Music Library True Stories No.3

What’s more awesome than 60 music librarians from across all library sectors of Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales coming together for a weekend conference and confab? When they all meet in Cardiff, of course!

The weekend after Easter saw the City and University teeming with information professionals keen to trade tips and stories on getting those hard-to-find choir score sets, music research through crowdsourcing, archival materials preservation and access, music library advocacy through website development, building cross-sector partnerships and collaborations, specialist music librarian training through the Aberystwyth University distance learning programme, and of course as much Wales-based musicology and service provision as we could pack in!

This was the Annual Study Weekend (ASW) celebrating the 59th anniversary of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres’ UK & Ireland Branch (IAML UK & Irl). Held in the Cardiff University School of Music, conference delegates enjoyed a wide range of presentation topics, many of which were supported by members of the University and City community. Three School of Music academic staff members gave talks, including the keynote address presented by Professor David Wyn Jones, Head of School. Music libraries in Cardiff also opened their doors for special tours on Saturday to give a small taste of the depth and breadth of music information available to the community.

And because there can never be too much music information joy to spread around, SCOLAR created a wonderful physical and online exhibition featuring four of the University’s fabulous music special collections. This worked in conjunction with the JISC development bid awarded to “Music Collections at Cardiff University” for cataloguing three main collections: Mackworth, Aylward, and BBC Music. In addition to the exhibitions, a presentation was also made to the conference on the history of these three collections, the librarian perspective on special collection curation and long-term planning, and an update on RISM UK and how these collections will eventually be displayed on the improved website.

For more information on this year’s ASW, please see our programme: http://www.iaml.info/iaml-uk-irl/training/ASW2012_programme.pdf

The official website for our national IAML branch can be found at: http://www.iaml.info/iaml-uk-irl

For updates on the “Music Collections at Cardiff University” project, please see: http://cardiffmusicproject.wordpress.com

The online exhibition of four music special collections can be found here: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/libraries/scolar/digital/music.html

Visit http://www.rism.org.uk to explore RISM UK, a national free database of original and rare music score sources