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Representation matters:

Developing a Canadian BIPOC composers dataset for music collection evaluation and development

Carolyn Doi (USASK) & Janet Hilts (UBC)

MLA Conference, March 4, 2022

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Outline

Definitions
Project introduction and goals
Overview of the project workflow and structure of the dataset
Ethical considerations and challenges
How to find the dataset
Future directions

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BIPOC: Black Peoples, Indigenous Peoples, People(s) of Colour/Indigenous Peoples, Black Peoples, and People(s) of Colour. Variations of this acronym are also sometimes used. Other variations: IBPOC, BIMPOC.

People(s) of Colour: Used to refer to all people who are not white. Often used to signal shared experiences of systemic oppression and racism, however controversial, especially when it is used in ways that erase the specific experiences of Black people and anti-Black racism.

SFU Library. (2021, July 14). Glossary of inclusive and antiracist writing terms. https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/slc/writing/inclusive-antiracist-writing/glossary-terms

From SFU Glossary of inclusive and antiracist writing terms: It should be further noted that identity labelling is complex and often contested. The acronym BIPOC (and its variations) has been challenged for its tendency to collapse the unique experiences of Indigenous Peoples, Black Peoples, and Peoples of Colour. Recalling that specificity is a core principle of inclusive writing, it is preferable to write specifically and directly about the experiences of particular people or groups of people, rather than trying to generalize across a wide swath of experiences.

People(s) of Colour: Used to refer to all people who are not white.[4] This term is often used to signal shared experiences of systemic oppression and racism in a culture of white supremacy. The term is pluralized (i.e., People(s) of Colour) to highlight the many people and experiences that are encompassed by it. While the term is controversial, especially when it is used in ways that erase the specific experiences of Black people and anti-Black racism, it is often preferred to terms like non-white, which continue to explicitly centre and normalize whiteness as a dominant experience.

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Project origins

Initial brainstorming on how to incorporate more diverse voices into the collections
Collaboration as part of UBC Professional Experience program (LIBR 596), 120 hours
Plan to create a project that was scaled to our smaller music collections at the University of Saskatchewan.
Few lists of BIPOC composers, especially those able to narrow to Canadian composers
Traditional RDA cataloguing and LCSH generally does not help users discover demographics (S. Stone, 318)

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Education & Music Library, University of Saskatchewan

Saskatoon, SK, Canada, Treaty Six Territory and Homeland of the Métis

Photo of the Usask Education & Music Library

Located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada which is on Treaty Six Territory and Homeland of the Metis

The University of Saskatchewan is a publicly funded medical doctoral university with a student population of close to 26,000. This includes 13% self reported Indigenous students, and 7.8% international students. The Education & Music Library supports undergraduate and graduate programming in the Department of Music, which enrolls about 75 students in undergraduate and graduate programs. Courses on music performance literature and Canadian music are regulars in the curriculum. New faculty with an interest in inclusion, diversity, and equity bring a growing awareness of the need for access to repertoire by diverse composers. The library physical music scores collection contains over 16,000 items, including repertoire for solo instruments and small ensembles. Most of our standing orders for scores are dedicated to complete works and collected editions. These items primarily support performance and study in areas of classical music, jazz, musical theatre.

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Why diversify the music score collection?

Growing demand and interest from library users, performers, and audiences for diverse suggestions for repertoire and performance planning
Changing course offerings, reading and listening lists that seek to expand access to diverse viewpoints in music education
Seeing works by diverse composers on the shelf provides an opportunity for increased exposure among library users

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“What’s particularly exciting about [these] efforts … is representation,” Briggs said. “Without an attention towards what’s missing, who’s being left out of the conversation, what are we not including in our library catalog— sometimes you don’t even know it exists.”

Most, Becca. “University of Minnesota Music Library Seeks to Diversify Its Collection.” The Minnesota Daily. https://mndaily.com/264865/news/university-of-minnesota-music-library-seeks-to-diversify-its-collection/.

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Conducting a diversity audit

Diversity audit: an inventory of a collection to determine the amount of diversity within the collection. It’s a way of analyzing collection data to make sure that we include a wide variety of points of view, experiences, and representations within a collection.

Some standard approaches (Ciszek & Young, 2010; Jensen, 2017):

Comparison to standard lists
Diversity statements
Diversity codes in order records
Random sampling
Focus on smaller niche collection

Diversity audits:

Conducting a diversity audit helps the librarian make informed collection development decisions to ensure that historically marginalized people can see themselves represented in the collection.

