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Hyperconnected Access to Archival Music Collections: Cataloging, Finding Aids, and Social Media

Stacey Krim

William “Mac” Nelson

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

SEMLA 2015

UGA Libraries, Athens, GA

October 31, 2015

View this presentation online: http://uncg.libguides.com/scua/cello

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The Cello Music Collections at UNCG

Lev Aronson Cello Music and Personal Papers Collections

Elizabeth Cowling Cello Music and Personal Papers Collections

Marion Davies Cello Music Collection

Maurice Eisenberg Cello Music and Personal Papers Collections

Lubomir Georgiev Cello Music Collection

Bernard Greenhouse Cello Music and Personal Papers Collections

Fritz Magg Cello Music Collection

Rudolf Matz Cello Music and Personal Papers Collections

Douglas B. Moore Cello Music Collection

Janos Scholz Cello Music and Personal Papers Collections

Luigi Silva Cello Music and Personal Papers Collections

Laszlo Varga Cello Music Collection

Additional Music Collection:

George Darden Piano and Opera Collection

Peter Paul Fuchs Papers

Raymond J. Gariglio Papers

North Carolina Holograph Collection, 1939-1961

International Double Reed Society Records, 1900-2007

Susan Metcalfe Letter, 1902-1922

North Carolina Music Educators Association Records, 1970-1995

Harold Schiffman Archive, 1944 - 2012

Egon Wellesz Contemporary Music Collection, 1892 - 1975

Mac: As some of the more seasoned of you in attendance might recall, I have made two presentations at previous Annual Meetings of SEMLA about the Cello Music Collection at UNCG. Something I addressed on both of those occasions was the extent of my outreach and public service activity on behalf of the Collection. Despite the very technical services sounding title of Cello Music Cataloger, my position description includes a deadly little phrase--“chief resource person for the Collection”—which rivals the more familiar, much dreaded phrase “other duties as assigned,” that we all recognize as a sure harbinger of terminal overload. I mention this now, by way of introduction, for two reasons, both having to do with my colleague and co-presenter Stacey Krim. The first is, I am happy to say, that Stacey now takes the lead in public services and outreach, allowing me to play more of a support role in these areas while shifting my focus back to cataloging and writing about the Collection. The second is that Stacey has really hit the ground running on the fast track of digital communication, and, as you will see, has all kinds of cool, cutting-edge stuff to report. So, even though item-level cataloging is the real hero of the story we are about to tell, this cataloger will be playing something of a support role in the presentation after describing the role that cataloging plays in hyperconnected access.

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Mac continues: Speaking of heroes, before you on the right the patron saint of the Cello Music Collection, Elizabeth Cowling, who served UNCG (and earlier Woman’s College) as a cellist, pedagogue, scholar, and collaborator from 1945 through 1976. Not only was she a donor herself and the major force behind the foundational purchase of The Luigi Silva Collection by the UNCG Friends of the Library in 1963 but she also understood the crucial matter of processing and cataloging library collections and she donated $20,000 dollars upon her death in 1997 for these purposes. Together, the Silva and Cowling Collections were sufficiently substantive to put UNCG on the map as a cello study center, a status which led to further donations over the decades by a number of their distinguished colleagues. As the Collection grew, item-level cataloging was a constant, and by the 1990s a three-quarter time Cello Music Cataloger position was established, followed in 2006 by the full-time Faculty Librarian position I now enjoy. So, we have long treated the Collection, not as a music archive but as a full cataloged Special Collection. (Clarify this last point a bit, if you like, Stacey.)

As a cataloger who communicates often with patrons, I have observed the efficacy of item-level cataloging for access and have sometimes had to defend the large amount of time and expense required to create such data-rich bibliographic records. It seems an easy assumption for many that in the “digital age” this manner of cataloging is something of a dinosaur that has managed to sidestep the tar pit. However, this presentation is about how such cataloging is paying off in the worlds of WMS and Google.

