Articles

❖ MLA-L at Twenty, Notes (2009)
Abstract: MLA-L, the electronic-mail distribution list for music librarians, is now twenty years old. Before the establishment of the list in 1989, professional communication among music librarians was paper based and slow. The growth of computer networks in the early 1980s led to the development of applications to promote group communication, including LISTSERV, an e-mail distribution application released in 1986. With the help of Mary Papakhian, a member of the information technology staff at Indiana University, Ralph Papakhian established MLA-L as the first distribution list on the university's LISTSERV server. Growth of the list was rapid: by the end of 1995, there were over 1,000 subscribers, and since then the number has slowly increased to over 1,100. The topics of discussion on MLA-L cover all aspects of the profession, and the archives of messages posted to the list provide a rich resource for the study of the history of music librarianship.
❖ Music Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania
Originally published in Philadelphia Music Makers, vol. 3, no. 4 (winter 2004). Can be viewed as either a webpage or PDF document.
❖ Distant Music: Delivering Audio over the Internet, Notes (2003)
Abstract: Advances in audio technology in the 1980s and 1990s made it possible for librarians to create digital copies of sound recordings and to provide off-site access to them through streaming-media servers. Because streaming technology could accommodate heavy use at odd hours from any location, librarians quickly applied the new digital audio technologies to curricular listening assignments, providing a parallel to the print "e-reserves" projects developed by academic libraries during the 1990s. The results of a survey of thirty-nine digital audio reserves projects offers information on streaming formats, streaming rates, access control, user interfaces, staffing, equipment, and costs.
❖ Periodical Use in a University Music Library: A Citation Study of Theses and Dissertations Submitted to the Indiana University School of Music from 1975-1980, Serials Librarian (1983)
Abstract: In an effort to measure in-house use of music periodicals, a citation study based on bibliographies in theses and dissertations was conducted at the Indiana University Music Library. A total of 256 titles were cited, but only 30% were cited more than once. While the periodical literature cited by musicologists has a low rate of obsolescence, the periodicals cited by theorists and educators becomes obsolete at a rapid rate, making the rate of obsolescence for the field as a whole, fairly high, unlike other subject areas in the humanities.