Diversity audit: an inventory of a collection to determine the amount of diversity within the collection. It’s a way of analyzing collection data to make sure that we include a wide variety of points of view, experiences, and representations within a collection.

Cizsek & Young (2010) mention several standard approaches to conducting diversity audits such as comparison to standard lists, creating diversity statements in collection development policies, and use of diversity codes in order records. Most case studies focus on smaller niche collections for this type of collection auditing. Diversifying library collections are just one tool for creating an inclusive and less harmful learning space for users. Ultimately, anti-racism work requires ongoing, thoughtful, and respectful consideration.

It would be good to acknowledge upfront that an able bodied, white cishet neutral is assumed in society and in publishing… for that reason, "diversity" is the imperfect umbrella term used to bring perspectives other than that assumed neutral into focus. Our goal is to make our collections as inclusive as possible. Diversity is the common term, but inclusive collections are our goal.*

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“It would be good to acknowledge up front that an able bodied, white cis-het neutral is assumed in society and in publishing, and, for that reason, "diversity" is the imperfect umbrella term used to bring perspectives other than that assumed neutral into focus. Our goal is to make our collections as inclusive as possible. Diversity is the common term, but inclusive collections are our goal.”

Karen Jensen. “Diversity Considerations in YA: Doing a Diversity Audit,” 2017. http://www.teenlibrariantoolbox.com/files/2017/11/Diversity-Audit-Outline-2017-with-Sources.pdf.

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Project goals

Identify composers (through existing secondary/tertiary sources) who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour and who have an affiliation with Canada.
Include: basic information about each composer, including their primary genres of composition, affiliated publisher/vendor, website for self published materials, etc.
Use this information to conduct an audit of the music scores collection, identifying gaps and areas for future purchases.
Share the findings of the data collection openly for use by other members of the community

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Building the Dataset

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Activity Management

Building the dataset & Challenges

1. Review literature

2. Select resources

-to identify composers

3. Determine dataset headings & controlled vocabulary

4. Identify composers & publishers

5. Prepare dataset

6. Communicate with

contributors

I was tasked with creating the dataset. I reviewed the literature for best practises on ethical and respectful inclusive collection development, selected existing resources and tools to use to identify BIPOC composers affiliated with Canada, determined fields to populate in the dataset & made decisions on terms and controlled vocabulary, identified composers and their publishers and populating the dataset, prepared and cleaned the dataset, and last communicated with those who had assisted me, providing them with details on how to access the finished dataset and answering questions. My work wasn’t always linear, so for example, new leads for potential resources came in throughout my work term, and sometimes while researching a new composers, I’d come across even more resources to check out.

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Building the dataset & Challenges

Select resources

Identify individuals,

orgs, working groups

Find library guides

Find published materials

Search Internet

Evaluate resources

for transparency & ethics

Create resources list

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Developing collections to improve diversity

identify and use a variety of alternatives to traditional collection dev. tools ¹

e.g. Scott Stone → value of following professional theatre companies that promote/commission works by playwrights of ethnicities needed to reflect local diversity.²

1. Lehner-Quam, ‘Diversifying and Transforming a Public University’s Children’s Book Collection’.

2. Stone, ‘Whose Play Scripts Are Being Published? A Diversity Audit of One Library’s Collection in Conversation with the Broader Play Publishing World’.

“Intentionality in collection development requires also being intentional about the tools used to find and acquire diverse materials …”¹

Building the dataset & Challenges

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Composer Diversity Database, screenshot image, Institute for Composer Diversity, https://www.composerdiversity.com/composer-diversity-database.

Black Composers - Tag, screenshot image, WRTI, https://www.wrti.org/tags/black-composers

Loose Tea Music Theatre announces BIPOC Composer & Librettist Development Program, screenshot image, Opera Canada, https://operacanada.ca/loose-tea-music-theatre-bipoc-development-program/

CFMTA / FCAPM Virtual Conference Musical diversity from coast to coast to coast, screenshot image, CFMTA / FCAPM, https://www.cfmta.org/docs/resources/conference/Conference_Program_Final.pdf

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Time Management

Estimating time needed to examine online resources

for composers with connection to Canada

Search by Composer, screenshot image, African Diaspora Music Project, https://africandiasporamusicproject.org/search-composers.

Explore Music by Asian and Asian-American Composers, screenshot image, Theodore Front, https://www.tfront.com/topic/AsianComposers.