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Connecting Researchers with the Item and Making them Come Back for More

Stacey: What I have been observing is that people are searching in exactly the manner you would expect--they are searching for specific music pieces in Google. That researchers are searching for individual pieces is not surprising, as most musicians do not think in terms of libraries collecting archives of annotated and manuscript music. Even if a researcher thinks to look for “music archives” or “music collections,” those phrases are so broadly used online for YouTube channels and personalized video, audio, and visual online content so as to make such a search useless. However, searching for individual items through some combination of keywords has a chance at yield usable results. The results of these searches in many cases are yielding the catalog record in the first page of results, if not the top five results. Mac and I are going to give you an overview of how the catalog record acting as the doorway to our archival music collections by providing enough description of individual items, drawing the researchers into contacting me to learn more about the collections as a whole.

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“Paganini 24 caprices for violoncello”

“Silva caprices 24 cello”

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Mac: The data from the catalog record tells much about them: (1) The level of completion—which caprices are there, which are not, and what Silva the arranger has done with them; (2) What else is there—unidentified sketches (There is so much the title alone does not say); (3) Perhaps most consistently significant are the performance notes (describe and tell of patrons who have been in touch with me about them over the years).

Of course it was not every day that library patrons contacted me about annotations—but in the world of Google this detail is directly available; it gets the notes in front of many more eyes than ever before. And the Google search creates the opportunity for a high level of keyword searching through communication with Stacey. (Using “annotations” as a keyword, etc.) Stacey’s great line: “Two out of the top five hits. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.”

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Mac: SILVA BOX 6-2: 24 caprices for violoncello and piano / Paganini ; Silva (OCLC 43564562)

Originally for violin alone; arranged for violoncello and piano by Luigi Silva.

Title derived from complete work.

Manuscript in the hand of Luigi Silva. Most caprices in pen with performance notes in pencil or red pencil. Some have solo line in green pen.

Multiple copies: Caprice 6, 2 copies; Caprice 9, 4 copies (3 are transposed); Caprice 17, 5 copies + 2 photocopies (1 incomplete); Caprice 24, 3 copies of score, 1 of part.

Some caprices, solo part only (nos. 5, 15, 2 copies of 17, 18, 19, 23, and 2 copies of 24).

Some caprices transposed: no. 9 (3 copies), no. 14-15, and no. 21. Many have differences from original.�Photocopies of no. 17-19. 1 copy of no. 17 and no. 18-19: first page only.

Two caprices dated May, 1941 at end.

Many pages have unidentified sketches on verso; may be related to Caprices. One labeled "Preludium."

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Stacey: So, once the researcher discovers that this piece exists, the next step is finding where it is located. They can do this directly through the catalog page, as the interface displays libraries holding the item, in order of the closest to farthest distance from the researcher’s IP address. If our institution is listed, there is an “ask a librarian” link, which will take the researcher to our library’s page with an embedded chat box, telephone number, email address, and texting option. These communication portals go to our reference department, so they are likely to be routed through 1-2 places before they get to me. This is not a perfect stream of public services communication, but I think that is a minor flaw considering a researcher anywhere can find a piece of music that may exist in 1-3 collections worldwide from the initial discovery of the record to contacting me can potentially have a reproduction in their hands the same day as the question is submitted.

I would also like to point out that in WorldCat, as well as the form we use for our local ILS system, persistent urls are available, and many of the researchers who communicate with me send me this link, so I know exactly what they are looking at, and can as appropriate follow-up questions.

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Stacey: For researchers who are not fluent in English, which is the norm in music but I think especially with music archives, the ability to communicate through sharing catalog records significantly improves the research interaction. When I am able, I try to use whatever dialogue I have in the languages in which I have a modest vocabulary when I am contacted through instant message and email to encourage interaction and build relationships. While musical terms are fairly uniform across multiple languages, I am not a natural linguist, so I have found the Google translate option to be particularly useful in communicating the details about pieces which can be found within our catalog records. Detailed records lead to more questions, providing motivation for the researcher to contact the library. Every instance of contact provides the opportunity to build relationships.

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Enhancing Connections: Researchers, Librarians, and Collections:

Helping Researchers Find Something instead of Anything, pt. 1

Stacey: If you are working with a world class collection, you will attract world class researchers and performers. This means you will be asked world class research questions. This is a time virtual research support is very much to your benefit because researchers never get to see the panic. Most of the research questions, in my experience, require extremely precise, but exhaustive information relating to specific compositions, composers, and annotators. Traditional archival finding aids do not have enough item level description to be helpful, since you are describing for the creator of the collection, not the item.

