book on musical philately.

Louise Spear, UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive

When Steve Fry retires after 25 years at UCLA, the Music Library will miss a friend and colleague...but also the Ethnomusicology Archive will miss a great supporter. Ethnomusicology students and faculty have always appreciated Steve's friendly smile and indefatigable enthusiasm for our projects, but may not have been aware of how much he has contributed behind the scenes to ethnomusicology collection development, archival collections, reference services, classroom instruction, and library and archive tours.

We have enjoyed the many exhibits Steve has mounted in the Schoenberg lobby with titles such as "Those Wonderful Olde Musik Machines," "The American Songwriters," "Duke Ellington," and "African Mbira Players-Photographs by James Arkatov." We have learned from the numerous articles Steve has contributed to journals and encyclopedias, including some surprising ones like "Philately, Musical" in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, "The Music for the Pink Panther: A Study in Lyrical Timelessness" in The Cue Sheet, and "Nicolas Slonimsky: The Tyrannosaurus Rex of Lex(icography)" in the Sonneck Society Bulletin. We especially appreciated the "Ethnews from the Music Library" column which Steve regularly wrote for EthnoMuse: The Intra-Departmental Newsletter for the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology. In all, Steve has written and edited three monographs, 85 articles, and 115 book reviews.

Steve has been an active member of the Music Library Association, serving on the Board twice and working on many committees. For the annual conference held at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles in 1999, Steve organized the first ever MLA Big Band, which included music librarians from all over the country, UCLA Music Library staff Gordon Theil on trombone and Tim Edwards on guitar, and local ringers Steve Loza on trumpet and Kenny Burrell on guitar. The Big Band was the hit of the conference. Steve also formed a committee to visit wineries and select California wines that would be bottled and labeled "MLA 68th Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA." It was the most popular committee in the history of the local MLA chapter.

Steve has also been a central figure in the Film Music Society, formerly known as the Society for the Preservation of Film Music, serving as secretary for 10 years, on the Advisory Board for 10 years, and on the Board of Trustees for 10 years. On October 6 of this year, at a black-tie affair at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, famed film music composer Elmer Bernstein presented Steve with a Career Achievement Preservation Award for his work in preserving film music materials at UCLA for 25 years.

Steve is an avid musician, directing and playing bass and piano in the Westside Jazz Ensemble, a 17-piece big band from Culver City; playing piano in the Dan Walker Swing Machine, another local big band; directing and playing piano in Razzmatazz, a jazz trio; and playing piano in The Leadmen, a jazz quartet. He also performs solo and in groups all over the city and country.

When Steve retires he says he plans to "write a couple of books, play a lot of music, and travel to exotic places like Bakersfield and Barstow." He has a family ranch in Boise Valley, Idaho, where he "hopes to raise emus, llamas, and miniature yaks."

Steve sums up his philosophy of life by saying, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took them."

Elaine Barkin, Professor Emerita, UCLA Department of Music

During our however many long years of colleagueship you were always "there," astonishingly knowledgeable, full of enthusiasms, eager to share, a fervent feminist and supporter of idiosyncratic work, infinitely patient and witty, a terrific performer, and you certainly "made" many of my days!

Kimasi Browne, Graduate Student, UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology

Thank you Steve for contributing so much to my UCLA experience and to me as a human being. Your invitation to me to examine the book Who’s Who in Soul Music by Ralph Tee was the entrance to the maze that has turned out to be my dissertation on Northern Soul. I saw the term for the very first time in the glossary of that book on that day.

Barbara Zeisl Schoenberg, Retired Professor of German Language and Literature, Pomona College

I owe it all to you! In 1970, for some unknown and perhaps ill-advised reason, you decided to leave the University of California, Riverside and head east to Indiana University, Pennsylvania--an institution of confused geography and dubious distinction. But the fact that you decided to leave beautiful Southern California gave me the opportunity to come to UCR as Music Librarian with the challenge of trying to follow in your distinguished footsteps. I often wonder where I would have ended up if I hadn’t met you in Library school at USC. I still remember talking with you by the fountain in front of the Doheny Library, when you told me that you were planning to move on and encouraged me to apply for your position at Riverside. Thirty years later, I must acknowledge the debt I owe you for opening the door that led to a very happy and exciting career with UCR. Thank you and best wishes for a well-deserved, rewarding, and fun-filled retirement!

MLA/SCC Executive Board

Chair: Kristina Shanton, CSU, Long Beach

Vice Chair/Chair Elect: Kevin McLaughlin, California Institute of the Arts

Secretary/Treasurer: Nanette Schneir, Santa Monica Public Library

Members-At-Large: Joan Flintoff LoPear, UCLA

Eunice Schroeder, UC-Santa Barbara

Past Chair: Rhonelle Runner, Occidental College