Building the dataset & Challenges

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Time Management

Estimating time needed to examine online resources

for composers with connection to Canada
to determine which individuals had scores

Search by Composer, screenshot image, African Diaspora Music Project, https://africandiasporamusicproject.org/search-composers.

Explore Music by Asian and Asian-American Composers, screenshot image, Theodore Front, https://www.tfront.com/topic/AsianComposers.

Find the Artist You Need, screenshot image, Prime Mover, https://www.primemovertheatre.com/artist-database.

Building the dataset & Challenges

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Pati Tyrell, Melody McKiver, photograph, https://www.melodymckiver.com/

Name	Publisher	Publisher 2	Publisher 3	Vendor / Repository	Black	Indigenous	Indigenous Nation
McKiver, Melody	self	NA	NA	NA	no	yes	Anishinaabe

Music genre	Music genre 2	Music genre 3	Resource found at	Composer's website
Art music	Dramatic music	NA	Canadian Art Song Project; Hungry Listening	https://www.melodymckiver.com/

Melody McKiver, composer

Populating the dataset

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Building the dataset

132 composers are included

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Challenges

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Challenges

related to ethics of inclusive collecting

ethical considerations when attempting to identify and classify composers using markers such as ethnicity, race, or nationality

Key Challenges

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“identifying people according to their wishes is good journalism — it’s in keeping with our goals of accuracy, respect for the people we cover.”

Jerome Socolovsky, "BIPOC? Latinx? Here’s How to Describe People Accurately," NPR Training / Sources, 1 December 2021, https://training.npr.org/2021/12/01/journalism-guide-terms-disability-ethnicity-gender-race/.”

Key Challenges

For guidance on respectfully or ethically identifying and labelling composers as BIPOC, I looked at best practices from relevant guides in journalism or from organizations with existing relevant lists. As an NPR training guide puts it -- “identifying people according to their wishes is good journalism — it’s in keeping with our goals of accuracy, respect for the people we cover.” In general, then, to include a composer on my list while avoiding assumptions about race or ethnicity, I would first find some evidence they identified as BIPOC and/or were a member of an Indigenous Nation.

That said, doing this work is a process not perfection--some composers on our list may not identify as BIPOC or did in the past but don’t now. In the dataset, we’ve included the resources I used to locate composers so how they came to be on the list can be traced -- users can apply their information evaluation skills to follow up and investigate further. We also hope users direct us to mistakes or omissions.

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Priorities when selecting resources to consult

transparency re. methods for respectful labelling of individuals
created and maintained by BIPOC-led initiatives

Key Challenges

Compromised and consulted resources that weren’t ideal

Solutions

cross-reference composers with other sources
consider authority & positionality of who recommends a list
consider steps taken by list creator re anti-racist education

For existing online lists of BIPOC composers, I prioritized consulting those transparent about their methods regarding respectful labelling and that were created and maintained by BIPOC-led organizations.

Still, I had to make use of other existing lists to successfully compile a list long and varied enough to be useful. A challenge was that certain organizations or vendors had extensive lists, but determining how they had been compiled wasn’t clear. Despite this, I included composers from some of these lists and attempted to cross-reference the composers with other sources –composer’s participation in a BIPOC event, personal web page bio, for example. I did the same for a list compiled and shared with me by a white faculty member at Canada’s Royal Conservatory – a list compiled to support revision of the RCM piano syllabus for diversity and inclusion. When evaluating this resource, I also considered the authority and positionality of who had referred me to his work – Karen Burke, a Black music professor at my former university who has, for decades, been working to address the underrepresentation of Black musics and music by Black composers within music education in Canada [-I also took into consideration that this RCM faculty member had attended relevant lectures Professor Burke recently curated.]

I share this example to illustrate how making judgment calls on resource reliability and ultimately on who will end up on a list happens in this type of work along with associated biases—a challenge to keep in mind.

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Pretendians:

“People who fake an Indigenous identity or dig up an old ancestor from hundreds of years ago to proclaim themselves as Indigenous today.”

Fraudsters who “take up a lot of space and income from First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples.”

Melissa Ridgen (Red River Métis)

Melissa Ridgen, "Pretendians and What to Do with People Who Falsely Say They’re Indigenous," APTN News (blog), 28 January 2021, https://www.aptnnews.ca/infocus/pretendians-and-what-to-do-with-people-who-falsely-say-theyre-indigenous-put-infocus/.