In a time when ILS’s are trying to become more Google-like to help researchers find anything, many catalogs are no longer being designed with thought to advanced researchers looking for something as opposed to anything. Combined with trends of copy cataloging and minimal description in the record, collection access from a research consultation perspective is becoming a challenge. However, we have found that detailed cataloging of an item can offset some of the flaws of the ILS system, as we can craft very powerful and precise searches. Being able to manipulate these specific variables into a search can literally cut hours if not days off of a research consultation, in addition to making us look really good.

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“I am editing my own version of the Bach Suites for Solo Cello. I am interested only in annotated copies, and I am specifically interested if any cellist in your collection bothered annotating the Markevitch edition.”

Stacey: Annotated and manuscript cello music is our collection development focus, so I get asked some form of this question on a daily basis, whether they are researchers surveying pieces for their own editions or performers needing help on a piece they are practicing. And, once you have established a positive relationship with the researcher (especially performers), they are likely to return to you for pieces in future performances, and may wish to be taught how to perform and adapt these searches one there own. This presents challenges on multiple levels, but the combination of detailed cataloging, creative search strategies, and social media platforms cataloging, public services, and the researcher, creating a relatively smooth and efficient reference interaction.

As you can imagine we have many editions of the Bach Cello Suites across our collection, by several arrangers, with performance notes. I do not want to have to search every collection unless I have to, and if I am communicating through IM, there is some expectation of a quick response. This means I need to reduce my search time. There are several variable to consider, including arranger, if the edition is annotated, as well as who annotated the piece.

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(au:Bach, Johann Sebastian) AND ((kw:annot*) OR (kf:performance note*)) AND (pn:Markevitch) AND (mt:sco)

AND

((b8:Silva) OR (b8:Cowling) OR (b8:Matz) OR (b8:Eisenberg) OR (b8:Scholz) OR (b8:Magg) OR (b8:Greenhouse) OR (b8:Varga) OR (b8:Aronson) OR (b8:Cello Books))

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magg record

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Easy to be overwhelmed in searching the Bach suites because there are so very many editions; these would be called duplicates if not for the “gold mine” of annotations by various cellists that makes each item unique in terms of research value

Data in item-level catalog records is key to organized search not for every copy but for the right one

For this particular edition we have one copy with performance notes by Elizabeth Cowling, another with a few such notes by Lev Aronson (the one of our cellists who does not appear to have revered the Bach suites as the others did), and then a very special set of performance notes, annotations, and manuscript additions by Fritz Magg (show the mind-blower example)

MAGG BOX 13-5: Six suites for solo cello / J. S. Bach (OCLC 5932375)

Preface by the editor with musical examples.

Includes 2 versions of the fifth suite.

Includes facsimiles of three early manuscripts.

Copy in Special Collections Scholz: inscribed to János Scholz by the editor.

Copy in Special Collections Cowling: performance notes and annotations in the hand of Elizabeth Cowling.

Copy in Special Collections Eisenberg: inscribed to Maurice Eisenberg by the editor.

Copy in Special Collections Magg: extensive performance notes, annotations, and manuscript additions in the hand of Fritz Magg.

Special Collections Aronson copy: a few performance notes in the hand of Lev Aronson.�760616

[G major] -- [D minor] -- [C major] -- [E-flat major] -- [Suite 5, [C minor, discordable] -- Suite 5, [C minor, after the version for the lute] -- [D major].

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I am a DMA student interested in unaccompanied cello solos. Is there an easy way I can search them in your collection?

