Updates from the Music Library Association Cataloging and Metadata Committee
Prepared for ALA, June 2023
Below please find brief updates from the Cataloging and Metadata Committee (CMC) of the Music Library Association. CMC includes three subcommittees, the MLA Linked Data Working Group, and hosts the three PCC music funnels.
MLA-CMC Essentials
What has CMC/MLA been up to lately?
- Contact: Kevin Kishimoto, LDWG Chair
- Energized exploration and serious play, working hours, group discussion
- Upcoming: (More) Wikidata projects; BIBFRAME/Performed Music Ontology data
- Contact: Encoding Standards Subcommittee. Chair Ethan D’Ver began March 2023; Outgoing Chair Karen Peters completed the term of service in 2023
- Metadata for Music Resources page updated (no MARC here!)
- MARC updates, proposals, discussion papers to accompany Official RDA, e.g. indicators for Representative Expression, numeric identifiers for expressions
- MARC proposal 2023-02 Adding Subfield $3 to Field 041 in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format (MLA and OLAC) to appear in MARC Update 36
- Other CMC personnel updates
- CMC Chair: Rebecca Belford began March 2023. Outgoing Chair Hermine Vermeij completed the term of service in 2023.
- OCLC representative: Morris Levy begins July 2023 upon the retirement of Jay Weitz from OCLC after many years of service as the rep to CMC and its subcommittees.
Meetings
MLA-TLA Meeting 2023
The Music Library Association and Theater Library Association met jointly March 2023 in St. Louis, MO. CMC sponsored three program sessions (links go to slides):
All recorded meeting programming will be available through MLA’s Vimeo channel in September 2023. Individual presenters may also elect to upload their slides to Music Library Association Humanities Commons space
MLA 2024
Cincinnati, Ohio, February 28-March 2, 2024 (hybrid)
MLA Chapter meetings
MLA has 10 regional chapters, whose meetings take place various times throughout the year. Some are virtual, and registration costs are significantly lower than for national meetings. Newcomers encouraged!
MOUG
MOUG (the Music OCLC Users Group) held its 2023 annual meeting virtually on February 10 and 17, 2023, followed by an in-person reception held shortly before MLA in St Louis in honor of Jay Weitz’s retirement. Slides from program sessions will be posted to the MOUG website:
- Aggregates for the Practical Cataloger (Keith Knop, University of Georgia)
- Digital Score Cataloging: How’s Everyone Else Doing It? (Chuck Peters, Indiana University)
- Ask Everything! (Jay Weitz, OCLC; Damian Iseminger, Library of Congress)
- Getting Our Feet Wet: Starting Music Linked Data Projects in Wikidata (Kevin Kishimoto, Stanford University; Kristi Bergland, University of Minnesota; Treshani Perera, University of Kentucky; Clare Spitzer, Stanford University; Laura Yust, Library of Congress;
Emma Clarkson, New York Public Library) - Discovery Services Update (Jay Holloway, OCLC)
- PDF Scores in Circulating Music Library Collections: If You Catalog, Print, and Bind It, They Can Use It (Treshani Perera, University of Kentucky)
- Discovery Analytics (Suzanne Eggleston Lovejoy, Yale University; Yukari Sugiyama (Yale University)
- Lightning talks
MOUG awarded the 2023 Distinguished Service Award to Peter Lisius and Ralph Hartsock.
Music-Related Metadata/Cataloging News and Resources
"Why Do We Need a Music Cataloger" Infographic (pdf), from the MLA Advocacy Committee
Email lists
- MLA-L, Music Library Association email discussion list. Varied topics related to all areas of music libraries and librarianship, including some metadata and technical services content. Open to all (MLA membership not required).
- MOUG-L, email discussion list of the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG), is a forum where those who catalog music ask and answer detailed music cataloging questions in a collaborative, supportive environment. Topics include RDA, MARC, LCSH, LCGFT, LCMPT, and more. Open to all (MOUG membership not required.)
System User Groups:
- MLA Interest groups: Alma, Sirsi, and WMS
- FOLIO Music Users Group (unofficial and unaffiliated)
- MOUG, the Music OCLC Users Group (separate update below)
Continuing ed
- ALA-MLA E-Courses: Intro to Music Cataloging; Music Cataloging with Library of Congress Vocabularies; Music Cataloging with Library of Congress Classification
- ALA webinar series: Using the New RDA Toolkit to Catalog Music
Other organizations
- IAML (International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres): IAML is holding its 2023 Congress in Cambridge, England, July 20-August 4, 2023. The program includes sessions sponsored by the Cataloguing and Metadata Section (Chris Holden, Library of Congress, Chair).
- ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections): ARSC met May 17-20, 2023 in Pittsburgh, PA. Continuing education webinars are available through ARSC Aviary platform; including archival and digitization topics.
- MEI (Music Encoding Initiative): The MEI is “a community-driven, open-source effort to define a system for encoding musical documents in a machine-readable structure.”