So I’ve been advocating for including composers on lists such as our who self-identified as Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour. But I need to mention something important connected to Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous identity specifically, that others should consider when attempting similar inclusive collection development or assessment work. During this project, I kept a critical eye out for Pretendians, [animation] people who falsely claim to have Indigenous ancestry. As Melissa Ridgen (Red River Metis) defines, those “… who fake an Indigenous identity or dig up an old ancestor from hundreds of years ago to proclaim themselves as Indigenous today”, often for some sort of personal or professional gain. To avoid these Fraudsters, I spent time doing lateral reading – looking to see if a composer I’d included had been covered in Indigenous-run media, a certain Nation’s blog, and the like.

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respect for Indigenous knowledge and expertise

Key Challenges

Prioritise Indigenous-created resources when looking for Indigenous composers

Avery, Dawn. "Native Classical: Musical Modernities, Indigenous Research Methodologies, and a Kanienkéha (Mohawk) Concept of Non:Wa (Now)." PhD diss, University of Maryland, 2014.

National Indigenous Music Impact Study, screenshot image, APTN, and NVision Insight, /https://www.aptnnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Music-Impact-Study.pdf

Not only to avoid Pretendians, but to avoid common settler misrepresentations and to respect Indigenous expertise and knowledge, I also intentionally looked for Indigenous composers first in resources created by Indigenous people or organizations,[1][2] including reaching out directly to organizations for suggestions. These resources include Dawn Avery’s PhD thesis and an Aboriginal People’s Television Network report. You can find these resources, along with the other resources I used, listed in our dataset.

[1] Dawn Avery, ‘Native Classical: Musical Modernities, Indigenous Research Methodologies, and a Kanienkéha (Mohawk) Concept of Non:Wa (Now)’ (PhD diss, College Park, University of Maryland, 2014); Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020).

[2] APTN and NVision Insight, ‘National Indigenous Music Impact Study’, 2019, https://www.aptnnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Music-Impact-Study.pdf; ‘NWIA (Native Women in the Arts)’, Native Women in the Arts, n.d., http://www.nwia.ca/.

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Level of precision when labeling composers with race or ethnicity markers

Identify if composers are Black or Indigenous
Identify Indigenous Nation

Key Challenges

“Precision is important. It shows respect by acknowledging the diversity and distinctness of Indigenous Peoples.”

“Names are part of the way we render identity. Use the words that individual people use for themselves.”

Scholar Gregory Younging (Opaskwayak Cree Nation member)

Younging, Gregory. Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing by and about Indigenous Peoples. Edmonton, Alberta: Brush Education, 2018.

Another challenge was deciding on the level of precision when labeling composers with markers for race or ethnicity. We aimed to respect the history behind the BIPOC term, where Indigenous people and then Black activists and academics rejected being lumped together under the term People of Colour. So, our list identifies Indigenous and Black composers as such - as you saw when we looked at the record for the composer Melody McKiver.

I also made sure we didn’t end with identifying Indigenous composers simply as Indigenous. In the dataset record you also saw I included a column for Indigenous Nation. Gregory Younging explains in his book the Elements of Indigenous Style that blanket terms, such as Indigenous People, should best be avoided, in general: “Precision is important. It shows respect by acknowledging the diversity and distinctness of Indigenous Peoples.” “Names are part of the way we render identity..”

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Mainstream, colonialist controlled-vocabularies used in LIS have been widely critiqued by Indigenous information professionals for omission, lack of recognition of sovereign nations, and more.

Key Challenges

Doyle, Ann M., Kimberley Lawson, and Sarah Dupont. "Indigenization of Knowledge Organization at the Xwi7xwa Library." Journal of Library and Information Studies 13, no. 2 (2015). https://doi.org/10.6182/jlis.2015.

Duarte, Marisa Elena, and Miranda Belarde-Lewis. “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (4 July 2015): 677–702. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396.

Littletree, Sandra, and Cheryl A. Metoyer. "Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project." Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (2015): 640–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1010113.

Further, failing to include specificity and accuracy in how we labelled each Indigenous composer on our list would risk reproducing the inadequacies of mainstream, colonialist controlled-vocabularies used in LIS, which have been widely critiqued by Indigenous information professionals for omission, lack of recognition of sovereign nations, and so on. So, I endeavoured to label the Indigenous composers on our list by naming the particular Indigenous Peoples, their Nation, and tracking down words the individual composers use for themselves. Again, I hope users let me know of any corrections I should make.