(mt:sco) AND ((kw:cello) OR (kw:violoncello)) AND ((kw:unaccompan*) OR (kf:cello solo) OR (kf:solo cello) OR (kf:violoncello solo) OR (kf:solo violoncello) OR (kf:cello alone) OR (kf:violoncello alone))

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Quest for the Dream Search (1)

Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music (LCMPT)

382 01 cello $n 1 $s 1 $2 lcmpt

382 01 cello $n 1 $a piano $n 1 $s 2 $2

lcmpt

Those DMA students—always looking for an easy search! One that will yield everything they want and reject everything they don’t want. And of course Stacey encourages this, especially when she herself is frustrated by our inability, and the inability of our patrons, to design satisfactory searches for unaccompanied cello music. And I quote “Really, Mac,” she asks, “Is there really no ‘solo’ or ‘unaccompanied’ search option? Is the Subject Heading ‘Suites (Cello)’ the best LC can do?” Everybody wants more “granularity” these days…

…and this granularity is on the way from an important new thesaurus of medium of performance terms for music. Our search for unaccompanied cello music provides an excellent example of where far more precise data on the medium side of things allows the granularity for precise searching. On the screen you see how music for solo cello is coded in MARC field 382. To quote our colleague Casey Mullin of the New York Public Library, “It is the subfield $s that provides the secret sauce. Theoretically, a search system should be able to run a query on the catalog where 382a=cello and 382s=1. That is, where the medium is cello and only cello” (as opposed to cello and piano in the 2^nd example) I say “theoretically because we are not there yet, for two reasons: (1) We have not retrospectively added 382 to our older records, and (2) our systems don’t yet make full use of 382 fields for searching. But there is work being done on both fronts. For the retrospective addition of fields, there is a Vocabularies Subcommittee (which Casey chairs) that is working with Gary Strawn of NW University to design a program that generates 655/382/385/386 fields from 650 fields. Once this program has been fully vetted and tested, it will be able to run on catalogs large and small, including OCLC WorldCat.

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Quest for the Dream Search (2)

“Might we have more precise searches: ‘women composers of cello music,’ or ‘Italian composers of cello music,’ perhaps?”

382 (medium of performance)

385 (audience characteristics)

386 (creator/contributor characteristics)

655 (genre/form headings)

Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT)

For the retrospective addition of fields, there is a Vocabularies Subcommittee (which Casey chairs) of the Music Library Association’s Cataloging and Metadata Committee now working with Gary Strawn of NW University to design a program that generates 655/382/385/386 fields from 650 fields. Once this program has been fully vetted and tested, it will be able to run on catalogs large and small, including OCLC WorldCat.

So you can see the potential for greatly enhanced searching facilitated by increasingly data-rich bibliographic records, which will make possible far more precise searches—women composers of cello music, Italian composers of cello music, and so on—by the new 385 and 386 fields, and the new vocabulary LCDGT, which was necessitated by the genre/form project (LCGFT 655) and the growing demand for faceted displays and searching. This vocabulary will be used to describe the creators of, and contributors to, resources, and also the intended audiences of resources.

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“The subject of my thesis is the history and evolution(?) of the more than 100 editions of the Bach Solo Cello Suites... As part of the research for the thesis, I am currently in the process of tracking down all - or at least most - of these editions either as hard copies or in electronic version. I am aware that you hold the Cello Music Collections at Special Collections Division of Jackson Library. In this collection you have a number of Bach Cello Suites editions that are still missing from my own collection. However, so far I was unable to do a proper search of the Cello Music Collections. As a result of that, while I know that there are certain Bach Suites editions that I would need, you would very possibly have some others that I don’t even know about.

My first question therefore would be: how could I get proper access to your catalogue?” (email question)

Personalized Annotated Bibliographies

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Helping Researchers Find Something instead of Anything, pt. 2

Teaching researchers how to search…

and crafting shareable searches.

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Connecting to the Social Media Bandwagon

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Digital Projects

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Meeting Needs across Social Media: Soliciting a Response

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In Conclusion: Building Hyperconnected Relationships Worldwide

If we had more than 45 minutes, Mac and I could spend the rest of the morning describing scenarios demonstrating how all of the things mentioned contributed to someone on the other side of the world magically found either an item or one of us, providing contact if not an ongoing relationship. I am ending with this interaction. I frequent the Internet Cello Society on Facebook, and a conversation started about cadenzas for the Haydn C cello concerto. The conversation turned to Laszlo Varga’s cadenza, so having Varga’s collection and that particular piece digitized, I thought I would jump into the conversation, which I do on the rarest of occasions when I have something intelligent to contribute. While jumping into a “whose cadenza is better” debate on Facebook can turn nasty, this had a happy ending. There were many likes and downloads, and this cellist imed me, and we had a long conversation….

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Thank You and Questions