(see Doyle, Lawson and Dupont (2015), Duarte and Belarde-Lewis (2015) among others)[1]

[1] Ann M. Doyle, Kimberley Lawson, and Sarah Dupont, ‘Indigenization of Knowledge Organization at the Xwi7xwa Library’, Journal of Library and Information Studies 13, no. 2 (2015), https://doi.org/10.6182/jlis.2015; Marisa Elena Duarte and Miranda Belarde-Lewis, ‘Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies’, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (4 July 2015): 677–702, https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396; Sandra Littletree and Cheryl A. Metoyer, ‘Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project’, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (2015): 640–57, https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1010113.

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BIPOC Composers Dataset

https://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7939/DVN/OINUZU

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Next Steps

Collection assessment
Identifying areas for purchasing
Identifying other areas of the collection for further assessment (i.e. sound recordings, broader diversity collecting?)
Inclusion and anti-racism beyond the music collection

A final key challenge I (Janet) had doing this work relates to the tension I felt between the scope and immediate purpose of the project and more substantial issues within music education and librarianship relating to confronting Eurocentric & white supremacist assessments and understandings of art music. I constantly felt conflicted working on a project which aims to improve the inclusivity of art music in Canada, while being required to prioritize composers who create music in score format—if my work is not affirming various epistemologies of music within Canada, how is it inclusive? Anxiety. I believe, what scholar Dylan Robinson characterizes as “additive” inclusion, would describe our project, which “… can in fact maintain the larger system of white supremacy within which music programs [in Canada] operate.” Dylan Robinson, ‘To All Who Should Be Concerned’, Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music 39, no. 1 (2019): 137, https://doi.org/10.7202/1075347ar.

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References

CCBC. "Diversity Statistics FAQs." Cooperative Children’s Book Center, UW-Madison. Accessed 12 June 2021. https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/diversity-statistics-faqs/.

Doyle, Ann M., Kimberley Lawson, and Sarah Dupont. "Indigenization of Knowledge Organization at the Xwi7xwa Library." Journal of Library and Information Studies 13, no. 2 (2015). http://hdl.handle.net/2429/54261

Duarte, Marisa Elena, and Miranda Belarde-Lewis. "Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies." Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (4 July 2015): 677–702. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396.

Hamilton, Darren. "BlackMusicMatters: Dismantling Anti-Black Racism in Music Education." Canadian Music Educator 62, no. 2 (2021): 16–28.

Hooper, Lisa. “Introduction to Music Collection Development: Tools and Resources.” Course materials. ALA eLearning, March 2021. https://ecourses.ala.org/mod/page/view.php?id=5424 2.

Institute for Composer Diversity. "Frequently Asked Questions." Institute for Composer Diversity. Accessed 9 June 2021. https://www.composerdiversity.com/faqs.

Lehner-Quam, Alison. “Diversifying and Transforming a Public University’s Children’s Book Collection: Librarian and Teacher Education Faculty Collaboration on Grants, Research, and Collection Development.” Collection Management (2021): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2021.1958400.

Manuell, Romany, Kate McEntee, and Marcus Chester. "The Equity Collection: Analysis and Transformation of the Monash University Design Collection." Art Libraries Journal 44, no. 3 (2019): 119–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/alj.2019.16.

Mason, James. “Programmatically Enhancing Collection Metadata to Help Assess Collection Diversity.” Presented at the NYS/O Fall 2021 Meeting, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, October 29, 2021.

Primary Colours Couleurs primaires. "IBPOC Artistic Practices." Primary Colours Couleurs primaires. Accessed 6 January 2022. https://www.primary-colours.ca/project_collections/21-ibpoc-artistic-practices.

Robinson, Dylan. "To All Who Should Be Concerned." Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music 39, no. 1 (2019): 137-144. https://doi.org/10.7202/1075347ar.

SFU Library. “Glossary of Inclusive and Antiracist Writing Terms |,” July 14, 2021. https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/slc/writing/inclusive-antiracist-writing/glossary-terms.

Stone, Scott M. “Whose Play Scripts Are Being Published? A Diversity Audit of One Library’s Collection in Conversation with the Broader Play Publishing World.” ’Collection Management 45, no. 4 (2020): 304–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2020.1715314.

Younging, Gregory. Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing by and about Indigenous Peoples. Edmonton, Alberta: Brush Education, 2018.

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Questions?

Carolyn Doi carolyn.doi@usask.ca

Janet Hilts jane tflorahilts@outlook.com